Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Moonshots Podcast goes behind the scenes of the world's greatest superstars, thinkers and entrepreneurs to discover the secrets to their success. We deconstruct their success from mindset to daily habits so that we can apply it to our lives. Join us as we 'learn out loud' from Elon Musk, Brene Brown to emerging talents like David Goggins.
[Music]
hello and welcome to the mood shocks
podcast it's episode 156 i'm your
co-host mike parsons and as always i'm
joined by the fully oxygenated mark
pearson freeland good morning mark hey
good morning mike i'm taking a deep
breath i'm filling my lungs with oxygen
and air ready to get into a brand new
series with you today how are you doing
mate i'm pretty excited about a new show
a new series
bringing it into a whole new
territory for the moonshots podcast
where are we going today mark mike and
listeners as show 156 we're getting into
patrick mccowan's the oxygen advantage
which mic is number one in our brand new
series on health this is a brand new
direction for you and i and our
listeners and i'm very very excited
because i think we have such a road map
of fascinating books
individuals as well as topics for you
and i and our listeners to learn out
loud from and today with patrick
mccarron's the oxygen advantage i think
we are kicking off in an absolutely
perfect way aren't we
i totally agree you can't get more
fundamental than oxygen can you mark i
mean
if if we just think about it for a
second i mean we breathe a gazillion
times in a day
so
you know why not think about how to do
it a little bit better and isn't it
shocking
if you think about something that's so
fundamental to our existence
how little we talk about well do we do
we breathe right are we using oxygen
oxygen right like
very interesting that we can be consumed
with so many other topics but is there
anything more fundamental i mean this is
more important than drinking and eating
i mean this is take a breath and take a
good breath isn't it i i think that
for you and i and our listeners and
those that we work with our colleagues i
would say that there must be a very very
very small minority
who have ever been sat down and taught
how to breathe correctly i think it's
something that
is very very easy to
get wrong
and obviously you know breathing it's
it's unconscious as well as conscious of
course so you're always going to breathe
correctly some of the time aren't you
but i think what is funny for me as i
reflect on you know being a kid growing
up doing exercise collaborating with
with with different people it's never
ever been something that has been
demonstrated or taught to me before how
to breathe incorrectly and it's
fascinating exactly as you just said it
is one of the essential pillars that
keeps
me alive
you know and it's pretty important stuff
incredibly important pretty important
stuff and it's something that i totally
take for granted and what's interesting
getting into patrick's work is how
important it is to so much of my my life
my career my general happiness and
health is it's so essential for all of
us to get right
exactly and that's why we chose uh
patrick mccowen's book the oxygen
advantage because we really do feel
that as part of a health series breath
is the the underlying the fundamental
starting point we're also going to do
sleep diet and the body
we've got some some of my absolute
favorite authors including michael
pollan author of indefensive food which
really changed my perspective towards
food so that's all to come in the series
but today we're delving into the oxygen
advantage which is based on something we
always love in the moonshots uh podcast
four years of scientific research so
there's the rigor there's the data
behind all of this and patrick has
studied this for many many many years
and it really brings us this
revolutionary approach
and we can all take from it today so if
you're interested in
uh improving your weight
improving your how you sleep the energy
you have during the day right through to
concentration focus or you just want to
feel some peace and calm it's all ahead
of you today so mark where do we kick
off
when we go to this universe of the
oxygen advantage i think it's only right
for the author himself to kick us off
mike and get us started on today's show
so first up we are going to hear from
patrick mccowan introduce us the idea of
breathing consciously stress
makes people sick and
on the basis that stress makes people
sick relaxation will help to make them
better
how can we negate the effects of stress
how do we breathe when we get stressed
we breathe faster we breathe shallow we
breathe irregular
and this is keeping the body in that
state of fight or flight so what are we
doing
i'm saying to people i need you to
breathe through your nose i need you to
gently slow down your breathing i need
you to use your diaphragm and i need you
to adopt a cadence of the breath because
when we're looking at the breathing we
need to consider that it's not just
about diaphragmatic breathing or it's
not just about breathing into the nose
and out through them out or it's not
just about take a deep breath when
you're stressed the information take a
deep breath when your stress is absolute
nonsense
it is based on nothing and it helps
nobody because if we have a belief that
it's going to be taking in that huge big
breath
are we really making any positive change
in the body and what i would say to
people is
start just gently slowing down your
breath even to the point of a slight air
hunger by just relaxing your breathing
breathing through the nose
and you know just even concentrate on
that
does it change your body temperature
does it increase the amount of saliva in
the mouth do you feel different
yeah
i mean there is so much to talk about
with respect to how we breathe and those
three elements or those three pillars of
breathing
it's
