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. 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 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 rest is 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, cholotropic 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 is,
is the I guess the the honest answer and the factual answer
from what we know and 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 in 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 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 lots of we had big, big
house, big family bathroom and we're going to school And I lock
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 as 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 still
to me is 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 of 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.
And 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'd 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 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 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 6
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, there's 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 shown 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 at 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 a goddess come in and, and it was incredibly powerful that
my own mind created that. And it's 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 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 to
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 that's happened since.
So that was the one where I went, oh, I wonder how one would
go about teaching this to people.
And I had a conversation with the guy that ran 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, that stand out, a
couple of people who have connected to late partners or 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, one 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 a, 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 actually curing a, a stomach condition that you have
for like 6-7 years of a really intolerance of not being out
there to eat most foods. And if you would eat stomach
blah pick up and rashes and so forth.
And we did a whole weekend essentially on, or we did
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 actually get into some root causes, held his
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 was 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,
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.
So yeah, it feels like it's gone, feels like it 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, 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 semantic breath work,
the breath work where it is going into trauma, healing,
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? Breath.
Work. Breath work.
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 it's all well and good going.
I think I feel better now. OK, 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, 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 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 your self-awareness fight is 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 I do now to take
action? How can I do some different
action right now? Yeah, and I think I very much
view, I used to talk about this as sort of healing 1.0, healing
2.0. So it's like 1.0 is a 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 alchemise 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 insight 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 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 and 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's
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, they're 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
repeat. It's the patterns throughout 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 and versed in.
And I'm like, yeah, do you know what that makes me feel
uncomfortable doing this? 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
it 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 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
breathwork. And perhaps you go breathwork
one point O first as a way into that part of the journey.
But also, rather than thinking about what, what breathwork 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 couldn't 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 2.0 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, who you are becoming.
That's like the 2.0 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 the 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 pretty much solely read nonfiction 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 think that's something that
that we're seeing across the board is this 1.02 point zero
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 the. Mic.
Same. Thank you for tuning in and
we'll be back next week with another one.
Cheers guys.