Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
We take around 25,000 breaths per day and we don’t really give it much thought. But in this episode with Breathwork coach Mike Maher, you'll learn that how you take those breaths can determine your quality of life, sleep, blood pressure and even your chances of suffering from heart failure.
Dr Ali Abdaal is the world’s most followed productivity expert and author of Feel-Good Productivity, the brand new book that reveals why the secret to productivity isn’t discipline, it’s joy. In his podcast, Deep Dive, Ali sits down with inspiring creators, thinkers, entrepreneurs and high performers to help listeners build lives that they love.
Ali’s cheerful style, positive approach, and well-researched content have made him a trusted voice when it comes to productivity. The internet means that we have access to more knowledge and information than ever before - but it can also be overwhelming. So, Ali and his expert guests focus on simple, scientifically proven, and actionable steps you can take to make real changes in your life.
Ali’s a firm believer that happiness isn’t the result of success - in fact, happiness is the key to success in the first place. Ali made this discovery while working as a doctor in a chaotic hospital ward. In the past, hard work had been the answer to every obstacle in his life. But no amount of hard work was going to combat panic and burnout.
So, Ali dedicated himself to figuring out a new approach to productivity - one that focuses on enjoying the journey and working towards truly meaningful goals. Deep Dive, with its authentic and engaging conversations, will give you all the insights you need to do just that.
Ali Abdaal 0:00
Hey friends, how's it going? Welcome back to deep dive. This episode is a little bit different because we're talking all about the topic of breath work, what the hell is breath work? I had no idea, which is why I interviewed Mike Mayer, who's the UK expert on the topic of breath work he's worked with and interviewed dozens of people who specialise in a breathing, I didn't realise this was the thing, apparently, the way that we breathe by default on the way that most of us kind of find ourselves breathing day to day is kind of wrong, which is quite interesting, because I thought that, hey, I've been breathing perfectly fine my whole life, like, how bad can it be, but apparently, like when we breathe wrong in terms of either breathing too much breathing through or through little breathing through our mouth, that's something I do a lot. Currently, that's really bad. All of that can contribute to things like include increased blood pressure, reduced quality of life, and apparently even increase your risk of heart disease further down the line. And apparently, breathwork is this active meditation where we consciously alter our breathing patterns, to get outcomes like helping us relax, regulate our stress levels, raise our energy, increase our immune system function, changing our state of consciousness, or even calming our nervous system. Allegedly, to be honest, I was pretty sceptical about the whole thing. But this conversation with Mike has changed the way that I approach breathing. I was read the book breath by James nestoil, which is excellent and also kinda helped me realise the perils of breathing badly. But that's all the stuff that we're going to cover in in this week's conversation on Deep Dive. So I hope you enjoyed this discussion with breathwork. Coach Mike Mayer, what is what is breathwork? And is it a scam?
Unknown Speaker 1:15
Okay. Oh, wow. Bloody hell. So first of all, I want to say that I adopt a white belt mentality to everything. I'm sure we'll get stuck into the back. Yeah, the backstory and all that sort of jazz later. And is it a scam, there might be elements of it potentially, like with anything, there's a scam, but I like to use the term now breath, play, breath play. So we should be playing with our breath. Okay. And I'm hoping that over the next period of time that we're talking, I'll try and demystify some of it for you, because actually quite a lot of science that sits behind breath work or breath play. But the simplest thing I would say is, you've got two areas of breath works, I'm going to try now to simplify breathwork, where I'm going to simplify every breathing exercise that's ever existed, okay, in two ways. So here we go. So we breathe 25,000 times a day, something like that, some of us maybe 30 35,000 25,000 breaths, so they were all doing that. And then we've got all these different breathing exercises that people talk about. And so there's two categories. Number one, I breathe less than I need. So that would be one group of exercises. And that's what I would really like to talk about today. Functional breathing, I'm going to go down that route, so I breathe less. So an example of that would be alternate nostril breathing. So I'm going I'm sitting here right now breathe in, maybe I'm doing 15 breaths a minute. And all of a sudden, I'm gonna cap my right nostril. I'm gonna breathe really slowly and out really slowly. Now, I've kept the airflow through my nose, so all these half an extra one nostril, rather than two. And I'm breathing slower than I need. And that's a whole load of benefits, which we'll get stuck into. Okay, now, there's the other side of breath work, I breathe more than I need hyperventilation exercises, benefits there. Maybe some people would call some woowoo stuff there as well. I've had some profound experiences in there. But what I would like people to take some away from from this conversation, it's we need to get off foundation of breathing, right? Because I believe we've lost our way how to breathe, okay, we don't breathe the way nature is intended is to breathe, okay. And the good news is, our body wants to breathe correctly, and we can find out how to do it quite quickly as well.
Ali Abdaal 3:25
Okay, what what do you mean by breathe? Breathe correctly. Like I've been reading my whole life. I'm sitting here. I haven't died yet. Yes, my nose always feels a bit blocked. I'm definitely a mouth breather. But like, you know, yeah, so what? So what? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 3:36
what's the point is, it's, yeah, I've been breathing my whole life. And when I was talking to my girlfriend's mom's, what's he doing on YouTube? What's this thing? Breathe in, breathe out. Everyone's doing that. Yeah. So so, you know, there's a wonderful writer called Dr. Chris Ryan, he wrote a book called sex at dawn. And he wrote another one called civilised to death, which I highly recommend. And the front cover of that book is a chimpanzee. I think he's got t shirt on, you sit in a bad posture with a cigarette, he's got his iPhone out, and a can of Coke and wear that chimpanzee, we are not designed to be sitting 16 hours a day in poor posture, chronic stress emails coming in straight. So we live in very, not how our ancestors used to live. And so of course, if I'm in a compressed position, and I'm stressed, there's a very good chance that I've gone to mouth breathing because mouth breathing is stressful, breathe, and we'll get into that. I'm probably in a bad posture. So my diaphragm is a bit locked, not moving properly. So as a productivity guru person, I would say that we're not breathing as efficiently as we should be. And that's the key to this is efficient to breathe and not be inefficient right now.
Ali Abdaal 4:46
Why does efficient breathing matter? Okay, isn't the whole point of breathing to you know, oxygen into bloodstream, carbon dioxide out of bloodstream? And the body figure the rest out?
Unknown Speaker 4:57
Yes, yes, but there's a nuance to this When we go down that path so, let's, let's talk about the nose. First of all the nose is a wonderful organ that sits on your face this beautiful schnoz. That breeds, we've got all these wonderful hairs plus and then they filter all the dust and rubbish out the air. If the air is too cold, it's going to warm up the air for us. If it's too hot, it's going to call it down. It's going to emit humidifier. It's going to put pressure into the air because when I breathe through the mouth, that big old pipe, it just it just comes in really quick. Yeah, when I breathe through the nose, I'm breathing a bit slower because the pace which we'll get into as well is really important. So the nose does all these wonderful things. And it also does it releases something called nasal nitric oxide you familiar with vaguely like a beta dilator or something it says vasodilation so it helps open up all the smooth tissues in around the body. I think it will molecule the year 1992. But but that is produced through your nose. And if you home which will be a breathing exercise with you later it produces more. So we've let's think about what we've just covered off there. warming and cooling of the air. moisturising of the air pressurising the air sterilising the air through nasal nitric oxide. All of these things happen here. You get any of that through the mouth. sterilising the air, there's nasal nitric oxide kills bacteria, it kills bacteria. So if you want to get protection from airborne issues that are going on in today's society, you get zero protection. If you are using your mouth, if you're using your nose, that you have got all these protections, your nose is designed for breathe and your mouth is designed for kissing and eaten, which are quite like
Ali Abdaal 6:31
Okay, so why I mean, I'm I'm very much a mouth breather. And I realised this when I started doing YouTube videos, and I started doing vlogs filming myself. Yeah. And I'd be like, I would look at myself and I would have this sort of, at all times where I'm like hunched over a belly sticking out. And I just had no idea that I was doing this, by the way, if you if anyone's listening to this on the podcast version, I would consider checking it out the YouTube version, because I guess we're gonna be talking about breath and like exercises and stuff were seeing it visually might also help but we'll do our best to describe things as we're going along for for the listeners. But I had this very much kind of posture with my mouth open. And I also realised when I started doing podcast that I was looking back at the footage, and I was like, why is my mouth hanging open like an idiot all the time? Like, what's what's going on there. But at the same time as a mouth breather, I still have survived. So like, what are the what are the kind of downsides of mouth breathing? And then all of it? Because yes, there's all these all these things that the nose does for you. But I feel I'm operating at reasonable capacity just by breathing through the mouth. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 7:32
yeah. Okay. So I too, was a chronic mouth breather. So I found out and here's the thing, what's going to happen to you now it'd be a perspective shift, because next time you go to the gym, but oh my god, everyone's to shut them out. You'll just see we all go around with our mouths open. So the problems are and it's a bold claim, you are literally starving yourself of oxygen by breathing through your mouth and I'll explain a bit of the science behind it. So what's going on here so oxygen comes in with the air and we breathe co2 Out co2 is a waste gas. We've heard that term before. And interestingly, I was watching you've got some wonderful study with me videos I was watching on the other days putting a background you know just just crack on my work and you're looking at the oxygen disassociation Herve and Bohr effect and that sort of thing. So if I break this down to a really simple way, homeostasis, we won't be balanced on noses designed for breathing our mouth, isn't it by the way, emergency fantastic backup, he breaks your nose so you get to trouble or there's that Sabre tooth tiger, everyone keeps talking about in the wilderness, we've got this fantastic extra valve we can open up, but actually it's there for that emergency situation. So when you are mouth breathe, and you're blowing have too much co2, so too much is coming out because the pressure is here. And you're breathing at a nice slow rate. And we'll talk about pace as well. And so you're breathing out too much co2. Now, that is also works like a vasodilation as well. So when you don't have enough co2 in your body, everything starts to constrict, and it gets tighter. And here's the other thing. So in our plasma in our blood and our red blood cells, we've got haemoglobin in each red blood cells around 270 million haemoglobin, and in each of those, it can hold four molecules, so for oxygen or for co2, so I like to call that the haemoglobin taxi to four passengers get him. Now those taxes drive around the body. And if I pick up a really heavy bottle, and I start to do some dumb, you know, some curls, this muscle is going to start to get warm, you know, it's using the extra energy is probably using more than than my legs which aren't really moving. And so there's a presence of co2 there and your body wants to deliver some oxygen and then take the co2 away. If you have blown off too much co2, then the presence of co2 is lower. It is harder for the oxygen to get in To the places it needs to get to what's known as the affinity is now stronger. The oxygen doesn't want to leave the haemoglobin. And so it's not getting out, you're no longer an efficient breather, you're making it harder for your body to get oxygen to the places in these gaps. So