i don't know it's one of those things
take a deep breath
as we've already discussed we made a
little video for people on that but the
whole idea of taking a deep breath
you're not actually against it you're
just against the way
most people
interpret that and what they do yes so
we would demonstrate that if to most
people you say hey take a deep breath
what do they do
sort of open the mouth lift the chest up
you know breathing from the chest yes
breathing through the mouth and you're
saying there is another way to take a
deep breath which is
using your diaphragm through the nose
slow slow and quiet i'm saying to do the
absolute opposite to how you breathe
when you are stressed when we breathe
when we are stressed we sigh more we
breathe faster we breathe shallow
instead of sighing we want to achieve
regular breathing instead of breathing
faster we want to slow down the breath
instead of breathing using the chest we
want to breathe using the diaphragm
such
breakthrough
thinking and i i i really personally
have experienced this
in
discovering that
if you don't manage your
breath
and you allow yourself to over breathe
which is the chronic problem
uh that begins the inside of this whole
book from patrick mccowen which is we
chronically over brief too much too fast
the big thing mark is that when you
breathe really deep and really fast
you're bringing more oxygen into the
body you're making the heart go quicker
so you're stressing yourself out you're
you're literally inducing stress and
personally
what i've discovered doing breath work
is if you take slow breath
if you hold
the breath for a long time you exhale
for an even longer time
you actually slow your heart down you
slow your whole body right down
and that's how you can get to a calmer
clearer mind
and
as simple as this sounds i i've
discovered it in my 40s mark like what
have i been doing all my life
i think this is one of the really
interesting
lessons and topics and areas that i
think we're going to uncover throughout
the whole of the health series some of
these things are going to be simple but
not obvious
you know you're quite right
it's all about slowing down your heart
rate through slower breaths
and therefore feeling more relaxed for
me it's never been something that i've
really that the pennies never dropped
for me either so i've always gone
through my life when i'm feeling
stressed or maybe i've gone for a run
something strenuous i'll take a series
of deep breaths because i'm assuming
that that's the right way of doing it
but you're totally right what it's doing
is flooding me with oxygen which is of
course great but it's not doing anything
to kind of slow my heart rate down and
get me feeling a little bit more
comfortable because instead what it's
doing is rising that maybe pressure as
well as pulse
in order to simulate and stimulate those
those stress and anxiety factors more so
than than before and i think this is
really really interesting i think the
breathing consciously idea makes again
total sense but it's never been
something that i've actively apart from
going into you know a little bit of
meditation or maybe yoga
it's never been something that has been
on my
daily
habitual uh
list of things to do
uh like it is yours i know for you
the breath work is really something that
you you stick to it in your to-do list
each day
yes and and i think it's fascinating to
now be introduced to it
for myself a little bit more here
to understand that it's not just about
um
slowing things down but it has this real
advantage on on actually slowing your
heart rate down as well
yeah and and so when that happens
your brain is not being pumped with so
much blood and running amok
your mind can calm down
and you can be more present more calm
but there's a ton of other benefits that
come from this practice and we're going
to discover
together
you me and all of our listeners we're
going to go and discover not only how
this is really fantastic for
uh being more present being more relaxed
being able to think a bit clearer but
actually
this is also a bridge to higher
performance in your training and in your
workout and here's a really interesting
thing mom
some of the greatest athletes
when they are in very active performance
they breathe
through
their nose
they don't do their runs
through their mouth they're not
breathing through their mouth they do it
through the nose so they slow the body
down a bit
they don't overload it with that heavy
panting through the mouth breathing that
the greatest athletes actually do nose
breathing when they're running marathons
for example
isn't that again that seems
like a step away from what i would have
always done you know the habit that i
have would be to go for a run and i
assume that i'm taking in more oxygen if
i've got
my mouth open
but that's clearly not the case um
according to patrick and all of the
research that he's done yes because the
breathing through the nose like you say
it's allowing that oxygen probably to be
absorbed maybe a little bit slower as
well as slowing down the rate of breath
inhalation as well
so it has a far
more body
wide benefit
rather than just the breathing it again
it's not something that i've ever been
kind of exposed to or taught
so i've always developed those bad
habits of of panting
so there is so much to get out of this i
hope everybody is really tuned in and
ready to learn but before we jump into
the next part of the series mark
we've been really fortunate we continue
to have more of you our listeners
signing up to be a member obviously if
you become a member of the moonshots
podcast you get access to our fabulous
moonshots master series of which we are
building quite the collection we publish
one of those every single month uh to
all of our members but mark let's give a
shout out who are our members let's do a
rogue roll call and really show our
gratitude for all our members well mike
it's lucky that today we're doing
