Hi there everybody. Welcome to another episode of the cloud based Mayhem. We'll different music to start us off here. That is Jeremy Will Wi sitting right next to me playing his hand pan. And this is gonna get us in the mood for this episode. We just all got out of the water in the Columbia River and did some breath work this morning, big group of us here at S for the Us Nationals.
And we've been doing this We did a bunch of this last year at Us nationals, and he and I recorded this show and my microphones were all messed up, so we lost that 1, and wanted to do it again. Jeremy is an icon in our in our para lighting tribe here in the Us, and he got into breath work and cold punch stuff, kinda of the Wim hof method about 8 years ago, and he's been sharing it with our community and how it helps.
You to be calm when you need to be calm or or you need more energy, you can use it to get more energy, but it really affects performance and safety and all kinds of physiological things where you can really kinda take control of what's going on in your life, so it makes you better on the ground. And in the air, very powerful and really, very easy, things you can do to literally changed your mindset and physiology instantly. And so it's a great talk, and we had a lot of fun with this.
Second time around. You're gonna hear some road noise in the background. I'm sorry about that. And it's very windy outside and we had to do this in the camper, and we're pretty close to a road there's a little bit of side noise, but just ignore it and enjoy this great talk with a really good friend of mine. Terribly well need. Hey, Jeremy. Gavin. How we doing? Good. We're gonna get to do this round 2. We did it exactly a year ago here in Chilean, and my microphones were screw, and we nailed it.
So we're gonna try to nail round 2. Perfect. Oh, did a really nice session with you here at the beach a little while ago with a bunch of the pilots here. Those you listening were in Sc for Us Nationals. We've got a weather day. It's really windy, So we're or inside, you're gonna hear some road noise going back and forth. But that's the best we could do. But Jeremy tell me what You got into all these years ago. And last year was 7 years ago. So now it's 8 years ago, breathing Wim hof
what is it? What's the physiology of it? Why are we talking about? Yeah. Perfect. Well, thanks for having me on the show gavin. And, yeah, like, you said a re recording a year later. So, yeah, My background is I've been fine flying para for 10:11 years and about 8 years ago now. I was actually on a van trip I was traveling down in New Zealand. And I was out I was out surfing 1 day. And I met a local out in the water, and I needed some help because my
van had some rust on it. So I couldn't get my warrant of fitness is what they call it down in New Zealand to register my van. And, so I was asking the surfer and he said, oh, I got a buddy with car shop, he can help you out with that. Perfect. And he goes, then he invites me to... You can come stay at my farm tonight. You're cool. Let's, you know, you can park
your van there. And so when I got up there, I met his girlfriend who owned a yoga studio on the North Island in New Zealand, And I got talking with them and they're like, hey, you should you should come stay for this. There's a Wim hof event, and I'm like, what is Wim hof? They're oh, man. This I like climbs mount everest and shorts and no sure, and you can, like, you know, sit in ice water for 2
hours and do all this crazy stuff. And I'm like, okay, that That sounds crazy, but, you know, I'm living in Savannah at this time, so I'm like, alright. Well I'll stick around for a couple more days and check it out. And so I went to this this, workshop. Is about a 3 hour workshop, and the Wim hof method has 3 pillars. Its breath work, it's cold exposure and it's mindset training. I was like, yeah. Let's let's go check this out. So we did some breathing practices there.
And then we got in a bucket of cold water, and we did some other exercises, and I was jazz up. And I left that thing going and practicing myself, because the breath work especially gave me this sense of autonomy over my thoughts. And my actions and allowed me to regulate my nervous system, kinda from the inside out. No longer was I looking for external validation or sources to change how I feel. I could I could produce it myself. Yep.
And so from there, I practiced for a couple years, and then I started showing all my friends around town. I showed my mom. She is very anxious about a lot of things that I don't think are things you should be. Anxious about and like most anxious. Yeah. Exactly. You know, if we needed to go to the airport. It didn't matter if we left 4 hours early. She was racing into the airport. And 1 day, I said, hey, mom. Let let's just We got time to go to the airport. Give me 10 minutes.
And I guided her through a breath work session for 10 minutes. And she got up and she... She was, like, a different person. She started doing the laundry. She started doing these other things until the point where I said, okay, mom. We gotta go to the airport. And so there was this just this direct correlation, and it was almost like this magic that changes your physiology to whatever state you'd like to get into.
And so I kept showing my friends and family, and then at some, I was like, maybe I should just become instructor. And so this started as a total passion project. And I put over a thousand people into ice plunge and done workshops and breath work things. And you know, I'm... I've sold real estate for 13 years, and this was kind of my
chinese. Side gig just having fun with it, and it's really transformed my life, and you know, I I love sharing with the para community because here we are, a group of, you know, psycho that think were birds and times we are. But para you can agree is such a mental sport. You know? I mean, and we have to react very quickly. And we have to react and call manner else the situation can you know, cascade and get totally out of control.
So I think training the mind is some of the most important things in para, not only super perform well, but to stay safe to and also to enjoy your time on the ground when you're not para. So breath work, cold plunging, the Wim hof method has been super powerful and my progression as a pilot, and I just... I I love sharing of Yeah.