Ali Abdaal 10:14
we are going to take a little quick break from the podcast introduce the sponsor of this podcast, which is curiosity stream. If you haven't heard by now, curiosity streams is the world's leading documentary streaming subscription platform, founded by John Hendricks is the founder of the Discovery Channel. And on Curiosity stream, they've got hundreds of really high quality high budget documentaries, covering all sorts of things from science and technology to history and ancient civilizations to food and medicine and meditation, like all of this stuff in between. Now the really cool thing about curiosity stream is that they support independent creators. And so there's a service called Nebula, which you might have heard of, it's an independent streaming platform that's run by me and a bunch of other creators and on nebula we can put content like videos and behind the scenes and long form longer form stuff without worrying about things like the YouTube algorithm. And so for example, in nebula I have a bunch of exclusive content that you won't find anywhere else, we actually have the original season zero of the deep dive podcast, which started off as like remote zoom live streams during the pandemic, and that is only available in nebula you won't find it anywhere else. So if you enjoy the sorts of conversations we have on deep dive, you might like to see, you know, a whole year before we started this podcast properly once the pandemic stopped, what sort of conversations I was having with people on Zoom, I've also got a series of videos in nebula called workflow, which is where I deep dive into some of my favourite productivity tools. And on nebula you also get early ad free access to my videos and videos from a bunch of other creators that you might be familiar with, like Thomas Frank, and Tom Scott, and legal eagle and Lindsey Ellis. And the really cool thing is that because curiosity stream loves supporting independent creators, we've gotten a bundle deal, which is that if you sign up for an account on Curiosity stream, you actually get free access to nebula bundled with that, so if you head over to curiosity stream.com forward slash deep dive, then for less than $15 a year, you can get full access to curiosity streams, incredible library of documentaries, and also free access to all of the stuff on nebula bundled with that. So head over to curiosity stream comm forward slash deep dive to get the bundle deal. So thank you curiosity stream for sponsoring this episode. Yeah, this is Ryan reminded me of like first year physiology where it's like co2 contributes to the acidity of the blood. And in one of the directions, whether can't remember whether blood becomes more acidic or less acidic, the curve, you've got the shift the effect of the shift to the right or whatever. And then it's harder for oxygen to be released. So you're saying, okay, so if we're breathing through our mouths, then a because of the fact that we breathe more frequently through our mouths and be because of the fact that there's less pressure of air going out. Because the way gases are exchanged, is based on kind of partial pressure differentials, we are therefore blowing off more co2 than we probably should, compared to breathing through our nose that is causing the bore get oxygen dissociation curve to shift in a in the direction that means that we are more likely to be somewhat starving our muscles of oxygen,
Unknown Speaker 12:46
the affinity is too strong. Yeah, we can't get the oxygen out. Now there's more layers to this. Yep. So when you blow off co2, you so you have sensors in the back of your your brain, chemo receptors, and what they're doing is the body is this wonderful machine, you know, it's it's detecting how much co2 is in the blood. And there'll be a base level for all of us. Now, the wonderful thing is, if I get into a situation where I start running, or I'm scared, or what have you, and the co2 starts to rise, I'll hold my breath is probably easier to hold my breath, co2 starts to rise. The chemo receptors go, oh, no, we've got a problem here, the city is going up, let's send a signal to the brain to the lungs, we need to stop breathing faster, quicker. Now you're going to feel an air hunger. And that is the co2 rising because many people don't want to hold my breath. And I feel like need to breathe all because I'm running out of oxygen. But if we put on a pulse oximeter, you probably between 95 98% full of oxygen, hold your breath, maybe it's 92, full of oxygen. So it's not your body run out of oxygen, it's the co2 that's rising. There is a latest stimulus, I believe, that says the oxygen is run and there'll be another impulse to breathe. I believe that's much, much later. And so what's happening here is we've all got this co2 baseline, which is flexible, this is the problem and a good thing. It's a flexible baseline. So right now, if I was you know, a mouth breather my entire life, it might be that when my co2 rises to this point, the signal start to say you need to breathe a bit faster, because we're a bit more agile. If I'm chronically mouth breathing, blowing off too much co2, I have a new, a new baseline starts to be at a lower level. And then there's this thing which is like a vicious circle, because I now feel air hunger, a lower level, I'm more likely to breathe quickly and maybe breathe through my mouth. And guess what that's gonna do, it's gonna, it's gonna lower it down a bit more. And so this is the cycle most of us are stuck in. And this problem relates to how we sleep, how we exercise and how we work rest, you know, do the things during the day and they all affect each other. So if you are a mouth breather in the gym, there's a good chunk of mouth breathing at night. If your mouth breathe at night, there's a good chance your mouth breathing when you sit in the work and the three things go together and Just going back to your point about you seen self on the camera, I too have that. And I don't think this is a very fair thing. But if you go on Google and type in mouth breather the, and I'm not calling you this or me, it's a stupid person. And if you look at a picture of a village idiot, yeah, they're normally like that. So we've known that this is a problem for a very, very long time. And in fact, there's been several reports of this, I think in Kenya and other places where they would give young children a cup of water and hold the water. And I'd have to run for 10 miles, and at the end of it to pass the test had to spit the water out the right amount of water. And the whole reason that was designed is to make you be a functional nose breather non business. Because another issue with nose breathing versus mouth breathing, I believe it's a 42% increase in moisture comes out of your mouth if you're blowing on a mirror. Yeah, I think like that. Yeah. So I'm sorry, I'm going off in a few different tangents here. But in essence, we don't want to lower our tolerance to co2, we want to increase it. And the good news is, we can do that with breathing exercises and education. Okay,
Ali Abdaal 16:09
so in a nutshell, we should not breathe through our mouth, we should breathe through our nose. And we should not breathe as frequently as we are, we should breathe less frequently. Because we want to have the right level of carbon dioxide in our blood, rather than an artificially low level of carbon dioxide in our blood. Because the right level of carbon dioxide and blood leads to us. The haemoglobin letting go of oxygen more readily. Ergo, our muscles and our brain and every tissue in our body will be more cost effective because it's now got the appropriate amount of oxygen rather than less oxygen. Yes. Okay. Interesting.
Unknown Speaker 16:50
There's one yes, that's worth caveat in here as well. Because when I first learned if this, oh, my God, I can never breathe through my mouth. Again, I need to breathe through my nose all the time, because mouth breathing is really bad. And what this is what puts people in, like, so if you're watching this, or listening to this, right now, this gives you like, the extra bit that a lot of people don't get, there is a huge difference between how I breathe 25,000 times a day, and a breathing exercise that and we have to know that this distinguishment is there because there are some wonderful mouth breathing exercises that are out there that have specific qualities, for example, even just a sigh. We saw when we're stressed, and we sigh when we're relaxed. And so you might think well, I shouldn't do that. Because a sighs I'm losing all that moisture and our mouth breathing. And so what we want to do is we want to create an environment where we are nasal breathing 99% of the day, but we can still play with some of the breathing exercises that are out there.
Ali Abdaal 17:44
So a few months ago, I read the book breath by James next door, or rather listen to the audiobook. And basically, every single chapter in that book talks about how mouth breathing is like, you know, the coming of Satan. There's all of these negative effects of mouth breathing. And he kind of talks about how mouth breathing is bad for your jaw line mouth breathing is bad for like, basically, basically everything imaginable. Is that is that legit? Is his mouth breathing, like actually killing us as James Destro would potentially have us believe?
Unknown Speaker 18:16
You know, you look at the experiment he did, we bombed his nose to air plugs for 10 days, he looked really bad. At the end of those 10 days, I think very quickly, within the first day or so his blood pressure going up X amount of points. His sleep was impacted. And I think he said, you know, something like 30% of the American population are breathing like this all the time. And then when he took those ear plugs out of his nose him and Anders Olson I've interviewed both of them actually, when he took those ear plugs out of his nose, I get I think it was within a matter of hours, his blood pressure started to come back down again. I started to feel more himself. So again, is it is it that bad? If it's a breathing exercise, I would say no, don't don't have some fun with the breathing exercises. But the thing is, if most of us are chronically hyperventilating all the time, we need to get that foundation fixed first before we start playing with the sexy stuff with the big breathing exercises, because that's the stuff that's going to make sure that we're in a better place. Because if you take for example, Wim Hof breathing, which is 30, Big breaths in and then a pause. That is known as a stressor. It's like going to the gym, you're stressing yourself out. And there's some benefits to to that. If you're already stressed because you've been mouth breathing all day, I think it's the right thing for you then to go and do some more hyperventilation. And I think we need to do it the other way. Let's get our baseline, right, let's get it secure. And then once it's in a good place, we can then start to play with it.