patreon mccann's the oxygen advantage
because i'm going to need a deep breath
in order to do the full roll call here
helena and mark byron tom dietmar ken
marjolyn sandy niall brydie and terry
john niles and bob welcome to all of our
members on the patreon member site thank
you so much for joining us every week
and every month and being part of the
moonshot team
yeah and if you would like to become a
member and show your support for the
moonshot podcast uh head over to
moonshots.io click on the big members
button
become a member because you know what
you're helping us pay some of our bills
we've almost got enough members now to
cover all of our transcription costs um
our hosting costs we're almost there we
probably need to get to about 50 members
i think to safely cover all of our costs
and after that i think we're going to
invest all that uh membership
contribution to building the the
moonshots app so there's just so much
uh that you can do to contribute and we
hope to really share more of the good
moonshots vibes with you so go on
while you're listening right now just go
and open up moonshots.io become a member
we just use patreon it's super easy
and we'd love to hear your thoughts tell
us who you'd love us to do a show on but
for now mark we're doing a show on
patrick mcconan and the oxygen advantage
where do we go next so i think we
started to get introduced from patrick
into this idea of breathing consciously
and the next clip we've got is actually
how to practice conscious breathing in
moments of stress and mike i mean this
is something that you and i and probably
all of our listeners have had to deal
with before so i'm really interested and
looking forward to getting into this so
the next clip we've got is from patrick
and how to utilize conscious breathing
to manage moments of stress
now it's not just about slow breathing
as you pointed out we do breath holding
as well now why would we do breath
holding we want
you know to stress the body a little bit
because we can cause adaptations to
happen there like modern life now it's
all about comfort yeah but throughout
revolution we were always exposed to
little stressors and i think it's good
you know physical exercise is a stress
i'm going into a cold environment as a
stress we can improve our ability to
cope by doing stressors and breath
tooling is a stressor to give you an
example if i get a give a presentation
and i talk quite a lot and i you know
i'm giving presentations to different
groups of people and i used to get a
little bit anxious of it because of
course you're going out yeah and i don't
like using powerpoint so i'll often talk
off the cuff and you can be talking for
an hour and you've no backup
and the reason that i don't like
powerpoints is because people get
hypnotized by this white light and
they're not looking at me at all i want
to connect directly with the audience in
front of me so what would i do
before the event i would
go into a separate room and i would
really slow down my breathing and take
my attention out of the mind onto the
breath and bring a quietness to the mind
and bring myself into the zone
but then i'm too relaxed i have i focus
but i'm too relaxed
then i do five strong breath tools
because this increases blood flow to the
brain
it opens up my nose it opens up my lungs
it puts me into that state of
preparedness how can i go out and how do
you do those breath holds so i simply i
will be in the room i know i'm about to
talk and say five or ten minutes i'll
take a breath in through my nose a
breath out through my nose i pinch my
nose and i simply walk around holding my
breath until i feel a medium to stronger
hunger then i let go i breathe through
my nose i count my breathing i wait a
minute i do it again i'll do about five
of them and we also have athletes do it
pre-competition yeah and it's really
good for alertness because you want to
be going if you're making a presentation
you don't you want to be relaxed and
focused but you don't want to be too
relaxed i want to have absolute
stillness of the mind whereby i can
focus 100 percent of my attention on the
delivery and i want i want my attention
to move simultaneously with time i spent
20 years living in my head stuck in my
head
and with all of my attention pretty much
thinking all the time and you know this
is another topic for conversation
because western education it has give us
a great ability to think
we can decipher we can break information
into tiny pieces we can reason we have
been trained how to think
but we have not been trained how to stop
thinking we need also to be able to
bring a solitude to the mind how can you
create gaps between thoughts and it's
not that we want to turn the individual
into vegetable but we want to have
choice
we don't even hardly pay attention to
what we're thinking about we're talking
about lack of awareness of the breath
how about lack of awareness of the mind
i cannot agree
more
with what patrick mccowen is saying
there i i think i am personally victim
of
monkey mind the the mind running wild
and thinking about a million and one
different things
and the true
blessing for which i am so grateful is
discovering that i
i had you know a couple years ago i
realized like i have to get in control
of my breath because i can always
i always noticed mark that
when i was really really busy or
experiencing stress
i just noticed how shallow my breath was
and how rapid it was
and so if you're a listener and you're
experiencing that kind of feeling of
very rapid shallow breath
during work because you're busy you're
stressed or maybe you have some sort of
anxiety based on the situation you're in
the the most empowering thought that i
can communicate to you
right now
is that you can totally get back in
control of your breath
slow it down
take active breathing exercises into
your practice
and
slow
steady
uh breath from deep in your belly not in
the top of your chest