Let let's dive into that because when you first approached me, you sent this great email, which we just reviewed, and a couple of the things grabbed me in that that I hadn't thought of when it when I think of breath work and you know, mindfulness, I guess, would be a way to put that, But you said, you know, this can really impact performance and safety. And you just said that, dive into that. How how can we literally change how we
our our our... We can literally change our ability in the air and also our calm ness in the air. Yeah used to it and it's quick. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So the science with breath work is... So We are a big electrical system. We send impulses from the body, to the brain from the brain down the body to move, to feel to act, whatever it is. And our our central nervous system, our electrical system, and we have, multiple parts of it.
For the term, fight flight or sympathetic nervous system running from the bear, a big collapse. You have that big collapse and recover it. You you may be shaking a little bit, scared or jacked up. However you wanna respond to it. That's our sympathetic nervous system kicking on, dump a bunch of adrenaline, cortisol into our system, and we have this hormonal release and, like, if we make it out okay, then we're good. We're stoked, you know, Know, it's like. It feels good. Telling
the buddies. Yeah. If that experience stays with you, and you have almost a fear injury over that it's a recurring it's it's stress. It's it's chronic stress that you're experiencing. On the other side of the tone, we have our parasympathetic nervous system, which is or rest and relaxation, rest and digestion. And that, you know, if that is firing too much, it manifests self as being with ar or un, and, you know, not wanna get off the couch or do whatever.
So on both sides of the sympathetic or the parasympathetic nervous system, if we have too much of 1 or the other, it creates issues, But if we have spikes in 1 part of the nervous system, like, we have that collapse. We recover. We're like, yeah. We're good. We're we're safe again, then it's awesome. It's like it's a... It's building our resilience.
But in our modern day, if we have the term chronic stress or we have this low level sympathetic nervous system response, Maybe you're sitting in traffic. Maybe your kids are crying, you're stressed about work. If we have that constantly constantly constantly, chronic stress, and that creates really big detrimental health effects. K?
So 1 way to get out of that is to have spikes in are either are sympathetic or a parasympathetic, and then we come down to baseline equilibrium of our nervous system. So good way to think about it is if you're feeling anxious, or you're feeling like a little uneasy and you go out for a run or you go for a bike ride or you go for a long period flight. You come and land in your content. You're like, oh, I'm go beers with my buddy. Like, there's nothing else I'd rather do,
contentment. That is the balance of our nervous And it doesn't take going for a run or hiking or para. We can achieve that state through just laying in our bed or laying on the ground and doing 10 minutes of breath. So those weather days or the days you can't get out or there's just on an inability, You now have a tool to control how you feel in the comfort of your home or, you know, wherever you like like to be.
So with the breath work, the power of it is we can manipulate our nervous system to achieve the state we would like to go to. So we're up on launch, maybe it's before a race. Maybe it's just before flight, and you got these jittery nervous that happens. You can sit down and do 3 or 4, 5 minutes of a certain type of breathing that will get into a little bit later, and it will pretty quickly calm your nervous system, and you can feel that calm happen.
Likewise, if you take a big collapse in the air and you're still on this big fight, but you're just feeling super anxious, we can breathe in a certain way while we're flying, that will physiological calm us down. Not even mentally It's like, we will calm down. Mh. And on the other side of the coin, if you're feeling the thirds, you're feeling un unregulated, you're like, god if I I love flying, but, like, for some reason, I just
not that. Yeah. We can breathe a certain way to, you know, amp that up or get ready. So the cool part is is you have the ability to control your physical always. You have the ability to determine how you feel. And it's really powerful because it puts the power back into ourselves. So we're no longer looking at external factors says fix our
issues. We're like, I'm gonna fix... I'm gonna go within do a certain type of breath work and I'm gonna change the state I'm into the state I'd like to like to go to. What I liked about it, I mean, in the work I've done with you last year and then this morning here, everybody says the same thing. It's it's immediate. And it's easy. You know, You you get the benefits instantly. You'd lay down, you start doing it and you're I mean, we did a session for this recording a year ago where, you
know, you can do things. You can do it in certain ways where it's almost el ng. And when you come out of this just in this bliss state, which is really quite cool. Okay. Yeah. No see why you're still doing it. Yeah. No. It's like, Wim hof method, 1 of Wim quotes is getting high on your own supply. Right. So it's like... That's definitely wim off before. Yeah. So when we mix, you know, like, this morning, we collected some people from the from camp.
We determined, you know, me and you were gonna go out and do a breath session and then it's like, hey, guys wanna come. Hey, guys wanna come. I think there end up being 10 of us or something. Yep. And guided through some different breath work techniques, and then we jumped in the Columbia river together as a tribe or crew and experienced voluntary discomfort. And I wanna highlight the word voluntary discomfort.
We are putting ourselves with the with doing a cold plunge and doing this breath work practice because we sometimes do long breath reach tensions. We are voluntarily putting ourselves into discomfort. And by doing that, we build resilience with their body. We build this determination. Alright. I'm gonna do something hard. For example, I'm gonna go... It's this morning. It's a little windy. It's a little chilly here in, which usually doesn't happen. But we went and jumped in the Columbia.