Ali Abdaal 19:33
Okay, so let's say someone someone watching or listening to this is like, Alright, cool. I'm sold. I want to do this nose breathing rather than mouth breathing thing. Are there any? Are there any tangible benefits they would get within a reasonable amount of time? Or is it like taking supplements where it's like, Oh, I know I probably should do this just so my body is B 12 levels or a baseline but I'm not really going to notice a real difference.
Unknown Speaker 19:58
Yeah, by the way, I feel like that bathroom I've been taking Schumer two years. Oh, what am I doing? It was bloody tumeric. And so I was a chronic mouth breather. And there was some measurements that you can do. So one of them is Patrick McHugh and orthodoxy advantage calls maximum breathlessness test. So what that is that is you because it's always good to measure isn't it, you want to measure and tracking things. And so what you do is you do normal breath in normal breath out, you cap and then you walk, and you count steps, you can walk, and you make note of them. And another one is you do breath in breath out hold, and you wait till the first impulse to breathe happens. And that gives you two numbers. So you can start to track that. But let's talk about what are some of the benefits? And I think it's about flipping it on its head sometimes. So what are the problems? Because here's the thing, you know, I, I like a bit of grounding, I saw a documentary about grounding, how important is that our body touches the earth, this is a whole other conversation, you know, we're the first animal that's removed our body from the planet, which is really bad, you know, put insulation on our shoes. And actually, you can measure the kind of electromagnetic static in your body. And when you touch the Earth, it kind of falls down and blood moves better. It's a wonderful documentary. But we're these people that that kind of expect a big benefit. But actually a lot of it's bringing us back to baseline to be not to be that chimpanzee with a kind of coat with poor posture. It's more about well, let's just get as to how nature intended us to be, as opposed to all there's loads and loads, I'm going to feel like I'm Superman, we might get some of that. But if you report breather, you might not even know what good breathing feels like till you do it. I dropped people mad because when I'm breathing, and I'm talking I'll, I'll take a normal breath in through the nose now to carry on the conversation. Because I want to keep that kind of good habits going. So some benefits then. So let's let's break some of this down. So there are some breathing exercises that can improve your your heart rate variability, and some studies on that. So there's one breathing exercise called coherence breathing. And that heart rate variability is the gap between the beats and they say that they're kind of the variability of those beats kind of signifies like that health. Sleep is a huge one. So probably my favourite benefit of good breathe. And I know you've done mouth taping. And if you are mouth breathing in the night, which so many of us are because remember, if we're mouth breathing in the gym, and mouth breathe, and while we're recording videos, and all that sort of stuff, and we talk all day, we might be talking all day and doing different things, then there's a good chance that you might be going to mouth at some point in the night. Now, what does that what's the problem with that? Well, you're never going to get into the deeper levels of sleep if your mouth breather. And then we know then that poor sleep is associated with increased risk of diabetes, cancers, high blood pressure, you know, I, before I mouth taped, I was a frequent we're in the night, and I just thought that was normal. And then the minute I started matters, I'm not going for me anymore. And I was going on there as because our body is releasing the right amount of kind of hormones, and suppressing the feelings of going to the toilet, that sort of thing, and you get a better night's sleep. And be interesting to know your thoughts on how you experience it. Because for me, it took me a couple of months, it was so bloody unnatural to have something on my mouth, I would rip it off. But I persisted with it. And now my sleep is is better, I wake up more refreshed. I don't have a dry mouth. And so sleep, you know, in itself, if I just said, I've got this magical pill here, that's gonna help you sleep better, it's gonna reduce all the risks associated with sleep, well, how much is that pill, we'll have to take that. And it might be to improve your heart rate variability, and it's gonna help to lower your blood pressure. And was not going to die from yet. But diaphragmatic breathing could help with lower back issues, it could help with digestive issues. So there's a whole host of other mechanical issues which we can get into, because our diaphragm is not moving properly as well. And again, we want to be a functional efficient breather.
Ali Abdaal 23:36
Okay, so plenty of benefits of nose breathing. And I yeah, I mean, I still take my mouth, too. To this day. I don't do it on days. Like if, for example, I'm staying over at my mom's place and I forget to take my 3am surgical tape, then I'm like, okay, cool. I guess I'm not meditating tonight. But I do find that on days. I don't know, I don't know if this, like I need to actually track the date on this properly. But I do find that on days where I have taped my mouth properly and wake up having not ripped it off. I just feel like it's a bit of a faff take it off, like gets in the way of like moustache and beard and stuff. I've done that I feel like Oh, I'm actually actually feel pretty rested tonight. Yeah, and I did, I did like, you know, I did this 30 Day mouth taping video and I looked at the hour ring and tried to track the numbers. It didn't really yield anything medically significant. But I mean, I still do it. And I feel like the benefit of just not waking up with a dry mouth. Plus the fact that I read this book and you know, look vaguely looked into breathwork a little bit and see that. Okay, breathing through nose while at night seems to have a lot of benefits. sticking a piece of tape on your mouth is a magic pill basically to force your self to breathe more through your nose. One issue that I have just what we're in the mouth breathing, breathing, breathing topic is that I often find my nose is quite blocked. Especially if I've got like a got like a cold or something. And, you know, when I was younger, I used to think oh, I can't breathe as efficiently through my nose as I can through my mouth. Therefore there is something wrong with my nose. Like is that something that that you you hear often?
Unknown Speaker 24:59
Yeah, so Some people have to have surgery on the nose. Again, I I'm trained as an oxygen advantage and potatoe breathing coach. So these are areas where we focus on Let's breathe less than we need. And so Patrick McEwen who wrote a couple of books in those areas, he says, if you can breathe through the nose for a minute, then you can breathe through the nose for the rest of your life. And he's been looking at this for sort of 20 years. And so there is a nose unblocking exercise. And if you've come across this, we can do this when we jump into it. And that will give you a bit of a bit of relief. But it's use it or lose it as well, if you've come off a day of mouth breathing, and you've not really been using that nose fully. When you come to go, right, I'm going to tape up my mouth, now you might be a bit stuffy, because it's not been been used as he could do breathing exercise to kind of open it up a little bit. And then once it's open, in theory, it should stay open. Now colds can affect it. Asthma can affect it. And, you know, surgical interventions might sometimes be need, and obviously would speak to medical professionals about that. But I think for the vast majority of people, we we didn't have a very good breath education. I don't know about you at school, No one sat me down and said, Hey, Bri three, you know, shut your mouth. You know, I know in some places, I think it was in Mexico, they give you tap on the back of the head. I think if you're in school and you breathe through your mouth and same in Poland, when my girlfriend's from the toll, you know, you should shut your mouth. But we didn't really get that education. And we copy poor role models, and everybody else is doing it. I'm not using our diaphragms properly. And so it's no wonder that we've got this issue where our noses are a bit stuffy, because we don't really use them as much as we should do.
Ali Abdaal 26:35
Okay, so it sounds like nose breathing, breathing properly, reading less potentially helps us get back to baseline. There are other claims that people say about breath work IV, like vaguely come across some of the Wim Hof stuff but haven't researched extensively. Or he talks about how kind of discovering the breathing thing helped, I don't know cure his depression or words to that effect. There are I know that breathing is a huge part of all of the like, pretty much every ancient tradition where there are allegedly benefits for it. People say that breathing in a certain way gives you psychedelic experiences beyond the breathing properly gets you to baseline. What are the other like? Actual, I guess science evidence based benefits of breathing? And like, how do we distinguish those from the potential hype around breathing, which may not necessarily be
Unknown Speaker 27:20
true? Yeah. Okay. So this would put us into I breathe more than I need category. And we'll have a little chat about that now. So. So my breathwork journey started in 2016. I just gone through a bit of a split up in in a relationship. I kept hearing this name Wim Hof, Wim Hof over and over again. Big fan, the Joe Rogan podcast and finally listened to a podcast. So this guy's credible and crazy at the same time. And I did some googling. And the other retreat in Poland. This is December 2016. Yeah.
Ali Abdaal 27:49
So for people who haven't come across when half Can you do a little? Yeah. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 27:53
of course. Thank you so, so the Dutch Iceman, I think he's broken 26 World Records. He would spend, for example, his time in a box of ice. And, you know, I think he did two hours in a box of ice. He has a bit of a tragic backstory, where his partner passed away, she took her own life. And he used kind of cold and breathing as a way to deal with some of the grief that happened that. And then he created what's called the Wim Hof Method, which involves cold exposure and breathing with a mindfulness element to it. And you combine all those things together. And that was the retreat that I went on. It's got world records of like, hanging from a balloon with one finger and on their throat deserts, with low water doing a marathon and going up Everest in his shorts, and all these wonderful things that make you think, Oh, my God, that doesn't seem real to me.
Ali Abdaal 28:43
Yeah. And I think he's like, one thing I remember being struck by with his story is that he's very cool with scientists poking and prodding him and measuring his blood levels and like doing like, yes, scientific studies and stuff. Yeah. Which is unusual, because most woowoo type people Yes. would be like, Oh, well, it's not gonna work if you measure it, right. This guy's that yeah, come at me with all your instruments. And it's all good.