and
[Music]
you can just
slow down
it's because you've the brain is
descending not only your mind but your
whole body racing
and then that's you know that's very
triggering of fight or flight um
kind of conditions for for us as
individuals
and he makes the point there mccoin
really makes the point like we we're
blessed in that we can think but then we
just overthink
and
just like music it's the space between
the notes that makes music so beautiful
it's the space between your thoughts
that makes your thinking so powerful
i i couldn't agree
more with what you were just building on
and what patrick was saying i thought
there were a couple of pieces that
really stood out to me in that clip that
i want to revisit one was
we've never been trained to stop
thinking and i think that's exactly what
you were just saying mike which is we
all have this tendency perhaps to
get distracted or maybe consumed by
whatever it is that we're doing right
now so your natural body
almost has to play
second priority and what happens is the
body then does i'm very similar as well
with shallow breaths sometimes in fact
i'll do it when i'm hunched over my
computer or my desk so my body doesn't
have enough
space i think almost to bring in those
deep breaths and because i'm breathing
unconsciously
it ends up being very very shallow so
what i'll realize after time is i'll
think oh wow i'm feeling a little bit on
edge here
and
sometimes it'll mean like i'll go for a
walk i'll walk around the office or i'll
just stand up for a little bit i know a
lot of people have standing desks i
imagine actually that that's a great
um alternative to sitting down because
it does allow your body to to be a
little bit more stretched
yeah your posture right it allows your
posture to open up and
you know um
you'll remember that
um
one of the
the lessons that we had with with jordan
peterson was his stan tall what was his
one stand tall with your shoulders or
your chest back chest out yeah yeah and
i think so i think what we're both
tapping into is that
if you're a modern knowledge worker you
can find yourself kind of crunched over
your computer for hours at a time
and lost in your mind you've forgotten
to to get up and walk around every half
an hour
you know you might be you know one of
the things i notice is just trying to
get my workload done
to meet deadlines and to not hold
processes up so to make sure that i'm
delivering
and that can be enormously
stressful because you're just like
trying to produce at such a phenomenal
kind of
rate like get the work out get things
moving
and um
you know taking
time to get your breath right you can
still be very productive
but it's like go slow to go fast which
is um which is a really interesting
thought isn't it if you think about
about this and and look so far already
mark i just want to point out how much
we're just like
look at how we're making the case for
breath like come on everyone
breathe consciously be aware
slow it down you know
it's such an important thing as you get
into it yet
hopefully we are disrupting and shaking
all of you out of your comas out of your
zombie state and unlocking some
conscious breathing yeah that's exactly
it mike it's the it's the conscious
breathing and something that i do just
want to revisit again in that last clip
we just heard was the idea of uh
air hunger and this is a big topic
within patrick's work and for those
listeners who want to find out more or
listen to some of the other clips that
we've got coming up in the show as well
as well as when you visit moonshots
we're going to have lots of different
clips for you to go and check out and
understand more about but air hunger
whereas patrick was just introducing us
to within that last clip mike is a way
of building resilience because that
stress
in any part of your life causes
evolution adaptation and a little bit of
resilience doesn't it
it certainly does i mean vim hoff talks
about breath in a cold shower
because we we live such comfortable
lives we actually need to stress the
body to provoke
our
physiology to to to grow it's no
different from working out and and being
a bit sore after you need to actually do
these things
to stimulate the body and if you look at
you know
any of those sort of
centenarians
one of the key things that they do is
they're constantly doing things that
stimulate
body growth they put themselves in
challenging uh situations you look at
the famous
um japanese
uh
communities that all live way past 100
they're still doing their karate they're
doing all sorts of things like this
to grow the body and that's where that
um
breathing a little uh
what does he call it what was the the
term that you mentioned the air hunger
yes this slight air hunger it's really
interesting
because what i notice when doing breath
work
is just actually um
how nice it is
to breathe out fully and just empty the
lungs
slowly bring it in and then hold it even
just holding the breath before you
exhale
all of this is is actually deeply
satisfying and i would never have
imagined
such calmness and
such satisfaction from doing something
like just some breath work it is really
just so powerful mark i'll tell you what
else is pretty powerful
are you ready
i'm ready
it's very very powerful and it's
available
in apple
itunes podcast application and do you
have any idea what i might be talking
about i've heard of it and i believe it
might just be
the moonshots master series is that
right
you are correct so listen
if you love patreon you know you should
jump over there and become a member and
you get access to our moonshot master
series but we acknowledge that for a lot
of people they love to listen to their
podcasts in their app of choice
and i am delighted to share with
everybody that you can now go into the
apple podcast app you can look up the
moonshots master series and you can get
a free trial
for our master series now it doesn't