That's probably high forties, and we floated down together as a 10 of us. And everyone's everybody's like, oh, it's called. You know, it's like, getting all excite and jacked up, and then we get out of the water. We walk back up, and then we we circle up and start doing this, like tribal movement. This horse stance and hoo and and hahn and just building the calm within it. And in a very short amount of time, you feel warm. And you feel connected.
And you feel connected at a deeper level than, you know, when we go to these para events and we go fly, we always wanna you know, tell everybody about our flight and anyway. This is why my collapse. Oh, this, and I was like, calling this line and it's And it's really cool. You know? Like,
that's what we'd like to. But at some level, you know, there's ability to go deeper with people and talk about things that maybe aren't para related, but maybe that need to be chatted about for 1 party's sake or the other party So I think think we have something really special in the Us community, especially the comp seen. And I can sharing these experiences that are not exactly flying, but at a flying event really adds another layer and strength to that to
that bond. I would say it it... It's kind of building connective tissue. It's making the l and tendons stronger some know that are between all of us. It's... Like you said it's allowing us it's allowing but... Man, especially who are not I'm not typically a very emotionally intelligent person. I would say, I'm not very emotionally available, and it allows us to be more vulnerable or open to a man hug. Nice get hug.
Totally. And, you know, the... You take para, it's probably... I don't know what the exact numbers, but you know, probably 90 percent, 85 now. Shifting is participants Yep are are men. Yep. And, you know, there's a smaller percentage of women here, and we, you know, know that women are intelligent. More won't more emotionally emotionally available intelligent. And so
we have this... My majority group in this sport that we don't really get balanced out of the most promotional intelligence of women even though man, though numbers of women they're fantastic in sport it's it's so fun of see. So we've got this sport where they're... We we've got a core group that's not so emotionally intelligent. Mh. Or maybe just don't have the tools of the ability to go there or feel uncomfortable going there, and then don't have an easy way to see how to go there with
somebody. K? So I think intuitively, even it's as guys, we can feel when there's something going on with her buddy. We can feel, oh, that... You know, my friend just seems a little off on launch from my friend. It feels like he's dealing with some thing, But we don't really know how to ask, and we feel like, I just won't say anything. And I don't think that's a about method. You know, I think there's a decent bit of mental health she's in this... In the community.
In the world, it's not just the para community. But here we are talking about para. So let's let's talk about that. Okay. You know, we've we've had loss. We've had trauma. We've had injuries. There's things with family there's things with friends outside of flying, and sometimes we use flying as the escape. So, you know, we're on the ground and we're like, feeling all sad and depressed, but then we go flying and we we forget
about that. We're we're in the moment of what's happening, and it feels really good. And then we can... And then we land. And maybe we have, like, some weather days or we can't go flying or without these work commitments and we kinda turned this like, real kinda asshole on the ground. Yeah. Because we think that this external thing of going flying is what's gonna solve all our things.
And if we can, you know, we can practice for breath work, for example, we're going into a a cold body of water or at water, doesn't take as much time as flying, but it allows us to go inward in, like, feel and and sense own thoughts and feelings. And you can also get to that state by talking to your buddies about something that is going on with them. You know. And if you don't know how to ask, I think a a suggestion I've used that seem to
work for wells. If, you know, you have a buddy up on launch or you have a buddy that you feel like there's something going on with him. You can approach him and say, hey, man. It seems like something's a little off And I just wanna tell you that, hey, last week I was up on lunch, and I was feeling a little off, and I was just, like, having, you know, me and my wife had a fight. Mh. Or something happened with my kid. And so I just... I don't know if that's what it is.
But I'm here if if you wanna talk about something. And then you just gotta shut up and sit there. You know, and allow that to trans. And maybe... And the thing is that friend might say, no, no. I'm fine. Okay. But he's probably gonna... If there's... If he's not fine. He's probably gonna come back to you later or text you later and be like, hey, man. I appreciate you. This is at what actually is going on.
So I think within the community normalizing the sense of, like, especially as guys like, hey, let's let's talk about deeper things besides you know, our flight and how we did that. I mean, that's fine we can do that. But if you see something and you can tell something's going on with somebody, like, Let's just approach it. So... Yeah. You talked about this morning, you were talking about how the importance of the way you breathe to transport
hemoglobin and carbon dioxide all these things. I'd love to be free you to revisit that. Just what's going on physiological how how important it is to breathe through your nose, and how that relates to performance. How that relates to, being able high altitude training, training in general. Sure. Why we feel so much better when we return to the coast. Mh. Some of that stuff. Yeah. Alright. So we'll we'll dip into the science a little bit and science nerds out there.
And we'll kinda will keep this pretty pretty basic. Yeah. So when we inhale, we inhale air, which is a mixture of oxygen so the other other molecules. And when we inhale the air comes in, it goes into our lungs, and then it fuses into our blood. Because these a alveoli Sacks at the end of our. There all these millions and millions of Sacks at the end of our lungs. Our lungs aren't 2 bags. There are millions and millions of small bags. Okay. Sweet inhale that has oxygen in it.