Unknown Speaker 29:02
Yeah, he has a he has a wonderful one about being injected with a poison. And he starts doing this huffing and puffing breathing technique. And when most people start to get sick, he didn't get sick. And he's I can replicate that with like, 20 strangers. And he did and I think he did again with 40 strangers. And that is to do with I believe, I haven't read that. Read that for a while. It's to do with the adrenaline that's getting released through this breathing technique. So if I just explained a bit about the breathe more than I need stuff, because it's very exciting. Yeah,
Ali Abdaal 29:28
sorry, I interrupted your story. So he said, when he's 2016 You listen to an episode of Joe Rogan, you discover Wim Hof. Yeah. And you're like this guy. It seems interesting. What happens?
Unknown Speaker 29:38
Yeah, so I go by myself to Poland. By the way, you know, I've never done anything like this. My backgrounds corporate. Yeah. I'm very much what you see is what exists. There's nothing else out there. And so I was very sceptical, but also very drawn to this. And again, I have this kind of freedom because I've been in a relationship for 12 years. And so suddenly, oh, this just feels like the right thing to do. So anyway, go out there 60 of us in three little cohorts, and we'd all get an instructor each and you're with Wim the entire time. This guy that I've seen podcast is a wonderful vice documentary, I had breakfast with him several times, just sitting opposite and then picking his brains. And he will teach you his his breathing technique and EEG often, this is December time now, you're going into these absolutely freezing pools and lakes and stuff. So anyway, on the first proper night of the course, we go to WIMS house, he's got a little house, he's got big hotel house, and he's got this dodgy ice bath. Like, I remember his girlfriend time saying, If you slip your break your neck and I was like Jesus Christ. And so we've got this big ice bath, he cracked the ice off is completely pitch black out there, people got mobile phones to kind of show you where to go in. And he's got a sauna inside. And so he's like, right, get in, let's get you in the cold. And I can't even get in a swimming pool. At this point. If it's too cold. We used to get to Tenerife as a kid and couldn't get in the salt pool because it's too cold. That was the reason I wanted to do this. So anyway, I went in, jump straight back out again. And I was like, I need to go home. This is ridiculous. I can't do this. And I'm thinking I've wasted all this money. And all this time. And I was just sat in the sauna and people I've been here three times I've been in four times, I just felt like a real piece of garbage. And then I don't know just something it's like, just go back and do it one more time. And if you hate it, then you can leave. And I was okay. So I was on this conversation. I go back in. And the guys just sent me relax, relax, and my shoulders just came down. And I think he said something like, imagine you slipping into a warm bath. And so I went into the ice up to my neck. And I did just relax. It's like good. You've got it. You've you've nailed it. So suddenly, I'm in this is minus five minus six outside, I'm in this water and I'm completely relaxed. I was like, This is ridiculous houses this possible. And then we want to do the breathing exercises. And again, I'm very analytical. Atheist, not really sure what's going on. We're huffing and puffing. And we're doing it for 45 minutes, maybe an hour. And so we're doing 30 breaths, then we do a retention.
Ali Abdaal 31:58
So what is how it is this while you're in the ice,
Unknown Speaker 31:59
this is no no. Two seconds things. Yeah, very, very dangerous today in the water. So we're back in the hotel now. So you're doing 30 breaths, you blow off all that co2. And then you're holding your breath and can hold your breath for bloody ages. Because if remember from the co2, chemo receptors, also co2 so low, even if I've got a low baseline, it's gonna take a while for my co2 to build back up again. And we kept doing that. And I'm telling a story of a story of a story. Now, Ali, but I have some of the most profound feelings and effects in my life, I saw colours, I saw images, I had a weird conversation with a being. And it was it was very, very simple. It was just Oh, I'm so glad you found us. And I've never done any plant medicines or anything like that. So I know that people talk about ayahuasca and different things. And they've described similar feelings. And after it's all over, I was just in the flood of tears. And there's 20 of us doing this, we will all cry and we all kind of cuddling each other strangers, you know, 48 hours ago, and it's one of the most impactful kind of moments of my life to have that experience. I was like, I need to go down this this breathwork route now because there's something going on here. But then the more I found out about it, the more I found about Patrick's work and and Dr. bliss of ranches work all these people have had on my podcast, as I've gotten foundations right before we start messing with some of this stuff, because it can be very profound. But actually from audience stress situation, let's let's let's get the functionality sorted.
Ali Abdaal 33:24
So you decided to quit your corporate job and get into breathwork like what happened next.
Unknown Speaker 33:29
So I'm awaken that there's something weird going on. Next thing I did was I walked across the Camino. So you can do a walk across Spain, you think you know that. So I did that for 33 days. Again, by myself. I've never done these things. I went by myself, made friends with fantastic group of people. And we just walked every day, 1012 hours just walking in sunshine, you with a tribe of people. It's taken a lot of the boxes of what nature intended us to have. And then after that, I went to see Tony Robbins with 13,000 other people. And we're doing this process called the Dekins. And he basically is getting you to this point where you're thinking if I what are all the problems that I think I've got in my life? What if I don't change them? Where would I be in five years now let's extend that to 10 years if I don't make change. Again, people are crimes 13,000 people in the room crying Ooh, making these noises. This is like day three of us is retreat. I need to quit my job. I need to quit my job. I always wanted to go travelling around the world. I never did it. So this was 2018 and the Mima girlfriend we handled on notice in that week, sold the car, sold the bed, and then we took a year off and when I went travelling Indonesia, Israel, Borneo a lot of places in that way, wonderful Bali. And that whole time I'd already made a couple of Wim Hof breathing exercises on YouTube. And there's only because nothing existed at the time in my background, before the corporate world I did video production at university and so I know how to add this on how to film and all that sort of stuff. And these videos started doing really well. And I'm in Bali and I've got a bit time I thought, Okay, I'll start looking at five and start getting voice artists and all that sort of stuff in the channel just just keeps growing, keeps growing. And then when the pandemic really kicked in almost two years ago now, I've got a good feeling for this. I don't really understand any of the science of it. And so that's when I learned the oxygen advantage through Patrick, he trained me. And then he he had this manuscript for this book called Breath by a guy called James nester. And he said, This is the best book I've ever read on breathing. And this is Patrick McEwen saying, this is a bit of a godfather of breathing less than I need. So very cheaply. I emailed his publicist said, I'm gonna be interesting having a conversation with me on Zoom, I've got a really decent breath channel now might be good to sell the book. And she's like, Yeah, bring him on. And that was the first podcast. And then he was on Joe Rogan the week after. And so then it kind of slowly but it what it taught me was, you need to learn some of the science now, because you've got all this like, breathe more the need, you've got some wonderful feelings and sensations. But it seems like there's 1000s of breathing exercises out there, we need to understand some of that. So that was, that was kind of where I got to. And by the way, I can demystify breath, work again, in a simple way for you. So we have all these different breathing exercises, but we already know it's breathe more, breathe less. If we took that down a little more, it's mouth or nose, there's an inhale, there's a hole at the top of the inhale. As an exhale as a top, there's a hole at the exhale. And then there's the pace. So there's this kind of seven key variables to any breathing exercise. And that's why let's call it breath play because we can kind of go with a long inhale and a slow exhale, and we can just mess about with those sort of things triangle breathe and so in, out and hold or box breathing in, hold out hold. And so again, breath work can seem quite daunting at first, but really, it's it's seven different variables that can make a huge change. And the exciting thing I've always found about breath work is I'm so passionate about is how you breathe affects how you think and feel. And we know that we have the ability to consciously change how we breathe so we can affect how we think and feel.
Ali Abdaal 36:57
Okay, I have a that's such a great story. This was fantastic stuff I have I have a few different things that a few different like points on a dive into the first one is a bit of a tangent you're at this Tony Robbins retreats a What prompted you to go to a Tony Robbins retreat, because most people like in our generation, but think it's a bit woowoo and stuff. And it seems more for that. I don't know, our parents generation possibly elite, I don't know maybe have the wrong idea of Tony Robbins but you know as as much as I kind of appreciate and admire the guy. It just the vibe that people my age seem to have of him is like um, you know, we think guru kind of, yeah, I don't have to do that. So a What prompted you to go on that retreat? And was that experience like when you decided to quit your job if you can,
Unknown Speaker 37:42
like so. So I watched I am not your guru on ah, I heard really good things about that. Good because I know Tony Robbins from shallow hell. You know, he's, if you see Chahal, Jack Black, no. So Jack Black and oh, he's the actress. Gwyneth Paltrow. Okay, and I won't ruin the story. I was 20 years old. Anyway, he's in the elevator and he hypnotises jack back to see her as being more beautiful than she might be physically in the in the story. As far as like, this is this guy that I saw the documentary. It had me in tears. I was like, Oh my God, when you start looking at stories of people in the personal transformation, yeah, leave me away. Then my best friends who I met on the Wim Hof retreats. I've been best friends now for five years. He went there. And so it profoundly changed his life. And so I was like, I've got this kind of feedback from the home feed and watching the documentary and one best friend saying did my own research, I need to go and he's gonna do this. It's just a bit like with a Wim Hof. And the Camino, there was kind of this. You've heard a lot of traffic light systems, how you brain, your heart and guts feeling. And if you've got a challenge in your life, you might say, Okay, let's do the traffic light system, my head saying it's a no but my heart sank. Yes, my gut sense. Yes, I've got two greens, one red, there was kind of this all over. I feel like I just need to go and do this. And it's wonderful. It was four days it was in London, you're exhausted. You start at 11am and 11pm. He's a beast. He's on stage. And he's been doing the same shtick for 40 years. 30 years. It's he hasn't really changed if you look at the videos on the aters it's the same sort of stuff. But it really does work. And so I learned so much.
Ali Abdaal 39:11
What's it like? What does the funny Robbins retreat look like?