quite have all the bells and whistles of
patreon
but
if you do love to get your podcasts
through that app and you're listening
right now in that app just actually try
it type it out moonshots master series
you can do a free trial and you can have
a listen to all of our master series
which is an ever expanding uh catalogue
isn't it mike i mean we're having a lot
of fun putting those master series
together we are
creating some pretty comprehensive deep
dives into a number of different themes
and topics as well as somewhat mindsets
like i mean the most recent one that we
did episode five was on the circle of
influence and that was really i think
again an extension of where we've sort
of gone with breathing you know focus
how we can be confident how can we
control the things that are in our inner
circle as opposed to our outer circle so
if you're interested listeners in
understanding a little bit more about mr
stephen covey and all the work around
the circle of influence
become
and come join us in apple podcast and be
a subscriber and you can check out that
uh episode number five but mike i mean
we've gone deep into a number of other
topics we also covered habits
we've covered teamwork yeah we've
covered motivations first principles and
first principles i mean we we're
starting to amass quite a quite a
library of
breakdowns actually
indeed indeed so just head over to the
apple podcast app give it a go you can
do take a free trial um why not and you
can get into the master series all right
now back to regular programming now it's
time for us to kind of go on a bit of a
blitz and
really get into some of the practical
tips from patrick mccowen's book the
oxygen advantage and look we're going to
go to one of our classic youtubers brian
from optimize we love his work and he's
going to kick things off and he's going
to talk about not breathing too much
let's talk about breathing
and the fact that we can live for weeks
without food we can live for days
without water but we can live for only
minutes
without oxygen
yet we don't think a lot about breathing
vis-a-vis eating and obviously drinking
water and moving our bodies and other
fundamentals so for me as i got into
breathing
i realized okay we've got eat move sleep
right then we've got our focusing of our
mind we need to add breathing and in
fact that perhaps should be the first
and most essential thing breathing we
take it for granted but we don't breathe
the way we used to both when we were
born and a hundred thousand plus years
ago uh due to a lot of different factors
so here's the number one obstacle
according to patrick he says that we in
short breathe too much chronic over
breathing here's a hint to see if you
potentially chronically over breathe do
you breathe through
your nose or do you breathe through your
mouth primarily
what do you think can you tell
if you snore at night you're breathing
through your mouth
you may know pretty obviously but that's
the basic thing that we want to think
about is the fact that we are
chronically over breathing patrick tells
us that we think about both the quality
and the quantity of what we eat uh and
what we drink but we don't think about
it with what we breathe we think about
the quality of the air we breathe of
course
right we don't want to
breathe in toxic polluted
infested air right or other toxins that
might exist in an indoor environment but
we're not thinking about the quantity of
oxygen we breed the quantity of air that
we breathe right he says we should be
thinking about that because just as
overeating eating too much food we all
know isn't a wise thing to do
breathing too much air is not a wise
thing to do
i love this connection mic and as usual
brian from optimize not only is he
breaking down for us in a really nice
simple way but actually he he's
reinforcing the series that we've we're
starting today mike
you know thinking about body and sleep
and food but starting with breath i mean
brian would be very pleased with the
with the order of our shows which is
great
i think we'll get a vote from from him
um what struck you about that clip
though as he kind of broke it down the
connection
that for me at least was not something
i'd ever considered the connection
between
i might eat too much and become
unhealthy i might drink too much i might
become unhealthy
if i breathe too much it's also not good
for me this connection between oxygen
this connection between breath
and being over
stimulated and over um exposed to it
is never something that i would have
anticipated being a bad thing i would
have always assumed breathing of course
i'll breathe as much as i possibly can
but what patrick is really saying and
what brian's breaking down for us in
that clip is when you are over breathing
it's almost as bad as overeating because
you're you're exposing yourself too much
to that as a stimulus in your body and
that's a totally brand new idea for me
yeah and it's um it's it's this really
disciplined almost stoic way of living
because you might say
um
it's not just over breathing over eating
but it's overdoing everything trying to
have too many possessions
like being so obsessed um like on this
big kind of treadmill of acquiring more
more more more and not just taking a
step back and saying i have enough
i can breathe i can eat i'm good let's
just pause right there i mean i think
this is really important thinking
just
slow down on your consumption of some of
those basic things and this is why we
see a boom in things like intermittent
fasting i think there's a real
connection here
that people are
becoming aware that actually it's been
it's become so easy to eat sleep and
drink and breathe and all that sort of
stuff we're like we're way over revved
uh we're way pumped up and it's all
about just taking a step back
and you know what's really interesting
about this breath thing mark is that
it's not only
something you can do during the day
but mark it's something you can do at