It diffuse into blood. And the... The molecule of oxygen will attach to our red blood cell, and in essence the glue that binds it is is called hemoglobin. K? So that you can think of it too as, like, you know, the oxygen a little kid getting on a school bus, and the red blood cells the school bus. And the hemoglobin the seat belt. K? The oxygen jumps on the bus, the bus transports the oxygen to different parts of our body to be utilized in our muscles in cells. Okay?
Then the bus stops that the you know, the bus stop, which of a muscle cell, the oxygen gets off and the carbon dioxide gets on and the bus drives back to or, to our lungs, and then that that carbon dioxide goes back into our lungs, and then we expire the carbon dioxide back into there. That's in essence respiration. K? Now there's this common myth that when you feel this... If you do a breath hold and you feel this stronger to take a breath, and it's because there's a lack of oxygen your system.
It's actually the opposite. It's the build of carbon dioxide within our system, which causes us to take a breath. K? So when we relate this to performance and athletics, we can increase the performance by building our carbon tolerance. So doing long breath, We train our body to be able to withstand the buildup up of carbon dioxide within our body. K? Because when we breathe in oxygen, that oxygen through combustion produces energy and the byproduct of energy is carbon dioxide. And water,
and then b x expel that. K? That's why when you're running a endurance race got p. It's you're burning. Right. And the 1 of the byproducts carbon out dioxide the other byproducts, water. Okay. So we can train ourselves to have a higher threshold of carbon dioxide in the body. And that allows us to better utilize the option that we're bringing it. Okay? So to better explain this, Almost everybody, humans 98 or 90 98 or 99 percent of our blood is saturated with oxygen.
So that red... The red blood cell that's transporting through our body, the bus, it's filled with oxygen, and it's circulating around her body. However, the only way the bus lets the oxygen off is by if there's enough enough carbon dioxide to replace it. K? So we've got this bus driving around with a bunch of oxygen. And if we have a large If we have a large amount of carbon dioxide in our body ready from exercising.
And the carbon docs switch places with the oxygen, and we get fresh oxygen toward our muscles in ourselves. Otherwise, just carrying a lot of dead oxygen. Base. It's not dead auction. It's just not letting it go. Okay. It's just staying it's it's staying on the bus. Okay. There's no bus stops. Yeah. And so when it comes to, performance, if we can allow our body to build
up more carbon dioxide within it. And when we take fresh oxygen in in that oxygen, we'll switch places really fast with the carbon dioxide and go into our muscles and ourselves. Okay. So So another way to look at it, if it's your... It's the start of the season, you're going on your first mountain of bike ride, You're going on your first run, and you're out there and you're like,
Breathing really hard... It's probably in and out through your mouth, and you're doing that because you're trying to blow off carbon dioxide that's being produced in the body through the mouth, because you're not trained properly. You don't... You haven't built up that tolerance to a withstand carbon dioxide. However, then you do a couple trainings, and then eventually you find yourself running or biking for 10:20, 30 miles, and you're barely breathing.
That's because you built up the tolerance to withstand the carbon in your body. And when you breathe in fresh oxygen, you are able to switch the... So the auction gets off the bus and the carbon dioxide that's on, and then you're able to feed your muscles themselves more effectively with the fresh oxygen coming in. So if you're going throughout your day and just breathing shallow breaths in and out through your mouth. You're pretty much blowing off all your carbon
dioxide. So you have tons of oxygen circulating through your body, but it's not being utilized. It's just going around, on the bus never getting off. So there's a really good book called breathe by James Nest that talks about this, and there's also also the oxygen advantage by Patrick Mc mckinnon. When you're going through your day to day, breathing slowly in and out through your nose. The nose is meant to to breathe. The mouth is meant for talking at et 18.
K. And there's a couple important things that the nose does when you inhale through the nose, it acts it humid solidifies the air. So if you're living out west or you living in a dry climate, it it humid solidifies air. It also, conditions air. If it's really cold air warm enough, it's really hot arrow cool down. So when it comes into lungs, it's inside of at a
better temperature. Mh And then we have a, nitric oxide that resides in your nasal cavity, and we breathe through our nose, we get nitric oxide into our blood system it actually dilate our blood vessels and it helps move oxygen more effectively throughout our body. And it also filters pollution or, you know, poll poll in the air. So there's huge reasons breathe in and out through your nose. And the nose is meant for breathing and
the mouse met for eating and time. This is a really big deal with kids that often if, you know, if kids have ad problems or tongue ties or and it's becoming more more prevalent as I understand it across the board, which can't get it janelle out to another discussion. But, you know, whether that pesticides or bad food or whatever. But you know, if you're a mouth breather, especially as kid. You don't develop a draw line. You don't develop
a good immune system. There's that's a there's a big cascading of bad if you don't... If you breathe through your mouth. Mostly at night. You that you really want sn. Yeah. And and some people say, hey, my nose is always clogged. I can't breathe through my nose. Like, it's just clogged. That's a byproduct of breathing through your mouth. Right? So you may have heard become a little popular taping your mouth.
So if you tape your mouth and we're talking about, like, a little piece of medical tape, right in the, you know, small piece of medical tape, right, on the center of your lips. And, you... We're not, you know, taking duct tape. Yeah. Right. You wanna. Even though maybe if maybe if you sure out listening in your your partner sn, you maybe wanna do that to him. You know, Let's shut you up.
But no, closing the mouth and breathing in and out through the nose well actually, if you do it and force yourself to do it, it will clear your nasal cavity. So if you feel like your nose is always blocked and you kinda force yourself to breathe in and out your years hills, it will it will start to clear. And we can also taper her mouse shut at night. Because for those of you that wake up in the morning with a dry mouth, you're breathing in and out through your mouth
night. K. And so we sleep for 8 hours a night. So if we can practice breathing in and out for our nose at night, you know, subconsciously with our mouth being taped shut, then that trans... That goes into your day to day life. So it's like a... We can train all night to do that. Alright. And the crazy thing is we take, like, 60000 breaths a day. So even these things we're talking about with breath work and changing your breathing patterns, breathing in and out through the nose.
It might seem like so my you in such a nuance thing to somebody. Oh, how is... What do what do you mean? I need to learn how to brief properties? It's like, This is something you do 60000 times a day. The smallest change can affect your life in such a positive way. Right. So it's like other things you use 60000 times a day at, you know? Maybe take 10000 steps, not 60000? Alright. You know? So what are... Let's give people a couple of action, so you're on launch and your low motivation. You're
you're not you're not feeling it. You'd rather just be down to bed and wake up. Right whatever. Your you're notched out. What what can you do? Yeah. So if we look at this, you're un, your lower you're probably having more firing of your Parasympathetic nervous system. Maybe you're not motivated, but you know you're going on a big flyer, you kind race or, you know, do something like
that. And in that sense, even though we just talked about breathing in and out through the nose, we can use mouth breathing in short stint of training in order to elect a different change in our nervous system. So for that situation, and I could take you through a couple rounds here is we're gonna do... And I wanna preface this that breath work and breathing techniques to be super powerful. And they're meant to be done lying down or if you have a comfortable seat to position.
Never while driving, this this exercise never won't para. I have another 1 that is is fine to do all your flying. Not this 1. And never around the water in the water, driving your car on the chair. They they can be very profound. Okay? So let's just do these in a comfort. Alright, man. But let's take this for example, You're up on launch. You're feeling tired and let. Alright. Step away off launch. Let's go go in the trees, find a find a spot.
Sit down, lie down, close your eyes and you can go ahead and do this cabin. K. And you can do 1 round. You can do 2 rounds. You 3 year rounds, whichever. So in order to help stimulate our sympathetic nervous system, we get more energy. We're gonna breathe at a faster pace in and out through the mouth. K? K? And this is a quick. This is only gonna take a couple minutes, and we're gonna do about 15 to 20 deep breaths in and out for the mouth. K?
The last 1 will take a full breath in, we're gonna hold at the top of the breath. And while you're holding at the top of the breath, you can start to engage the muscles of your pelvis, your lower back, your abdominals, and start to imagine that energy you created while doing the breathing is going out the crown of your head. Okay? K. So esoteric, as it sounds. It's just a good visualization. To go...
If you if you wanna try this at home, again, lying down or see it not driving, doing this please. Go go ahead and close your eyes. Take a nice deep breath fully in. Open up your mouth and let it go. We just take a couple breaths here to settle in fully in. Let it go. Last 1 for year. Let it go. Now we're gonna do 15 deep breaths in and out through the mouth at quicker place moving quite a bit of air. And as we're doing this, imagine you're building energy within your body. K? So here we go.
Inhale. Let it go inhale. Let it go inhale. It go. Inhale. Let it go. Him. Let it go. Him Let it go. Inhale. Let it go Inhale. Let it go. 5 more in here. Let it go in here. Let it go. Him. Let it go. 2 more. Here we go. Him. Let it go. Last 1 full breath in. Hold at the top of the breath, sipping in a little bit more air.
Hold here. Now start to engage the muscles of your pe, your lower back, your abdominals, your middle back, your chest, your upper back, Imagine that energy coming up to the crowd of your head. We're gonna hold for 543 to let it go. That feels so good. I feel so good. So that... I was just 1 round. Maybe that took a couple minutes. Yeah. You you can do another round. In in. So we're really just trying to change our state. Like, if we're in 1 state, and you wanna go a different state.
And it's a it's a tool just shift how we feel. Yeah. How on your own fly. Totally. Yeah. Feels so good. Hopefully y'all do that with us at home, that feels amazing. Okay. So now, you're you're in the sky, it's Lee. It's rough. You're not digging it. But you know, it's this is a good day. You wanna keep flying, you just need to reset in the air. You You're you're you're being forward. We all do this. And and we're tents. We're too hard on the bees.
We're jan things around. We're too we're too hands. There's just too much energy. There's too much there... There's too much noise in the system. Mh. Well what can we do then? Yeah. That's a great question. I think this is super powerful thing that we can we can utilize and coming back to focusing on our breathing. Because when we're, you know, flying in turbulent conditions flying, we take a big collapse, you know, at the end of the day, we're we're
the pilot command. Like, we need to write the ship. K? We need to change and shift our state to more common and clarity. K? And for the most part, the conditions that we're in, depending on your skill level, we can manage it. If we write our mental aspect of it. Mh okay? Whether you're a competition pilot, whether you're newer, I mean, at at some stand be flying in the right conditions. But sometimes shit happens, and we get in the lead and we get a big collapse and
we're like, oh, my god. I wanna go land. Maybe you're flying in the middle of the desert, and it's the middle of the day, you don't wanna go land. Mh, you know? So we need to ride the ship and we need to write the ship as quickly as possible. And so we can do a different breathing technique that utilizes nasal breathing with some mouth breathing. That will help calm our nervous down. So the 1 we just did energized us. Made me feel a little moves a little high. This is to calm down
our nervous system. Okay? So what we're doing, and what I like to call this is called pyramid breathing. So imagine a pyramid triangle. Imagine you're on a big Fa triangle record. Yes. Use triangles. Everybody likes triangles. So what what we're gonna do, we're not gonna close our eyes because we're flying paragraphs. You know, we're still in the mix. But for this example, you you can close your eyes if you're not flying a car driving a car doing like that.
But we're gonna inhale through our nose for 5 seconds, inhale 234, and then we're gonna exhale through our mouth with purse slips. So, like, pretend you're blowing out of a straw. K? For 5 seconds. And then we're gonna hold our breath for 5 seconds. Very short breath. K? And what this does is it helps you focus on your breathing and take your mind off, you know, the fear and the stress or whatever. It's it's it can be very powerful. K? So we'll run through this with you,
Gavin. Yep. If you're listening at home, again, if you're not flying para or you go and close your eyes. And if you're listening to this while flying a para or you need to seek help. Actually, that's really rare rad if you good. If you're doing that. Get on yeah. So go ahead and close your eyes. Again, we're gonna breathe in through our nose, and then we're gonna breathe out through our mouth with purse lips like we're blowing out of a straw, and then we're gonna hold. K. 5 seconds on each.
Let's go ahead and inhale, 234, exhale. 234, hold, 234. Inhale to the nose, 234, exhale to the mouth with purse lips. 234, hold, 234. Inhale for the nose, 234, exhale first lips, flowing out of a straw. 3, 4, hold, 2341 more time, inhale, 234, exhale, 234, hold, 234. Nice full breath in through the nose. Let that go. Lovely. So nice. So what is the... What's the physiology there? What are we doing that's so so much different?
Yeah. So if we breathe in and out for our mouth, it's very stimulating. It's very more sympathetic that's really easy to way to think about it from breathing in and out through my mouth and probably get you have this more, like sympathetic nervous response. When we breathe in and out through our nose, it's more it's more calming. And it and the blowing out of the mouth with the straw has to do it actually activates our... It's called the Vagus nerve. It's our tenth cra
nerve. Have 12:12 cra nerves, nerves. Pretty sure that's right. Studied gross anatomy. There's a long time ago. I'm our tents creating a nervous called our Vagus nerve, and that nerve innovate, and it actually passes through our heart. Kidneys needs use all these different organs within
our body. So if we can stimulate that vagus nerve, which is our trans cra nerve, that innovate to all these different parts of our body and that's how that's how we're able to get a para that response and and calm down. Same thing happens when you go into cold water. And you bring that water up over your shoulders? Is it stimulates that 10? Cra nerve, the vagus nerve and then it helps us relax? So when I take people into cold plunge,
you know, some people... They don't wanna go on the shoulders on my trust me, it's gonna be better if you want the shoulders. Or if you dip your head first, it's it could be... It it it helps calm me down actually. So by doing that breath work and blowing out like you're blowing out of a straw, that's that's stimulating that. So it it... It's not just a mental thing. It's like physiological
calming your system down. And that's why it works, and you can you can feel that or if you tried this with us. And so imagine you're out you're out flying. And you do 2 rounds that in the pyramid breathing in through the nose, about through the mouth, hold. Physiological you are calming now. Mh. And you're taking your mind off the stress or that collapse or whatever. Because at the end of the day, you're up in the sky, you
still gotta deal with this shit. Yep. And what happens is when we have accidents is something happened collapse, then you're nervous, then you're scared, and it's like the... Then it feels like the conditions just got 10 times as strong and then the wind got stronger and it it didn't. That's what happened. You're you're having this mental exercise in your brain, and you're you're scared. Then that's fine. Yeah. You're all get scared.
But scared and fear as part of this sport, but if we can train ourself to manage our fear in real time, then we reduce the amount of incidence is and total accidents, like, extremely fast. Yeah. And if we build this awareness, of ourselves and build this train ourselves to know... Okay. I feel fear coming. As opposed to fear take over. Yeah. So the difference is if you feel the fear coming and you recognize that, then you can go, oh, I feel this is fear. I have this tool to mitigate the fear.
As opposed to this fear came over me. Now my vision narrowing. Now all a sudden I'm at of control. All sudden, I'm trying to come in and land and, like, that tree looks like the only option when there's literally a field over there. There's a field over there. You can go back down when there's a field. And so your vision narrows in your life I have no way out. But at that moment, you gotta be like, you know, take a breath, take a second if you have a second. Which we usually
do. Yeah. Things don't fly that fast. Yeah. And look around. And it'll open up your vision. And so if you train yourself in I'm feeling fear come in. I have a tool to mitigate that as opposed to fears here, I have no fucking idea what's going on anymore. That's gonna save you from you know, packing
it or something worse happening. Yeah. And I think that's what, you know, as you experience you talk about experience, you gain that and you gain that experience and manage your fear and manage the risk. And for new pilots out there, it's like we can change our physiology and experience this re relief from anxiety in a very stressful. Yeah. Environment man. Mean we're pilots we. Yeah. It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. Cold. How does cold fit into all of this?
Yeah. So when we relate back to the Wim hof method, there's 3 pillars. There's breath work. There's cold, and there's mindset. K. So we we touched a little on the breath work. That wasn't Wim hof method the breath work, but that's... You know, it's other breath work that we can practice in the setting. They shouldn't to lining pilots that I think are most effective. Going into the cold water. K. The cold water is an ability and a chance for you to voluntarily go into a stressful situation. K?
So if you wanna get stronger muscles, you go to the gym and lift weights. Makes sense. If you wanna be more resilient, you put yourself in stressful environment voluntarily just like you go to the gym voluntarily and you train that mental muscle. Because guess what, if you go out and your para some shit hits the fan, and you haven't trained your mind to deal with shit hitting the fan in a safe environment. Then batch can happen. Mh. K? So the ice bath it could be different, stimuli. You
can go Asana, whatever. But the... Going into cold water, it's funny. You'll you'll be in the supermarket. You'll I'll see these magazines and say, like, be present, live in the moment, meditate mindfulness, and you're like, for some people, they're, like, yeah. I just close my eyes and I sit there and then it's like, I keep thinking about thoughts and this and this is a. This doesn't work. No mind. But I challenge you to go find cold plunge.
Or freezing body of water. Go get in there and think about your taxes or your problems with your girlfriend or the problems with your kids. Like, I'm didn't boss. It doesn't happen. You're you are you are a hundred percent in the present it because you were... It's like, you kinda go into the survival mode. K? And I would... And if we can train ourselves to go into this survival mode, extreme uncomfortable miss and be able to recognize how our body responds to that.
Then when we are para lighting, and we go into this mode of, like, extreme discomfort falling out of the sky, wind rotor collapses, Then now instead of that being a new situation. Now we're like, oh, I was in that bath. I was stressed out, but I was able to regulate. Oh, I'm in the sky. I'm stressed out. I can't I regulate here. And I and I think you can't. And I think you can and not not every situation, but I... You know, most of the accidents... If you go back and look at them,
it's usually pilot air. You know. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's not gear. Yeah. Yeah. Big gear great. And but it's mostly popular. Yep. And it comes with the experience, but it also comes with the mental capacity to deal with what is in front of you. And so likewise, if you just go jump into cold water, there's a huge physiological response, huge. It's huge. If you take a big whack and you come down. You have a huge physiological
response. The responses aren't different. Our body doesn't know if we're, like, you know, we're having response because we jump in ice water, voluntarily or we have a response because we've started falling out of the sky, but we we can train ourselves... Because there similar responses. So we can train ourself using the coal to deal with that when we're flying. And so it just allows you to be more calm and cool and collected when shit hits the fan.
So again, just think about, you go to the gym to lift weights to train your muscles stronger, We go into the cold water to train our minds to be more resilient under extreme stress. Right. I mean, and is this recreating in a sense who we once were as a as a people was it as humanity as a society. You know, we we are... We've gotten pretty good at surrounding ourselves with not having to deal exactly With... There's plenty of stress, but we're not having
to deal with fight or flight. We're not running from the tigers anymore, you know, we we we create more and more and more stuff to make life easier. And so we've lost that you know, campfire fire. We've lost the we've we've lost the... There's not many things that are gonna eat us or kill us or there's many of things that are gonna kill us slowly. Yeah. Not fast anymore. And so we... We're not you know, these kinds of things jumping in the cold water is very to me primal.
Makes feel alive. Oh, yeah. Makes you feel alive and and quickly. And yeah I know it's a it's a great point when we look at our modern society, You know, if it's if it's too hot in our house, we turn the Ac aco on. If it's too cold, we turned the heat on. Yes. We we didn't used to be able to do that. And now we're we're living in this sense of comfort in this very small, you know, 67 to 70 degrees. They're like this is premium. It's great. Nice warm showers. Yeah. Showers for my wife.
Yet. Exactly. But I I think our modern society has correlated being healthy with being comfortable. Right. And I would I would say, abundant comfort is killings. Yeah. K. It's like, abundant comfort, more food, more relaxation more this. It's it's it's not what our species was developed on our species was, you know, developed.
On scarcity. Exactly. Hunter Gather Caveman, And so while, you know, not many of us would probably desire to go back and live in caves with our early heating source of fire and you know, pounding on our chest and doing that. Somehow, we have to mix in with this with modern society and modern society saying, Here's a comfort. Here's a comfort. Here's a convenience Here's it's convenience. Have this convenience. Have it and you'll be happy in your. And then
we're, like, oh, yeah. Track distracted. Yeah. Yeah. We got all this comfort and convenience, but I feel empty. Yeah. And I don't feel like, full. But I have my car and my para and this and I got everything, I feel empty. Where you feel empty because you're youtube fucking cultural. You. And like, I love comfortable things. I love, but we have to mix with discomfort. Right. We have to voluntary go into comfortable things. We have to go You know, like, you might have that epic. The type 2 fun.
That's like you know, hiking for 30 miles and you have blisters and you're beat up and you're exhausted and you're hungry and blah blah blah. It's like, those are the best memory. Yes. The next days. You're awesome. That's that's did that. That's what we do. You know? It's like, you know, I'm probably your best vacation wasn't that memory of sitting on the beach sipping a mark you know, a margarita.
It was probably like, what you went on a fishing trip, and then the storm hit and this happened in blah, and I was just trying to survive. Yeah. And that's like what it comes down to and, like, when you jump in the cold water, you're really just you're just trying to survive. Yeah. And then you survive the experience. And you're like, like, whoa. I I feel alive. Yes. This is it. It's not all the stuff. It's here. It's in within me. Simple. Yeah. Didn't need anything to do it.
You don't even need a pair shorts. That my my gym recently installed a a cold plunge and I was surprised how the brutal backs off pretty quick. You know, the first few times it's just Oh, god. I hope I can make 30 seconds. And then really quickly, you're going 3 4 minutes, and it's still pretty brutal. Mh. But it's I mean, really quickly, Yeah. The end of the week, you're you're you're you're going for sustained amount of time. Mh. And the getting out feels this it just feels blissful both
ways. The 30 seconds, the 3 minutes. It's just... It you you just... You feel like you accomplish something, Mh. Which is weird. You're just sitting in the cold water, but you've you've come out feeling really in stoked, happy, and, yeah. I survived. I mean yeah It's quite an easy way to, you know, it's cold cold water. I mean, it's the fastest. And it's scary. You when... You know, go do it. Yeah. Oh, this is gonna be brutal. I mean, I've been doing this it's a hack. For...
That's what I'm like, yeah I I've been I've been doing this for 8 years and every time before I go on the cold water, take a cold shower. I like hap... I have this mental talk with myself. It's like... Yeah. Okay. You can do this. You can do this. And it's, like, never really gets that much easier, but you get more used to the ability to do it, and that is building your mental resilience. So that when you have something else happen in your life.
The your boss is yelling at you wife the kids, you got all this stuff instead of, like, oh, I don't wanna deal with this. You're like, Okay. Let's just deal with it. Let's let's go, like, because you build this mental fort to in order to do that. So while you say, you know, very quickly, the it it gets better. It's a little easier. It's because you're building that you're exercising that mental fort 2 muscle. And that's that's why your perception of it
is is easier. Mh So it's it's super powerful, and it only takes a couple minutes. It's like all these things like the breath were, we can go into deeper sessions, but he got 5 minutes. 2 minutes. 1 minute. I don't care I'm like. You know, just focusing on your breath, because when you start to build that ability to recognize subtle changes in differences and, like, have a moment with just yourself,
then you get this, like, new autonomy. Like, well, I'm I'm more in control of my life than I thought, like, I can I can do hard things? I can go on that cold shower. I can go in that cold water or I'm more aware of what's the subtle changes that are happened in my body because I did 1 or 2 minutes of breath work and just kind of focused on myself. And then it's like, oh, when I do that, then I show up as a better person. And then all of a sudden, you know, My wife's not is agitated with me, and
my kids seem happier around me. My flying is improving. Wow life just feels like a little bit nicer. But we often think the answers is outside of us and it's Hip sounds It's like, we're we're right here. Like, we have our own medicine cap. We are our own pharmacy to deal with a lot of the things, But it starts with us. You know, it starts with that, like, self reflection and the ability to
do things you don't necessarily wanna do. For very short spurt of time because there's some stuff we don't wanna do. We can keep putting it off and putting it off and putting, And then at some point it just drags on. Mh. It's, like, it's like, flying on full bar and, like, pulling some break. It's like, so inefficient. And you're pulling and then all... And then it collapses. You know, be bolt too hard on those 2 liners. Yep, you get a collapse. So now you're
spiraling down. And you're like oh, I gotta fix this and you just lost more altitude. And I like the analogy too. The you're dealing with hard stuff that you don't wanna deal with. It's like... Or you're have a negative attitude towards something. Then fly to the fly out of it. You know? Like, when para lighting, we're going on a big cross country flights. We're racing. What do you do when you get into sync? Leap sync. Leave sync to where? A leg left.
Okay. So your day to day life use this as an example, when you feeling crappy or if you're feeling negative, or this, push on some bar and get out of that sink, this this downward trend to the lift. You know, Like, utilize your same principles in para in your day to day life. And whether that is, you know, there's something going on with your kids your wife? Okay. To leave that sync, Go jump up the cold punch. Go do a little bit breath word. Find the lift.
Quick change. Quick change. Yeah. Don't dwell on it. Quick change. Go. Yeah. Yeah. You dwell on it. You just start going down. Right. So... Yeah. Great stuff. Jeremy. Thanks for sharing all this knowledge and your passion for this with with me our community in this community. I really appreciate it's very powerful, and that made me feel nice. Thank you so much for having. Glad I'd be able to do this again and, Yeah. We'll excited for another another couple more days of racing.
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