Unknown Speaker 39:14
So you go into a festival, so we could ascribe it. So you go into the XL centre, 13,000 people in seats, and then I was like, I am not going to get up on my on my I'm not gonna be dancing. I'm not a dancer, you know, I am very, would call it, you know, tight. And I'm not going to be doing this 15 years later. And we're all on our feet and the energy in the room. I don't know how he does it. There's a combination of music intensity, you kind of know who he is. And then you're just you're just in this kind of, I guess hypnotised state for four days where he's like getting you to break off into little groups as I write let's talk about a time where you struggled with Sony, Sony and they make some notes in your in your workbook, and you don't really get a break. You're going for like he's like you need to play full out with me now for the next four days. Can you do that you can do four days, can't you? You know, we can do anything for four days. So it gets you in this talk, I would highly recommend that it's
Ali Abdaal 40:06
61 of these now.
Unknown Speaker 40:07
I mean, he does it on Zoom. I did that one last year. It's good. But it's, it's not the same. I guess it's not the same as in person. Yeah, it's incredible in person. So I left there just burst. And it's almost a bit too much. Because like, and it's changed my whole life, you know, I need to tell everybody about what I've been through, but they're not gonna know, because I've not had before days with Tony and that sort of thing. And so, you know, I get my notice, but I did it in a smarter way. I said, Look, it was, that was more so than leaving December. I mean, I've been with the company 14 years. So going to give you like, you know, seven, eight months notice, but I will be leaving the end of the year. And I want this to be an official resignation. Because if you don't take it, I'll still be another 14 years. And it was it was the best decision. Because everything that you think is a fear of leaving your job. You say, Well, what's the worst that's gonna happen? I might not get another job, you're gonna get another job. And so I got another job when I needed to. And that was absolutely fine.
Ali Abdaal 40:57
So what was it about the event that made you decide that you needed to quit your job?
Unknown Speaker 41:01
It was it was the dickens process. I mean, there's a combination of things you're doing, but it is this visualisation exercise, where you've kind of been thinking for the last couple of days about what my limiting beliefs, What's stopping me from moving forward? Where would I really want to be if I had no fear? So if I had no fear, what was it I was wanting to do right now? Why am I not doing those things? And you really think about it. And the process is about two hours long. So two hours, like guided visualisation, and there's like, how would you feel if you're in this place of lack in five years and 10 years? What noise would you make if you were that person, and you're Oh, and everyone's doing that? So it's kind of feeding off each other as like, okay. And he's like, step into this, you know, bright light. Imagine what it's like. Now, if you remove those fears, and you did what you really wanted to do, and by the way, I'm butchering this one, like a few years ago, but it you do it, and then you make some commitments, like, okay, so what am I going to do next, and my first one was, quit my job. And so it just, it just felt like the right thing to do.
Ali Abdaal 41:59
Wow, okay. I really need to try one of these. So the, his his, his team actually got in touch with us last year, when he was doing a zoom thing and be like, Hey, you want to zoom thing? I was like, Oh, I know, I want to do in real life. Like I think zoom wouldn't wouldn't be quite the same experience. But I have done some, some of these, like, visualise your ideal future type stuff, like guided meditation type things for like 10 minutes at a time. And I always feel dumb, that was really useful. I should do this more often. So just the thought of actually, you know, being committed to doing this sort of stuff for a few days or a few hours, I imagine would be quite, quite useful. Yeah. And it's the stuff that we just tend not to do, like, really think about where do I actually want to be in five years time? Like, what are the things holding me back? Like, when when day to day life is going along? You don't think in those terms.
Unknown Speaker 42:47
As a person you are and the things that you talk about? This is right up your street is always been around for years, but he's kept current. So and he always adds extra value is a master of adding extra value. And so you know, we're getting to the end of I think they want a comment, but they they three, I mean, it was I have my friends just come to do a little gig for you. And then people turns up and does it like a concert for you in the same place. And I was a massive football fan till then. But then he tells a story about how he was coached by Tony and what he did to help his life and how he was in his mom's call since the Tony Robbins tapes in the 90s, late 2000. And so he tells the story, then he starts doing I've got a free concert this as well. So So you are in this four day bubble. It's really powerful. It shifts if you if you've got stuff that's kind of bubbling under the surface, it's going to come through in that in that session. Yes, by the way, Tony Robbins and breath work is fantastic. So So Tony Robbins, what I would say about him is he is researching what's the best thing in a specific modality. And so he does all sorts of stuff. So he's looking at kind of human psyche and NLP and and a lot of other things. But he also says that the quickest way to change your state is to is to change your physiology to move. So he is very keen on moving listening to music and changing state but he also has a good thing about breathwork. So he's adopted the Wim Hof Method into that and it's got people doing a bit of art he does some priming in the morning wasted and kind of Breath of Fire stuff. But he also really loves a guy called Bamboo les who is the Godfather, I think of breathwork is 40 years in now started as an EMT, I had him on the podcast, my end and what he doesn't know about breath work isn't isn't worth knowing. But what he and Tony wrote the foreword to his book. And Tony Robbins has a quote something like if you can harness the power of your breath, you can change yourself physically, mentally and spiritually. I think it's just it's a really lovely summary of his interpretation of what you can do with this very benign thing of breathing in and out you know, it's this weird thing we don't really think about but when you start getting onto the surface and playing with it, you can have big changes in your life.
Ali Abdaal 44:46
Awesome. So yeah, there's Tony Robbins experience made you decide to quit the job and then let's explore this breathwork stuff more started the YouTube channel. Things started going well pandemic happens. You've got the podcast you have all these big people who are into breath work and researched it and doctors and professors and stuff on the podcast. And now here we are. Yeah, trying to talk about Yeah. breathwork. Um, one of the other things that you said, which I found interesting was, you said that breath work or breathing or changing the way you breathe, has the potential to change how you think. What's the deal with that, like, so far, we've talked about kind of oxygen dissociation curves and stuff, we haven't really touched on the mental effects of breathing, what's the what's going on there?
Unknown Speaker 45:21
So there was a study in mice. And what it was really weird the terminology they use, but they said, there's some neurons in the brain, that spy on the way we breathe. And so there's this thing around how I breathe does affect it sends signals so that I was trying to think I was trying to rationalising, maybe you're trapped under a tree and you can't breathe properly, or someone scared you. But suddenly, the way that you're breathing, it's bi directional. So if I'm stressed, my breathing is gonna change. But if I breathe in stressful state, it's going to send signals that I'm I'm stressed. And so when I interviewed Dr. bliss of Kranich, who trained UFC fighters and SWAT teams in America, how to breathe properly. I said, How do we what chicken aka what comes first does dysfunctional breathing cause stress and anxiety, or distress and anxiety, core dysfunctional breathing, and her response is the best, I don't care. Let's fix the breathe. And we know we can fix the breathing. And so let's fix the breathing. And if there's still an issue afterwards, then let's look at what that is. And so that to me was this thing around, okay? How we're breathing is affecting how we're thinking and feeling. So for example, if you extend your exhale, going back to that breath plaything, what you're kind of doing, they're sending a signal to your brain, say, Everything's okay. We're okay, we're safe. Because if you're running from a tiger, you're not slowly nasal breathing. And if you picture what that person looks like, they're probably panic, breathe, and so a slow exhale through the nose, or the mouth, actually just send some signals, everything's okay. And so by doing that, it can actually lower blood pressure make you feel calmer and more relaxed. And so there's some breathing exercises around sleep, and just doing some breathing in counting to four, hold them for seven, and breathing out for eight. And just that release, just saying everything's okay. It can change how you think. Now, if you do Wim Hof breathing, and you stress yourself out, that's gonna make a different change to your brains make your brain feel there's a problem here, we're hyperventilating. And that's going to have its own effects on your thinking and feeling. But if we go back to the functional side of stuff, if we are depriving our wonderful body of oxygen, because we don't have too much co2, that is also going to affect it, because it's affecting how much blood and rich oxygens get into your brain as well, because you're out of balance.