night as well right yeah that's right
patrick's work really as he called out
in one of the earlier clips as well if
you snore it's going to be a result of
you breathing out of your mouth and this
next clip mike this comes from a lot of
the teaching that patrick's done with
his team and the oxygen advantage it's
pretty out there i'm gonna be in to
know whether you've given this a go like
so without further ado let's hear from
brian from optimize again
introducing you and our listeners to how
patrick suggests we can hack our
breathing while we sleep
so patrick makes the point
that we want to breathe through our nose
while we're sleeping as i said in the
little uh first idea kind of
introduction if you're snoring at night
that's one of the greatest and quickest
ways to know that you are almost
certainly breathing through your
mouth
the way to handle that
may sound super weird um
i thought it was anyway when i first
read it but i'm all in you guys pay me
to test these things and be a
professional optimizer so i immediately
went online and i bought what patrick
recommends which is a 3m
surgical
tape right i think there's a few
different sizes he may even recommend a
smaller one i don't know how thick this
one is maybe an inch and a half but
basically you take this tape
and you put it over your mouth
i will do so now to show how
ridiculously absurd it looks i do this
every night so you put it over your
mouth
nice and tight that might freak out some
people i didn't really have a problem
putting this on uh when i'm all into
something i'm all in caveats don't do
this your kids need to be older than i
think six years old don't do this if
you're drinking if you have significant
respiratory issues obviously think about
it uh but this is something a practice
that i've done that's been amazing
alexander does it
and we have fun with it so putting tape
over your mouth is basically patrick
says the only way to know whether or not
you're actually breathing through and to
get yourself to consistently breathe
through your nose
he still does that i'm almost certain he
said share that with me in our last chat
he still does this every night i do this
every night since i read the book and um
it's tough to track the things that i do
and which has the biggest impact on my
well-being but i am absolutely certain
that training myself to breathe through
my nose has resulted in a deeper level
of calm
a deeper level of comfort and confidence
um and it makes sense as we discussed uh
we just didn't evolve to breathe through
our mouth and that level of kind of
chronic over breathing is is
unconsciously eliciting that
fight-or-flight
response
you know the interesting thing here mark
is that he uh he talks about how over
breathing triggers that fight or flight
so this is really good if you feel any
sort of stress or anxiety at work
just employ
slowing
down
your breath
you can take up a number of practices
that are within the oxygen advantage
program so you can get the book you can
go to the website we're going to have a
complete set of links to all the
materials around oxygen advantage on
moonshots.io so you can just head over
there we'll have the whole package there
for you
look ma i think this is crazy i think my
wife is very excited about the idea i
think we may i may have seen an amazon
transaction for this very tape
uh that brian was mentioning
i think the the interesting thing here
is that there is a ton of work being
done
now on how you sleep how it relates
hayfield during the day so anything you
can do with your breath to improve your
sleep for me
i'm all up for it because i think this
is really at the heart of you know how
we are encouraging everybody to to sort
of learn out loud
whatever it takes to be the best version
of yourself and frankly if it means
taping up your mouth while you sleep
well then why not right well i think
this is i mean firstly my good luck and
speaking on behalf of the listeners i
know we're all excited to hear how this
experiment goes
[Laughter]
um i think what's interesting to what
you're just saying is
a familiar topic that we've run into a
lot uh particularly recently on the
moonshot show as well as the master
series and that's the idea of ownership
so like you say we're more aware
nowadays of the impacts of stress the
impacts on our sleep
the importance of having a good diet and
i'm almost doing this sales
chat right now for the health series
which obviously we'll dig into over the
next few weeks with our listeners
but i think what's really interesting
for me
as we
remind ourselves of of patrick's work
and what he's really fundamentally
saying here it's all about taking
ownership of
not only how we breathe but also how
much we breathe when we breathe and
almost putting into our our daily habits
exactly as you already do
you make time for journaling you make
time for exercise you make time to see
your family or maybe your pets
but having time to yourself to also
practice breathing
is not something that's currently in my
agenda each day i think what's what's
fascinating is as we've learned from
patrick as well as brian
is how important it is at
setting your mindset
setting your physical practice
yeah there's elements of vo2 max that
you can improve of course uh from an
athletic perspective and i think
historically at least for me
reading up about how to breathe better
is predominantly orientated around just
improving athletic performance but i
think what we're discovering today is it
has an impact on so many other
more normal aspects of life that for me
at least i would have taken for granted
and not really ever made that connection
right well so just to
remind you using
you know programs like the
reading books like the oxygen advantage
and using the practice in there there's
a particular name for this practice
right it's um let me let me try and say
it's called the boutique method that
that's that is promoted by patrick
mccowan in the oxygen advantages
and that's kind of he's like a grand
master in this and he was
he was taught by
constantine buchecko himself
in this method
that's exactly right a very scientific
it's revolutionizing how you breathe but
from like a historical perspective and i
like the connection mic that you had
earlier
to
the okinawa ladies in japan yeah and
there's a great website the blue zone
um which breaks it down there and i
believe that
this is just again additional proof
that there's so much science and history
behind it that we've kind of all
forgotten about so you need to be
introduced to it via somebody like
patrick and suddenly you and i as well
as our listeners can now go and dig
further into this method which i think
is just so
fascinating to start to pick up
yeah and look if you want to kick start
yourself and and look if you if you say
to yourself i want to improve my
concentration my sleep my energy levels
maybe manage your weight better the best
thing you can do is uh
go to our show notes at moonshots.org
we're going to have a link to
the fundamental test that is the basis
of the work from patrick mcgowan it's
called the bolt test and it stands for
body oxygen
level test
and this is very handy because it's sort
of an accurate way of determining
your breathing volume and it's a very
good very good starting point uh for you
it to improve how you breathe it's it's
really good just to have a measurable
number to know that you are improving
and you know there's some other goodies
that you found as well mark that he
offers on on his uh
on his website that's right there's also
a an hour-long 60-minute workout that
you can follow which is all orientated
around the
air hunger and breathing light approach
and i for one i'm gonna give this a test
mic i'm gonna see if i can stick to this
over the next week and by the time we
have our next episode on health maybe
this is what i'll do each week i'll pick
up a new new habit but there's a great
breakdown and again we'll have the link
in our show notes from moonshots.io that
will help you understand um how to maybe
be a little bit breathless or for me at
least mike he's also going to help me
improve my fitness during injury so when
you can't go for a run you're able to
maintain a level of um
ability with your with your breathing so
i'm fantastic
fantastic it's just incredible isn't it
like there's this whole world to breath
that you just didn't know about
um and that you just haven't worked on
and you kind of like i'm like kicking
myself
like why didn't i get into to breath
work and breath exercises earlier i mean
hey it only took me 40 odd years but i
got there i got there
um but you know look i think it would
only be fitting to kind of wrap things
up to go back to the author of him uh
himself do you think matt that's right
we've got one final clip today in our
show on patreon and the oxygen advantage
and this is patrick again
introducing us to the cadence of good
breathing
by gently slowing down your breath and a
lot of the research is centering around
six breaths per minute so when i'm
working with a client the first time we
what we'll do is we work on the
biochemistry of breathing so we generate
air hunger then i will spend so much
time working on the biomechanics of
breathing then i will work on the
cadence of the breath and i have the
client simply breathe in
two
three
four
and out
three
four
five
six and i continue with that and we are
changing the respiratory rate from their
normal spontaneous breathing down to six
breaths per minute why
because the research shows that you can
influence the autonomic nervous system
bodily systems which have been disturbed
by stress
especially long-term stress and the
research is looking at post-traumatic
stress disorder
and irritable bowel syndrome anxiety and
also depression has been featured that
when you slow down the respiratory rate
to six breaths per minute
it's stimulating the vagus nerve it's
increasing heart rate variability it's
increasing the synchronicity between
your respiration and the timing of your
heartbeat and it's also exercising or
increasing the sensitivity of
baroreceptors now i'll just talk about
those for just one moment yeah sure
our body has an innate capability
and a need to be able to respond well to
the environment we need to have a
balance between the parasympathetic and
the sympathetic if a challenge comes our
way we should be able to adapt to it
life is always going to throw us a
curved ball how does our body react to
it this is about resilience and people
with really good functioning of the
autonomic nervous system they can cope
better with what life is throwing at
them
now in terms of can you improve that if
you read a paper or an article by mark
russo it's called slow breathing you
will see that they have done quite a lot
of research looking at the the
application of slow breathing to general
health
when you slow down the breath to six
breaths per minute you stimulate
baroreceptors which are pressure
receptors in the major blood vessels in
the aorta and in the carotid arteries
and they become more sensitive so when
there's an increase of your blood
pressure the bar receptors send an
immediate message to cause your blood
vessels to dilate and your heart rate to
slow down so that it brings down your
blood pressure but conversely if your
blood pressure is low the bar receptors
immediately react that by causing your
blood vessels to constrict
and your heart rate to increase to
normalize your blood pressure but the
sensitivity of your bar receptors
are a very good marker of your
resilience in life
good stuff mark pearson freeland
good
cadence
for breath and it's just
i think what strikes me is how natural
and obvious and how common sense
what patrick has to say
really is
and then in the second um
thought is like
how little i've thought about it in my
life
so i don't know it's good and bad all at
the same time isn't it
it's
i think you've summed it up really well
there
it all makes so much sense but for me
it's so
unobvious
you know i think the
physiological and psychological benefits
of
breathing correctly consciously slowly
makes so much sense but
i think for me i've collected so many
bad habits whether it's being hunched
over the desk or whether it's just
naturally breathing very shallow when
i'm focused on something which then
leads to
um
an over stimulation that then recreates
a feeling of the fight or flight
moments in your life
it's it's not something breathing is
never something i've i've explicitly
spent a lot of time in but what i'm
learning from patrick's work
is
it actually is a great way of
creating a daily habit is a great way of
not only calming yourself down but also
being able to create that resilience
that he was just talking about in our in
our closing clip
i love this this concept of
building the resilience that then
whether it's athletic performance
or maybe it's just dealing with
stressful situations at work better
right there's so much benefit from truly
taking ownership and unlocking a better
breathing
pattern and platform in your own life
that transcends pretty much every touch
point in your life i think that's really
what patrick's saying to us breathing is
so important it impacts everything you
do
and you know i really thought of vim
half it this is like vimhoff's brother
v martha's got this raspy dutch accent
patrick's got this beautiful irish lilt
but but nevertheless i'm sure they're
related somehow the the point here for
me is that uh when he looks at the
science and the the response of the
nervous system
um you know there's some there's some
real science that's worth investigating
there and look if that doesn't work for
you just try
this
approach to breath work slowing down
the breath
and it just
feels good because you're calming down
your heart rate you're calming down your
blood pressure and you're just being
more
calm more still more peaceful more
present which
is an advantage
on the field in the office at home
it is just so damn good and one
interesting thing mark is like my
natural companion to breath work is
journaling like i feel like if there
were just two things i could recommend
to you and all of our listeners
do some breath work in the morning do
some journaling in the morning and you
will have
a good
day you know what i mean yeah i totally
do and i'm gonna
definitely add this into my
you know daily habit of of what i what i
function and what i do because i'm just
totally convinced
that there's so much science and data
that i can't i can't push back on this
this idea and like you say we got
introduced to it uh probably a little
bit via vim half
and i think patrick's
again making the case that if you start
with your breathing then that can lead
to a healthier and maybe happier
mindset in life so start me up today
good on you i'll be taped up um in bed
you'll be doing your your one hour
course let's see how we how we go
through this health series
mark it's it's just great doing uh a
health series how have you found like
kicking it off with this
sort of it's a little bit of a a sleeper
topic breath work but
um i think it's it's
really um struck a chord with both of us
hasn't it yeah it really really has
possibly more than i anticipated
actually i knew that we we wanted to
start with with breathing before we get
into the next few episodes that we've
got in our health series
but i didn't appreciate
before getting into patrick's work
just how important breath was going to
be
to
our approach to sleep to eating right to
having a good flexible
strong body
having a good mindset some a way to deal
with stress a way to be focused to be
patient
all starts
with that simple act that we kind of do
instinctively from birth but we never
necessarily take the time to learn to do
it properly and that's breathing and for
me this has been a big penny drop moment
where suddenly i'm my eyes are kind of
open
and now i can see
that it is going to be such an important
thing to actively maintain and practice
and do correctly because of how
influential it is and everything else
could i do so yeah to be honest mike
although it's going to sound a little
bit superlative and
maybe a bit
bit too chatty i think this has been one
of the uh
most practical
tips that i've found that i can start to
put into my my daily practice and i
think it will have a big effect on me
yeah and and surprising as well isn't it
i think that's the it's kind of oh okay
didn't think about this
that's right surprising and
and although again perhaps similar to
vim
it kind of sounds simple but it's so not
obvious
it's unobvious until you really have
that that eyes opening effect
yeah exactly
well mark i want to say thank you to you
and i want to say thank you to you
our listeners and our members today has
been the start of a wonderful new series
on health and we kicked it off with the
most fundamental the essential oxygen
advantage by patrick mccowen and in the
introduction he called us to arms he
asked us to breathe consciously and in
moments of stress
or to get focused
he said hold your breath
because we're in a war against chronic
over-breathing his simple rule is don't
breathe too much
and you can do it both day and night you
can even hack your breathing while you
sleep tape up the mouth
you'll not only stop snoring you'll
sleep better and have more energy in
the new day in the new morning and in
the end of the day whether it's
evening
or night this comes down to creating a
cadence of good breath of building
resilience giving you the capacity not
only to fight stress but to become
healthier in all respects and that truly
serves our mission here on the moonshots
podcast where we learn out loud together
on how we can be the very best version
of ourselves well that's it for the
moonshots podcast that's a wrap