Ali Abdaal 47:38
So it sounds like the effects on the brain are more like breathing less, like breathing more deeply gets you into this relaxed, calm state. And it's, it sounds like it ties in with that stuff, that genuinely the way that you move your body does relate to the way that your brain and your body kind of feels. In a way, like, I know, some people used to, they think like we came across as like James Lange theory of emotion, which was that, you know, we don't smile, because we're happy, we're happy because we're smiling or words to that effect. And people that quibble about this in the in the scientific community of like, oh, but like, the evidence isn't quite there. And if you look at this meta analysis, it doesn't. But I think it takes taking all that aside, I guess, you know, people's actual lived experience of, you know, when you do, for example, a mindfulness thing, or like a yoga thing are like a breathing thing. It does change the way that you feel. And maybe the scientific study about exactly what's what fMRI scanner is showing is doing in the brain while you're doing breath work. Maybe that's a bit equivocal, but who cares? Like I think my view on this stuff is that like, if it works, then I'm not going to quibble with it too much. And there's a good quote, I came across in an article, I was reading about stretching, which is that often, scientific evidence lags behind best practices. And I think the breathing front, like given that breathing, meditation, these sorts of things have been part of traditions for 1000s of years. The scientific method may not have yet caught up with that. That's my kind of very, very rough read on it. I guess you wouldn't even even to be doctors and stuff like, is the science behind all this stuff? Like actually pretty legit, and it's just not a not very well known or? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 49:28
there's plenty of studies about all different things to do with breathing. But what somebody said to me once was no breath work. People aren't very rich people. And so you know, to get a study done is harder, I guess, than some of the things like meditation but breath work is I see. It's like the new yoga so yoga, I don't know 30 years ago probably wasn't my mainstay like it is now breathwork seems to be that thing in part due to James nesters best selling book has really helped. But it's this thing that's now gaining momentum. And with that, what I think you'll see is a lot more scientific study. But you know, I've had, I've had a number of doctors on Dr. Cat well haven't released his podcast yet. He's at the Boston Children's Hospital. And he talks passionately about mouth breathing and children about the dangers of mouth breathing about all the you know, things that can be fixed so easily if we just shut them out. And they're he's a doctor, that scene on the front line, every single day. And a whole host of other kind of professionals. That's the the benefit, I guess, like what you do with kind of your niches, you get spent time picking the brains of these people, and you start to see patterns. And so that, for me was the thing of, they will keep talking about functional breathing and how it's an important baseline to get that right. And so I've had some I've had like a wonderful, beautiful human from the Holotropic Institute, and people loved her and she talked about all the healing powers of hyperventilation. But that to me, seems secondary to the let's get the functional breathing royal functional
Ali Abdaal 50:55
breathing as in the does 25,000 breaths that we take, rather than the one off breathing. Rhythm. Exactly, yeah. Okay. At this point, I'm sold on the mouth breathing thing. Sorry, no, the nose. What's the deal with sort of, I read in breath about how, you know, standard standard respirate, in a respiratory rate that we cite as doctors is somewhere between 12 and 20. And if someone has lower than 12 breaths per minute, they are hyperventilating, greater than 20 is hyperventilating. And these numbers are used in scales like, you know, could someone have sepsis, you know, the sepsis criteria, one of them is like a breath rate greater than 30, greater than 20, depending on which thing you you look at. Also, if someone is hypo, ventilating to breathing, too little potentially sign of opiate toxicity, and these other bad things that are happening, and so provided someone's respirate is between roughly 12 to 20. You're like, cool, there's a fairly normal. But then one thing I remember reading in breath by James Nesterov, was that no, jet, maybe 12 is actually too much. Well, yeah, what's the what's the deal on how often we should be? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 52:00
I think, you know, that number seems to change from a different paper to paper from person to person. But I think between 10 and 15 is pretty good. Once you start getting above 15, you're getting into kind of dysfunctional territory. And Anders Olson, who was part of that book with James Lester says, and he's worked with 1000s of students, I think he's seen people in the 30s, you know, per minute in terms of breath, what there is there is something known as the perfect breath, and coherence breathing is down this right. And that's around 5.5 breaths a minute. So he talked about that. But that isn't how we should breathe all the time. But coherence breathing is very, very, very cool. So I'm not an expert in this at all. But what's going on here? Have you heard of entrainment? So if you put like metronomes, load metronomes together, they sync up, did it? Yeah, it's happens with your grandfather clocks. And it's an I think the guy originally thought, oh, it's because the wind is blowing them. But actually, they were on the same piece of wood and says small vibrations, and they sync up through that. So he got on YouTube now thinks he's got like 100 metronomes, it shows a little thinking because they're all on like a wobbly ball. Anyway, what that showing is, when one thing starts to happen, it kind of has an effect on other things. When you're breathing at 5.5 breaths a minute, or 5.5 and 5.5 out, you are using your diaphragm, which you haven't spoke about yet. You're breathing at a nice slow rate, the inhale is coming in, and then going out. And that's pumping the heart massaging the heart of the diaphragm. And then what that's doing is when you breathe out and massage in the heart, the diaphragm moves back up again. So the bloods going around your body at a rate now that you're pumping it, because you're going a nice slow rate, you're not breathing fast, you're slowing it all down. And apparently what is happening is then the signals going from your heart to your brain, and it's all becoming in sync. And so there's a improvement of heart rate variability there, more relaxation. And so the coherence people are fascinating people as a whole a sub sect of breathing. Well, that's where it comes back to this 5.5 seconds. And I think James Lester spoke about rose rosary beads and people praying, and they would kind of say in the Lord's Prayer and breathe in and not nasal breathing, but there was slowing their breathing down. And as they were, like talking about the Lord's Prayer, and I think it's in other religions as well. So there are some health benefits to slowing it right down. One of them is by slowing your breathing right down, you're starting to build up your co2 levels. And by building the co2 level a little bit, you're gonna start adjusting your sensitivity to co2 as well as if your co2 sensitivity is higher, or, you know, normal, let's say, you're going to breathe at a slower rate. But if your co2 levels low because your mouth breathe, and you can breathe at a faster rate, so some neck sizes, which we'll jump into in a bit of war, but let's just slow breathing down. Let's get used to that feeling of our hunger, because by doing so, it's a bit like going to the gym and lifting that weight. We train ourselves to breathe at a slower rate.
Ali Abdaal 54:53
Okay, cool. We've mentioned the diaphragm a few times. I've had a few singing lessons When to my annoyance often focused on breathing. I was like, come on, I want to get to the good stuff. They were like, bro, there is no good stuff until until you sorted the breathing thing out. But I've never done them for long enough to actually have sorted the breathing thing out. And I was wanting to dive into actually singing songs and all that crap. But they were often focused on kind of, sort of people describe it in different ways. Like breathe, some, some people say breathe into the tummy. And other people say, Oh, no breathing into the abdomen is like not how you should be thinking about it. It's not about pushing your tummy out. Instead, it's about using your diaphragm, then some people say, well, the diaphragm is, is under the control of the phrenic nerve or something, which is a is not under conscious control, and therefore like, how can you actively choose to breathe through the diaphragm? And then I went on a rabbit hole on YouTube about this. And it seems like everyone's got an opinion Yeah, about whether you should be breathing into your tummy or not into your tummy or into the base of your lungs and not into the base of your lungs. I guess the question is, how should we breathe.
Unknown Speaker 55:53
So Dr. Chatterjee wrote a very good book about stress. And in that he talked about diaphragm. So when we're, when we're unconsciously breathing, the diaphragm is moving about one centimetre. But when we consciously focus on belly breathing, let's say we can move it up to 10 centimetres. Now, we talked a lot about the nose. But when it comes to gas exchange, the blood is at the lower part of our our lungs. And that's where the really cool gas exchange happens, the best gas exchange. And obviously, we use the nose because we want the vasodilation of the nasal nitric oxide. But also what's happening is when we have our bellies locked, let's just say I put a band around this now and I can't move it, then I might become what's known as an upper chest breather, take a big breath in, then your chest because we've got all these extra muscles which can be used again, a bit like an emergency mouth breath, we can we do all this and you know, my channels called Take a deep breath. And if you said to nine out of 10 people had to take a deep breath in it's Yeah, but actually, you can take a deep breath in slowly using your nose and using your belly. So instead up
Ali Abdaal 56:55
hmm, I always feel conscious when I do this, because the belly comes out. And I'm like, Oh, why am I so fat. So
Unknown Speaker 56:59
by the way, one of the biggest things I've struggled with in my life is what's known as good suck in, which is bloody terrible for you. So I started working in kitchens, when I was really like young 1415, I'd free access to chips and fries the whole time. And so easily started to get a bit of a belly doing that. And so I started to suck it in. And so anyone I had the conversation with Dr. Bliss ranch where she's like, Yeah, that you shouldn't be sucking belly. And that's, that's really bad. That's a common trait people have because you are effectively stopping your diaphragm from moving, which means you can't get a full gas exchange, all this is locked. Your diaphragm is this dome shaped muscle that goes all the way around the back. So if you start here, and you start working your fingers around the diaphragm is bloody huge. It goes all the way right around the back, you know, this huge thing on the biggest muscles. And that muscle is a stabilisation muscle. So it's linked to poor lower back problems. It's linked to your digestion. And so, you know, if you're using your diaphragm, it's kind of massage and everything you'll know, as a doctor, there's not a lot of space in here, if you look at what's inside, everything's pretty compressed. And so the extra work of the diaphragms kind of massaging everything, the tummy, all that sort of stuff. And so if it's locked, again, we are not being that natural, you know, ancestor whether with a chimpanzee with the can of Coke kind of bent over. And so we want to be able to use diaphragm, I've got some exercises, I can show you around how we kind of open it all along and stuff. It's conscious practice. But I also believe it's education as well. Because if you don't know the diaphragm is good for you in the nose is good for you, and why would you want to use it? But now that people listen to this, and you understand the What the Why and we're going to do the how that's how you can make a significant shift in your life.
Ali Abdaal 58:40
Okay, so I should be worried about my buddy coming out while I'm breathing. Let
Unknown Speaker 58:43
it come out. Yeah, let it come out. Well, we'll do some exercises just to just to kind of release that we, we need to release the belly.
Ali Abdaal 58:50
So when you say suck, you've got in order to give me like 10 to abs. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 58:53
so literally, you could be like, if I in the photograph, I need to set the tone for that. And you might be you might be like that all day. There'll be times I mean, I've done a lot of work on this over the last couple years. But they'll be some times that I'll be in I use I use a sauna spa where I am. And I was speaking to a friend the other day and suddenly found myself sick. My stomach told me no, yeah. Oh, no, come on. Yeah, no, that's bad for you. And so I have to kind of just consciously remind myself to kind of release it. But yeah, you by doing that you're not giving your diaphragm the space to move properly. And so by doing that, you're no longer an efficient functional breather. You're being dysfunctional, but in a different way to what's going on here because you're not getting the air into the lower lungs and not a good transfer.
Ali Abdaal 59:35
Got it. Okay, should we dive into some exercise?
Unknown Speaker 59:39
Let's do it. Let's do it. Just one last thing on breathing I think it's important is the efficiency and the rate of breathing. Okay. So, in the simplest way possible, if you do my math is terrible. But if you do 12 breaths a minute, and your tidal volume, which is the amount of air you take in is half a litre. So that's that's a lot of 12 litres. Yeah. All right. Six litres a minute, I can tell you six litres. Now if I was to double my tidal volume to a litre of, oh, they need to take six breaths in that same minute, the extra bonuses because the air is in your lungs for a little bit longer, got a bit more time to do the transfer. So by slowing our breathing down, we become more efficient. I think it's 20%, more oxygen is absorbed through each of those breaths. So I've now just suddenly taken half the amount of breaths as you and more oxygen was able to be absorbed into my body. So pace is so important to slowing everything down. And again, this is where education comes in. Because you can slow your breathing down, build a tolerance to co2, and your general breaths per minute will start to slow down as well.
Ali Abdaal 1:00:40
Okay, cool. So how do we do this? Okay,
Unknown Speaker 1:00:43
so how's it how's the nose? First of all? Is it open blocked?
Ali Abdaal 1:00:48
It feels a bit blocked. Yeah. But it always feels a bit blocked. I've been consciously trying to breathe through the nose for the conversation. But I've, I've looked it up to see how much of it was actually hanging open
Unknown Speaker 1:00:57
your cast, by the way now because your mouth breathe and mouth with Yeah. If you've got a phone or something to hands, yes. So bit gross, but bit fun, you could just blow onto it, you can see like, which nostril is kind of what the airflow is like. So if you just hold the phone here like this, and then just kind of breathe on to get an idea of what kind of breath for maybe one muscle is a bit more open than the other.
Ali Abdaal 1:01:20
I don't see anything at all. We take it out with the case.
So for people listening in, what I'm doing, is I'm holding up my phone parallel to the floor, underneath my nostrils and flowing onto a
Unknown Speaker 1:01:36
planter. That's gonna
Ali Abdaal 1:01:42
be more Yeah, definitely more from this one. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:45
so one, this one's a bit more open the other. So it's a feedback mechanism just to see kind of what's going on. I mean, you can sometimes just cap a nostril and see which one's open. And we have what's known as arousals with our nostrils, so sometimes one will be more open the other and I'll take it in turns to kind of open and close. Yeah,
Ali Abdaal 1:02:02
this one's That's right, one's definitely much more than the other one.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:05
And there's some interesting studies around again, I would do yoga years ago, I think this is a waste of time, alternate nostril breathing. There's some studies and James Lester references these, if you're breathing through the left nostril, it's more of a cooling calming effect. If you breathe through the right nostril, it's more creative energy effects. And that sounds like proper woowoo. They've done studies where they've kind of blocked Sundays, nostril open and discussed with them. So anyway, there's some cool stuff with the muscles. So one day, let's say, John blockiness, First chop works about 50% of time, if you already breathing quite well, then you might not feel it. But we'll do it. Now. Maybe we can cut it if it doesn't work. But so what I want you to do is take him second, take a normal breath in, under normal breath out. And I'm going to cap those, I'm going to just shake the head of the body. And the reason did that just create a bit more co2. And we're going to do that as do a fairly strong breath hold. Okay. And then when you're this is important, and when you're finished, you want to breathe back in through the nose because you've harnessed some nasal nitric oxide there. So we want to make sure we capture that because it's the vasodilation. So in our hold, shake as long as you can, don't do this, if you're pregnant. If you've got epilepsy or high blood pressure, it's quite strong breath hold. And what we'll do that is just going to start to increase the co2 in your body start to open everything up a little bit. So we'll do what you need to do about five times on this. So we'll do a little bit and see how, okay, so normal breath and on the breath in normal breath out capitalised. Shake your head. Keep shaker, shake your whole body. It's good to feel silly, look silly. Have a little bounce, keep holding. And as you're doing this, just No, you're full of oxygen. And so when that urgency to breathe comes, doesn't want to be a very stressful breath. But when you feel the right time to breathe, you're going to breathe back in through your nose. You can handle that beautiful nasal nitric oxide and then back out through the nose. So it may have started may not yet we're going to just breathe normally. Now three notes just for next 2030 seconds. We're gonna go for a second round. And just the air hunger was that what how would you have described how you felt during the last few seconds? Was it quite? Yeah, quite pleasant. Okay, so just keep breathing through your nose. Set, settling the breath again. And when you're ready, now we're going to normal breath in through the nose, normal breath out through the nose gonna cap you those, I'm going to shake. That's boogie. And again, you know that urgency to breathe is going to come up and that's a good thing because the co2 is rising the body just to the point where you've got a you know, a medium to strong air hunger. Keep going know that you're full of oxygen just keep breathing for a second. Now we're only two into probably five but is there any noticeable difference as yet still feel about the same or?
Ali Abdaal 1:04:58
I think this the unblocked not straw has become more unblocked. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:01
But we'll do one more. And we'll see how that's going. But about a five is about optimal for this. And the wonderful thing to do before bed is no, it's an exercise, it's going to help open things up if we put your mouth tape on. Okay, so when you're already in your own time, you're gonna breathe back in through the nose, and out through the nose and the cap, you know, some of them shake, keep going, keep shaking, keep going. Getting real insight to you as a dancer at a wedding, I think.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:29
Right now the co2 levels are really starting to go a bit higher in the body. Nothing dangerous here with just you know, slowly holding our breath, not to the point of passing out just purely a point where we can start to open upon those little bit.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:49
Yeah, feeling a little bit maybe a little bit more open? Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, there's no good and you know, you can do that three, six times, just a good way to get started. So what I want us to do them first is, you can just have your eyes open or closed. This one's called breath awareness. So I take my right hand on to my belly, right hand belly, and left hand onto my heart, we have two left hand hearts, you know, you want to sit up nice and straight. And this is the maybe the most difficult exercise, because what I want you to do is do nothing, I just want you to focus on Hey, braveness. And it might be very hard to do first of all, because you're going to want to start to change things. But really, the whole point here is just to check in with the breathing. And the reason for your hands where they are, because not only will you get to sense it through your nostrils, but also get sense how hands move. And so your belly hand is that moving much does that stay in the same same with the chest. So it's just breath awareness could be arguably the most important because we need to know how we're breathing first. So we can get under the hood, start to make some changes. And as you sit there and breathe, not really trying to change anything at all, just paying attention to the sound or the feeling of the air that comes in through your nose, and out through your nose and your hands and move in avoiding that temptation to change anything, just breathing in through the nose, and out through the nose can be quite powerful, less, because you're checking in with yourself here. It's a form of active meditation, because not only are we just trying to clear our thoughts, but actively focusing on something but something we don't really want to change just just to pay attention to. So just continue now breathing in through the nose, and out through the nose. And when you ready, you can open your eyes again. So the benefit of that exercise is just to get a sense of how you are feeling. And as you go through the steps of practising different breathing exercises, that becomes a useful tool to kind of check in with yourself because you might have found right then I haven't really moved much on the belly, it's quite static, or I could feel my chest was moving quite high. I felt like I was breathing quite fast on there. And so it's just, it's just a check in. And then something you can journal about and come back to. So what I want to do now is do a little bit of box breathing with you. And the reason for this is probably going from the other exercise is to slow everything down Navy SEALs uses exercise, because by slowing everything down, we might be in a better state to make a decision as opposed to be in frantically breathe and panic, breathe and Tronic decision. Let's just slow everything down. So what I'll do, I'll just guide you through a little bit about your brain just a couple around. So I'm going to use the nose for there. So we're going to breathe in through the nose for 4321. And hold for three to one out through the nose for three to one, and hold for three to one and in through the nose for three to one and hold for three to one and out through the nose 4321 and hold 4321 Slow down slightly now in through the nose 54321 Hold 54321 out through the nose 54321 Hold 54321 and go back to normal nasal breathing now, when we slowed it down, was there any challenge with that? Or was it I could do five I could do maybe even six or seven. So yes, it was great. Yeah, good. Okay. So what I wants to move on to now is of course,
Ali Abdaal 1:09:37
what's the point of these breathing exercises?
Unknown Speaker 1:09:39
Okay, so the breath awareness is to check in okay with the body yeah, the the box breathing is just slowing us down. So it's just getting a bit of control now starting to get under the hood and play with that. Okay, and so by breathing at a slower rate, it comes back to increase new levels of co2 If
Ali Abdaal 1:09:54
I'm in a if I feel like I'm in a stressful situation, yeah. Or
Unknown Speaker 1:09:57
yeah, if you've come out of a meeting and you know your boss has been 1000 a year, whatever you just in that panic state can check in with yourself, you can then do box breathing just to slow everything down. And by slowing things down, you're thinking clearer, and you can move forward and make a decision. Nice. Yeah. Okay, cool. So what I'd like us to do now is let's start to feel the airflow because this is a really cool exercise. So what you do is you get the middle finger where the middle finger meets the hand, you can just place that on your, on your nose like this. And as you're breathing through your nose, have you not had anything smelly on your hands, what you'll find is the airflow should start to hit the hand. Yeah. So what I'm going to do now I'm going to guide you through slowing this down. So just keep that Hamber. By the way, you can also do it like this, as a feather breath, I don't think it looks very good from a PR point of view to be doing that. So I like to do it this way. And so what you're doing here is you're feeling the air as it's hitting your hand. And so we're going to start to slow that down Ailee. So what we're going to do, you can, you can stay in the position you're in, you can keep your eyes open or closed, just before we start to play with it get a sense of what the air feels like, maybe it's stronger on one nostril, or the other. Maybe the intensity is quite hard. Just try remember, if you can well, that is because we're going to start slow it down. And what I like to use as an analogy is when there's old car stereos with the winding knob that you can use to turn the volume down. And what I want us to do now is let's just start to turn that volume down. And what that means for you is we're going to reduce the airflow, maybe just a couple of percent to start off with, can we make the air flow quieter, more gently and smoother. As we breathe in through the nose, and breathe out through the nose, I can already hear a quieter breath from you. Now, it was quite loud before and that was quite, it's fantastic. So we just slowing it down. And as you start to do this breathing in through the nose and breathing out through the nose, the levels of co2 in your body are going to rise slightly. And you're going to feel what's known as now hunger. And that's good. That's what we want to do here. Now a bit like when we did the breath holds before to unblock you knows that would be classed as a strong air hunger. We don't want to do that we want to probably have a medium our hunger, you know, we're not trying to get to that point where we're desperate. But I would like you to get to the point where you want to start to take a bit of a bigger breath, but you're choosing not to you're choosing to keep it slow. So we're breathing in through the nose and out through the nose. And the airflow is nice and gentle on the hands. Just give me a nod is it gentle than it was at the start the exercise good, okay. Now if you can, because this first time he's done, let's imagine, let's just take that radio knob and let's just turn it down into a couple of sank, we go a little bit more, could we go to a slightly lower, inhale and slightly slower, exhale, slightly, a little bit more of airflow, going back and forth. And again, you're getting this wonderful feedback of what's hitting your hands, you get to feel the air, but you're also getting to feel it in your body, the feeling of hunger, breathing in through the nose, and breathing out through the nose. And then when you're ready, you can move your hand or you can go back to normal, normal nasal breathing. How was that exercise for you?
Ali Abdaal 1:12:59
Yeah, I realised that sort of subconsciously. I was like making noise while I was breathing. Yeah, and probably wasn't necessary.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:07
Yeah. Yeah, when I was I did yoga in Bali for a month. And I would make the loudest noise possible cuz I wanted the orchestra and I was really suffering. And then I only realised after a nice slow nasal breathing, it's the game has is the way forward. So just what we're doing here, we're just playing with some different tools and free tools that can get us out of our head and get us to feel what's going on with our breathing. Now an exercise like that, you could do that for 10 or 15 minutes in the morning and the evening. And by creating an air hunger and consistent daily basis, you're going to be in a position, we're going to start to raise your tolerance to co2. And so I did that. And it took me about six weeks to get my breath hold from about 14 seconds. It's about 30, which is a good way. And so with all of these things, like anything in life, consistency is key. That's the thing that we we absolutely want to be doing. What I want us to focus on now is a bit of the abdomen. Okay, then. So you talked about belly breathing. You know how best to do it. There is a lot of different ways of doing that. But first of all, I like to think about the ribcage because people talk about can you prove lung capacity. And if you think about those, those sacks those bags just hanging in the ribcage, or the kind of constricted by everything that's going on, you know, if the diaphragm is not moving and the ribs are locked, then actually your lung capacity is going to be reduced. And actually, if we can open all that up, then it can make some some differences. So what we need to do here is we want to start opening things up. So this is a is a bit of breathing exercise, it's a bit of movement. And by the way, this is very accessible. So I'm very, very, very tight. Just naturally, I think. And so this is an exercise that pretty much anyone can do, we can do some crazy yoga with Adrian and you know, we can do handstands, but in this, it's just about opening things up a little bit. So first exercise is called picking apples. And what we're going to do is we're going to put a hand up in the air. And as we do, we're going to breathe in, and we're going to grab an apple from the top and so we're breathing in, grabbing the apple stretching all of this, all of the intercostal muscles here that sit in between the ribs, and we're just gonna Open them up a little bit and grab the apple. The good thing is we can slow the breathing down sometimes. So we're gonna go in
Unknown Speaker 1:15:10
and I can emphasise the exercise, but actually it does feel quite nice to go. So I'm going to go good, the other arm in pick an apple pick, stretch and bow. And there's two apples. Let's go both hands. Now we can really stretch the ribs on both sides, and it's your first time don't push it and back down again. Let's do one more both hands.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:54
Just feels good to get your hands out of your hands because I think we don't do enough. Now let's do this. Okay, what what this is a good chair for this. So we face forward too much these muscles need to move. So what we want to do is going to take a breath in through the nose. And as we breathe out, we can grab the back, I'm just gonna do a twist. Let me just twist it all the intercostals get a nice twist in there. Almost like wringing a tea towel out. So we'll sit in, first forward, breathing in now. Squeeze in and twist in and squeeze in and twist in the squeeze and then twist. And then when you're ready to breathe back in through the nose and face forward. We'll do one more that side. So here we go. Nice breath in and out. Twisting and squeezing that tea towel nicely rang out, get all that dishwater our teeth out, go. Okay, and face forward and breathe. And we want to balance things out. So we'll do the site twice now as well. So in your own time, we're going to breathe in. And we're going to twist keep twisting, that's a nice twist, breathing out, face forward. I'll do one more twist. Breathing out through the nose what that exercise doing, you can do Apple pick him for a few minutes, you can do twist interference, I always like to feel like I'm a bit more loose now. And I'm doing that. And so we just opened up all that kind of cage a little bit because it doesn't get the love, it deserves them. So now we've got a bit more flexibility. And again, that's a good exercise to do every day, every other day. And what we want to do now is we're gonna do some mechanical focusing on our belly breathe. And so some people say you can breathe into the back, you can breathe into the sides. And if you actually put your hands here, on the sides, we're gonna let our bellies go a little bit. Now, if you take a nice slow breath in through the nose, you feel your hands start to move apart. And the reason this is a good exercise to do is because yes, belly breathing is important, but it's really a 360 breath, everything is opening into the back, I heard that at the start of COVID, they stopped putting patients on the backs because they weren't been able to get a full breath. And so we breathe, you know, a 360 way. But I also think it's useful to focus on the belly. So I like to imagine this little balloon in the belly that's inflated. And what we're doing here is when we breathe in through the nose, we're really focusing on everything expanded outwards, and then we breathe back in again, the diaphragm comes back up into a nice resting position. And just by focusing on the diaphragm, it already starts to move a little bit more below. Dr. Jack Chatterjee said in his book, you know, one centimetre versus 10 centimetres is huge. And so we don't necessarily want to push out as far as we can, but just a normal nice breath in. I'm going to try and keep the shoulders where they are, we might be used to being shoulder breathers. And if you look at somebody that takes a big breath, the shoulders move and we want to keep that breath nice and low. And we can also put a hand back on the belly and one back on the chest. And this time now we can focus on the belly moving out as we breathe in. As we breathe back out, the belly moves in and the diaphragm moves up.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:17
Breathe and back in. Breathe and back out. So those exercises, I would say are really useful as functional foundations for people. So what we've got there, just a quick reminder, we've got breath awareness to check in. Then we do some box breathing to slow things down. Then we can feel our breath. Then can do some twisting to open everything up. And then finally we can focus on our diaphragm. Effects on the belly breathe and by using those combinations now with a breath awareness of the education that we've got, you can start to unpick What's happened over the century, decades, for me in particular, and we can start to go back to the way nature intended us to breathe, which is functionally which is efficiently, which is the way that we should be breathe and the way we used to breathe as children, but actually, we lost it through chronic stress, poor posture, you know, being indoors and being cramped all day, we can actually unpack some of that. And I've been through my own breath journey, I had low back problems, much better at IBS my whole life, my diaphragm was like, no surprise, I wasn't getting any massage in there. And so we can start to unpick some of this. And if I can give a bit of a plug. So I've just finished literally asked them a functional breathing essentials masterclass is a five week masterclass. And what that does is it takes everything we've talked about here. But we go in much deeper into the what the why and the house is like a mini masterclass. And over those five weeks, I'll set you different homework, you then get a week to practice or you get to learn all about the different things you can do, you can measure your breath scores, all these different things. And at the end of the five weeks, you get a really deep knowledge of being a functional, efficient breather. And that's, that's live now. And I'm, I can do a an Ollie 2020 to 22% discount on that as I was thinking about that. So I can give you the code for that. So anybody that's watching this would be able to get a discount, and we'd get cracking with that course.
Ali Abdaal 1:21:17
Yeah, we'll stick that in the video description in the show notes. Sweet. This has been great, interesting intro to introduction to the idea of breath work, I will continue taping my mouth shot because it seems to be good for you. I will continue being somewhat trying to be mindful of breathing through my nose, even if I don't feel like it because I was feel like Oh, it feels a bit blocked. But this this exercise is quite useful. And I'm very keen to attend to Tony Robbins thing and also sort of been, I've been thinking about like I should go to one of these Wim Hof things for ages just haven't really gotten around to it, but it will it will happen at some point. And then we were doing an interview on your podcast straight after this. So we'll put that in the video description in the show notes so people can check out more if people are interested in that sort of thing. But yeah, thank you very much for coming on any recommended resources for people who want to dive into this topic a bit more?
Unknown Speaker 1:22:00
Yeah, so obviously, I'm shamelessly plugging my course but but also my breath cast out if that's an original name, or non original name, but there's kind of 50 plus experts now been interviewed all about wellness and breathing. And that's really been a big source of my breathing education. And so to have this time, and you can go and watch these on YouTube or listen to them on Spotify, anywhere it wants to go deep down the rabbit hole of breath work, you know, most of the top people are in that the James nesters, the Patrick McHugh, Ian's the Dr. bliss of ranchers, and a whole host of other people. So I really recommend that as a good resource if you want to go much deeper
Ali Abdaal 1:22:32
sick so and we'll put a link to the breath cast podcast in the video description in the show notes as well. Alright, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast can be linked down in the video description or in the shownotes depending on where you're watching or listening to this if you're listening to this on a podcast platform and do please leave us a review on the iTunes store it really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That'd be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already and I'll see you next time.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:06
Bye bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai