And if we look at the common issues that we're facing today, stress, anxiety, poor sleep, lack of energy. And so breath has been shown across the board to be one of the most accessible but also impactful means to, to impact emotional through through those channels, feel it all to show up authentically. There's nothing more vulnerable
than showing up authentically. And the strength that then comes with that when you allow yourself to to do that, to not be affected by things in the same way, to have that regulation, to have that kind of understanding of yourself and just be able to continue to in a way that's consistent for for everybody around you. Welcome to the Heroic Man podcast. Today we have Jamie Clements. Jamie is founder of the Breast Space and is I've just coined the breathwork specialist of London.
Jamie, welcome in mate. Thank you for having me mate, it's good good to be here. Good good good lesson. I want to do a short episode on essentially breath work for dummies. Like just to get into the basics of what it is, how it works, how to do it, and how the guys listening to the podcast can get the most out of breath work for sure. So what is breath work? Breath work is an umbrella term, right? So it's a bit of a all-encompassing catch all headline that covers a lot of different bases.
So at its core to any way that we can use our breath to shift our state physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. So spans every aspect of breath and how we can use the breath to impact our mental health, emotional health, physical health, spiritual health, depending how deep down the spectrum and down the rabbit hole we go within that. The way that I used to speak to this work, and it's still very much applies, is sort of through three key pillars.
So we have at one end the real sort of nuts and bolts, the fundamentals of functional breathing, which is how you're breathing right now, how you breathe day-to-day, moment to moment, how you breathe at rest, during sleep, during exercise, that natural habituated pattern of breathing. So that's really the sort of first layer of the pyramid. We then have the role of breath within the nervous system,
nervous system regulation. And really that's about how can we use the breath as a tool, as a protocol to create a shift in the state of your nervous system. And then we have the kind of top of the pyramid or the far end of the spectrum, which is about therapeutic breath work and, and the healing modalities of breath work that we can use to work with subconscious mind, work with trauma and really explore those deeper layers of the psyche in the self.
So there's a lot that kind of falls under the umbrella, but I think if we kind of break it down into those 3 pillars, it makes it just relatively easy to to understand and, and digest and know how, where and why we might apply something. Yeah, yeah. OK. So, so pillar number one is our essentially just our normal breath, right? Why is that important to get right by the way we breathe? So I often kind of speak to it as being similar to posture in the sense that, you know, I know
my posture is not perfect. Your posture may not be perfect either. We can always improve it and to whatever extent we improve it, we'll see knock on benefits across how we feel and the same for functional breathing and how you breathe day-to-day. I supposed to take a step back even before that, is that the average adult breathes anywhere between 20 and 27,000 times every single day.
And so if we're doing anything over 20,000 times a day, you want to be doing it well, you want to be doing it right, You want to be doing it in a way that is supporting how you feel. And for a lot of us now, it's not that we're breathing drastically wrong in a way that's going to lead you to serious health issues there. There are cases of that,
absolutely. But for the majority of us, because of stress, because of air quality, a number of different factors of just modern life, we're breathing either too quickly, too much volume, we're breathing through the mouth. There's these subtle signs of what we call dysfunctional breathing. There are really just holding us back in terms of our overall health.
And so it's really just about the low hanging fruit of can we day-to-day moments, a moment learn to breathe in a way that's going to support us in how we think, feel and operate. Yeah, yeah, because it so example actually when we started this podcast, I noticed that my breathing was a lot faster, right real quick in the way I was talking call it breathe
slowly, talk slowly. I could feel my like my regulation system, my nervous system just getting slower, feel more confident in doing so. So the way that most people, how do most people breathe? I'd say, I guess if we look at ideal optimal versus most commonly non optimal and look at those two as maybe kind of personas of of respiratory health. So we'll start with the, I guess the bad news of the kind of most most frequent signs and we
mentioned a couple there. But I'd say for the majority of people who are breathing in some way dysfunctional, it's going to be upper chest. So in an ideal world, well, we want to be breathing deep using full respiratory capacity. So upper chest potentially even vertical. So as they breathe in shoulders are coming up and it's all very clavicular. So up into the kind of the collar bones and the upper chest, breathing quickly, breathing heavily, breathing noisily.
And really that is and, and then probably the final kind of boss of dysfunctional breathing would be mouth breathing. So breathing through the mouth. So all of those aspects really, really common in in modern life because of some of those factors we mentioned around stress, around air quality, around diet, There's a real kind of broad range of factors as well. And then in terms of optimal, what we're really looking for is
the antithesis of that. So breathing through the nose, nasal breathing super, super important as part of this conversation, breathing slowly, as you mentioned, breathing deeply, leading with the diaphragm and breathing gently. There's this common misconception that a deep breath has to be a big heavy breath, but that's actually going to add more stress, more strains than that to the nervous system, to the respiratory system. And so it's just about can you
slow your breath down? Can you make it more gentle? Can you breathe through the nose? And as you perfectly spoke to, you'll notice even in just a few breaths of doing that intentionally, how your mind, your body, your whole system starts to respond and and settle. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's like it's intentional breathing.
And with, I guess, with this sort of functional breathing conversation, the real magic of the breath at the very fundamental principles is the fact that it can be both unconscious and conscious. We don't want to be thinking about every single breath that we take. But often if we are working on something, we have to start off from a place of being quite conscious and intentional with doing it the right way so that eventually it becomes optimal
unconsciously. And there's a bit of a journey there to go through where we have to go, OK, becoming aware that you're doing it in a way that isn't optimal, working on that to get to a point of ultimately what we might refer to as as mastery, where it's happening without you having to think about it in the most optimal way for you. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's, it's essentially habit building for sure. And if like we just have discussion, you're 31, I'm 37, we've been breathing a certain
way for 30 odd years. It's not going to change overnight. You've got to be so conscious of the way that you breathe. For sure. And it and it's as as you said, kind of most people come into this a little later in life. There's a real ingrained physiological habit that this is kind of psychological and physiological. And so working against that does take a bit of commitment, a bit of time and and that intentional conscious practice on it. Yeah, Yeah, for sure.
So sticking again, just with our with our functional breath, if we're thinking about as you mentioned at the start there the the benefits is, is physical, it's emotional, it's spiritual and so forth. What's the benefits physically? So functional breasts getting that right physical benefits. So we can start really with the respiratory side of things. So if we're breathing through the nose, we're getting a whole range of benefits that come from nasal breathing.
So we're slowing the breath down. We're also filtering and and humidifying the air to be received by the lungs in the best possible state. So actually improving the air quality that we're receiving by breathing through the nose. Within that we also get this release of nasal nitric oxide. So we're lowering blood pressure, improving circulation. And then from a physical side of things, we're looking at things like cardiovascular health. What else? What else are we seeing there?
There can even be impacts around sort of particularly in children, but also in adults kind of formation of the jaw and the facial structure. And so I think the real core benefits from a physical standpoint are going to be around cardiovascular health for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. So physical, cardiovascular. What about emotional?
Emotional is probably where most of the excitement and interest in breath workers come from because we're looking at things like sleep quality, stress, anxiety and that and energy I'd put in there as well. And if we look at the common issues that we're facing today, stress, anxiety, porcelain, lack of energy and so breath has been shown across the board to be one of the most accessible but also impactful means to to impact emotional health through through those channels.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Just being able to regulate your emotions and slow them down. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. OK, what sort of situations? So let's let's think about typical situation. Typical, typical guy. Maybe he's married and he's and he's maybe he runs a business. Typical situations he might face day-to-day, conflict with a loved one, conflict with his children, conflict with a team member. Where does breath fall into? Like helping navigate that?
Yeah, I think it's really around that emotional regulation piece and and I suppose the mechanism beneath emotional regulation, big nervous system regulation and looking at two sides again, so proactive, preventative and sort of reactive responsive ways of using the breath. So the preventative piece I think is the longer term real big win here. It just is going to lead you to a place where actually the level of reactivity that you face in conflict comes down over time.
And so you're less triggered by things that used to trigger. You're less affected by, you know, kid throwing a tantrum. You're less affected by someone at work doing something that rubs you up the wrong way. And actually that space between you feeling that emotion and how you respond to it growing and growing and growing and just feeling much more in control of how you think, feel, but also respond to what's going on
around you. And so that would be where the daily practice of breath work of whether it's 10 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day, however many minutes a day, that consistent daily practice would be just a way to bring your overall level of regulation back into a more balanced place so that you're able to respond from a healthier position. And then in the moment, which is always, you know, we're not ever, I'd say, kind of immune from triggers or immune from
getting rubbed up the wrong way. And so in those moments, using the breath in quite an acute way to go, OK, I can feel myself getting aggravated, getting angry, getting frustrated. What can I do right here, right now to take the edge off of that so that I don't blow up, so that I don't, you know, say something that I'd later regret and just really impulsively react. And so same sort of tools that we would use there in terms of bringing down the level of energy and activation within the
nervous system. So slowing the breath down, extending the Excel, using short simple breath holds, just really kind of fundamental tools and practices that we can start implementing in both that preventive kind of proactive way, but also in the moment. Yeah, I found that for me personally, the breath in the moment when it comes to relationship conversations, conflicts, navigating that and being able to vocalize it says like, and you can't do it in
every situation. Like if you have a fucking conflict at work and you haven't and then you go hang on a minute, mate. Can I just take a breath and then let me and let me get clear and then I'll get back. But actually it's, I think I find like in more in intimate relationships where there's more understanding between the two of you that you both want to navigate it in the right way to be able to say to your partner, give me just needed to see in a minute and I'm just going to breathe.
And then I'll be able to respond in a more effective way. He's fucking super powerful. And I've also found for me as a guy, and I know this with working with men, that we process things over time. We need time. We're like analytical, we're logical beings. And the more time we have to process a response, the better the response is going to be rather than reactive fuck you or whatever comes out initially on a on a reaction.
I'd even go as far as to say like we should be able to in whatever situation if we're if we're in ourselves and really kind of tune into ourselves, be able to say whether it's work conflict, relationship conflict, whatever the conflict. I'm going to call time out here like I'm going to go take a minute and then we can come back to this. Because I think there's just almost particularly, yeah, I'd say kind of man to man in conflict.
There's a, a natural tendency towards reactivity and competitiveness and, and that sort of macho energy that can show up quite quickly and easily for all of us at times. And I think in those moments, it's almost more of a testament to where you can go. I'm going to take the responsibility here to put a pause on this. Otherwise, this is going to go in a way that I, I kind of regret or, or that I don't want it to.
I think there's also a piece relationally, if we're thinking romantic and intimate relationships and and parent kind of father child relationships. Where as a man in those scenarios, there is a, a sense, I'd hope for most men that you do want to provide a, a stable, sturdy, secure kind of base of strength for the people around you. And actually, this goes beyond just your, your home and family life.
This could be anywhere, this could be work as a leader, this could be anything actually, just to be that, that pillar of, of stability for people, certainly something that that I strive to be. And your nervous system, I'd argue, plays more of a role in that than your intellectual
capacity. Without realizing there's like this unspoken dialogue that is going on right now between our nervous systems, between anyone that you encounter, but particularly people close to you because you're attuned to each other. And if you can bring a grounded, stable base to a challenging conversation or an uncomfortable situation for your kids, for your colleagues, for your partner, their nervous systems will will feel that.
And likely you see this most obviously with children as to how much they feed off of the state of a parent's nervous system. And so if you are frantic and hectic and rushed and urgent, your kids going to spin out off of that. And then you go, well, that's why they're spinning out. And you know, what responsibility are you taking for, for your role in that scenario? And it's the same in, in every
one of our interactions. And so I think for, for men, for everybody to be able to regulate yourself is, is such a powerful form of accountability and responsibility to go, I'm going to show up to this scenario in the best way that I can. And that will give me the capacity to handle whatever I'm faced with, even if this person isn't regulated, but also showing up like that gives that person a chance to also regulate. And so it's really just you're taking ownership of that situation.
And that's that's super powerful. Yeah, absolutely. I did see a study last week on intimate relationships. The when you form deep intimate relationships, you begin to sync with each other's nervous systems. So it's like the other person energetically will be able to feel when you're off or your or your your regulation is up in the air and it will also affect theirs too. I think we talk a lot and you know, we've done it in this conversation as well and I'm
glad we touched on both sides. But we talk a lot and the world talks a lot about self regulation. Like you own your share, I'll own my share. Like regulate yourself and everything will be fine. But actually Co regulation, which is what we're talking about here, is equally as important actually. Are you surrounding yourself with people who are also taking
responsibility for themselves? But also in those moments for all of us where we're actually really struggling to regulate ourselves, Have you got someone who you, who can help you with that, who can support you with that?
Whether that's a partner, whether that's a friend, whoever it might be to actually in those moments where you're struggling, help you re regulate and and Co regulate through them feeling stable and then being able to provide that for other people as well when you feel more, more stable. So I think it's a it's much more collective piece than solely an individual piece as well. For sure.
But just going back to what you said a second ago about guys being conscious about regulating that and being like being the leader there for their own, for for themselves, and then helping to lead other people, essentially the the, the arctop of the king, right. But then there's forms, there's the shadow forms of that. Yeah, tyrant and the weakling.
So it's like you can be a king, but you could be an aggressive king where it's just like what you're doing is ultimately for yourself and not for your people.
And that's that good. And I think as I've seen that in leadership myself when I used to work in corporate, there were guys the the managerial positions which were so essentially kings in leadership positions, but would lead through aggression or force, Yeah, rather than lead through actual real leadership, whether side by side with you. Yeah, 100%. It's, it's something that I was writing about a little while ago, this this sort of difference between power over and power with.
And I think that's a really key thing for, for people to think about in leadership and and just in life, which is there's long been this sense that to have influence and to lead. There's this sense of power over whether it's aggression, whether it's fear, whatever it might be, whether it's force is actually
going. The only way I can make someone follow is by by forcing them to. And actually real kind of empathy LED, regulated, balanced, grounded leadership is about power with and it's that that sort of standing side by side with people and using your power to support yourself and others and sort of bring everybody up to, to to your level or to the same level. And I think that's a really subtle but important distinction as well.
Usually, yeah. In doing so, you, you raising your level of consciousness raises other people's levels of consciousness, for sure. Yeah, it's mega powerful. You read the book Power Versus Force. Actually haven't. I think it's on my. Bookshelf it's an incredible book.
It's an incredible book and it and in power versus force, like he talks about the levels, different levels of consciousness that we all go through as human beings and the effects that it can have on your family, your your children, but also your city. And and for nations, it's like someone in a real high state of consciousness, for example, Jesus, right, or Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela, kind of you can affect an entire nation with their level of this, their
essentially their state. And so we, you know, we draw that back into ourselves. Our state can affect hugely our family and our teams and our businesses and the people around us. Absolutely. I always say this to retreat groups on, on retreats that I lead, which on the last day I'll be like, don't underestimate the ripple effect of the work that you're doing on yourself because it can feel when you're in that kind of environment.
You know, people there who are parents who are partners, almost feeling a little bit guilty because it's it's for them, they're here for them. And I go put that to one side because you're not just here for you. And the fact that you're feeling that guilt shows that you're not just here for you because you care deeply about the people in
your life. And actually the only way to show up in the way that you want to for those people is to to do this kind of work for yourself and, and on yourself. And that ripple effective. Even I noticed it when I've come back from experiences that that I've done for, for myself, where it's not just actually my immediate kind of relationships, it's the stranger in this in the shop. It's the, you know, the person that I don't get rage at when
I'm driving on the road. Like it's those subtle things that then ripple out and it's really impactful. And, and that's why, you know, I love this work and, and conversations like this because you, you don't know how far it's going to knock on, even if it's just like a subtle shift in somebody as well. Yeah, absolutely. I say this to a lot of guys actually, and I fell into this, this trap for many, many, many years of putting other people
first. Like put, usually when I put my first business, there's always a team before me. They always got paid before me. It was always, I was just the nice people, pleasing, nice guy, putting most people before myself. And it was when I learned that when I'm great, everyone else around me is fucking great. But only when I'm great. If I'm just good, everyone else around me is OK, That they're OK, right?
It needs to be that we are #1 the self-care for ourselves, our inner growth, our personal development, whatever that looks like. We are #1 and in doing so, everyone else is fucking extraordinary. Yeah. And I think, I think it's, it
can be seasonal as well. You know, I've just been through a period in my own life where I need, I'd fallen into that, that place of, of not putting myself 1st and, and letting a lot of the things that I was doing to take care of myself kind of slide a little bit because I thought I was good. And I found myself in a place where I wasn't feeling particularly good. And I, I've just come out of, you know, six weeks or so of, of really focusing on me.
And, you know, my partner's been incredibly supportive through that. But now that I feel in a much better place, yes, I'm keeping the practices there. They're going to help me stay there.
But I'm then going, OK, well, what can I do to support, you know, and, and help her with herself and just be that, you know, to come back to that at previous point like that pillar of of stability, because I think that is what allows the people around you just to feel safe and secure to then go and do what they need to do for themselves. Absolutely. But you're doing that from shaky grounds. Yeah, your foundations are shocking.
It's like it's it's fucking hard to support other people when inside you're fucking going for your own turmoil. And then resentment kicks in and all sorts kicks in. And then it's like, like we said earlier, the other person can feel that. Yeah, exactly. They know. Especially women. They know. They they know before we fucking know. Deep. Why are you off? How did you freaking know? Yeah. I didn't even know.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think there's I one of the things that I've kind of worked through this year or, or one of the challenges I've faced this faced this year has been a, a sense of feeling a little uncertain in myself in terms of like, what am I doing? Where am I going? Like what's, what's the point of all this? And that's been very like ego LED and kind of surface level.
And I, I noticed actually that if I had that sense of uncertainty within myself, all of a sudden people around me felt less certain because it's contagious. If if you're, as you said, kind of on shaky ground, then people pick up on that and sense that. And so it's really that that move towards can I do the things that I need to do to feel better myself rather than trying to convince somebody that I'm OK or that I'm certain of myself, actually do the work to to build
that within yourself. And then actually it just shifts and it flicks like that for other people as well. Yeah. The thing is the knock on effect, if you think about the knock on effect of not looking after yourself, not looking after your regulation system. So say you're on shaky grounds. Yeah, it then leads to your own uncertainty. You're you don't feel stable in
yourself. Well, the dynamics for that in a relationship, say you're in an intimate relationship with a woman, like one of her core drivers for you will be stability. Like I'm, I'm I want that security in my partner, in my man that he's got that because it's a very masculine trait to have that stability soon as that if that unshakiness is there for it can be there for a short period, sure, But if it's there for a long fucking period, the pole, the polarity in a relationship can change.
And that's where you see the dynamics change and the woman takes more the masculine energy. The man seeps down into more of a feminine energy in the market. And it doesn't work for relationships long term. It just goes back to you guys. You got to pick yourself first. 100% And I think it's that that conscious, empathetic self-care and self work to go, I'm doing this for me, but I'm also doing this for everybody else.
And yeah, just always, always checking back in with that because I do think there are forms of the kind of self development conversation that do verge on selfishness and selfishness in its shadowy form. And I think so it's just really important, I think for everybody just to keep checking in with, you know, maybe you reach a point where you're like, actually, I'm good. I don't need to keep chasing this mystery place of like always improving, always
improving, always improving. Because that's also a surefire way to make sure that you never feel good enough if you're like, oh, I've still got somewhere to be. And we're kind of constantly reaching outside of ourselves for this mythical place that's actually just self acceptance and stillness, actually being like, I'm good, I'm fine. Yeah, there's a valid, there's a fucking valid point, particularly in the self development industry because it
can be very addictive just to keep going. 100%. Keep doing more work, more inner work, the next retreat, the next course, the next program, whatever, whatever, whatever to seek the next level of answer. Well, it's what the industry is built on, right? Yes, you are broken. I've got the solution. Come and pay me. Three steps. It only cost you 997. Exactly. And then you never get an answer. And then it's like, oh, but yeah, if you just sign up to the next thing, then then you might
have the answer. And actually, actually the answer is that there's there's no answer like that. I always try and position my workers supporting people through the process that ultimately is life. And a retreat might form a small journey as part of a bigger journey. But actually really emphasizing the fact that there is no end goal.
Like the end goal, if there is one, is to to lean into self acceptance so that you can just be good with you and have your own back, have other people's back and and just be able to move through life from a place of, of legitimate peace. I think that's that to me feels like the the goal rather than just perpetuating the cycle of you need fixing. Yeah, yeah. Well, selfless, like acceptance
is, it's your authenticity. And yeah, that's what we all crave for, is to just to be truly authentic. RIP off all the fucking masks. Get out. Get rid of it. Yeah, they ourselves. Easier said than done, right? Fucking easier said than done. Yeah, because particularly if our egos have been there for a long, long, long, long time in our 30s. Thirty odd years. I don't want to go.
Yeah, I I've too. I found the, the event that we met at the, the men's event was the workout and the, the breath work in the panel really interesting from that perspective, because I didn't realise I was chatting to my mate Bradley who was there afterwards. I, I hadn't realized how much internal sort of almost prejudice that I held around like male fitness kind of communities. Because it's not really, I'm not
a CrossFit guy. I'm not a, you know, I don't do a lot of group workout stuff in that, in that capacity with with other blokes, particularly jiu jitsu, but it's quite it feels quite different. And I definitely went into expecting a lot more bravado, a lot more kind of mask up, real ego posturing. And by the end of the day, I was like, I couldn't have been more wrong. Like the level of openness, particularly there.
And I think it's massive credit to to Pele who who organized the the thing, the work that he's done in himself and the kind of people that he surrounds himself with. But I was definitely surprised, pleasantly surprised, but surprised at how open, how receptive, how aware those guys
were. And I don't know why I was not expecting it. But for whatever reason, I still had this maybe old view that, you know, if you're a CrossFit bloke or if you're, you know, someone who loves the gym, that there's, there's that the ego might be a bit stronger than perhaps elsewhere. But yeah, I was. I enjoyed being proved wrong for sure. Yeah, I learned the same lesson a few years back. Yeah, Yeah. And I and I learned that.
And my buddy Robert Glover, who wrote, he wrote the book No More Mr. Nice Guy. Oh, yeah, he taught me this. And when he, when he first spoke about it, I didn't quite get it because he was like Pete. The masculine men, we bring love, we give love. The feminine receives it. And, and he was talking to me about it in like big male scenarios. He's like, I love being around loads and loads of guys because there's so much love there.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, I get, I get I can intellectualize that. And when I started to experience it, hosting these big events with lots of guys, I'm like, fucking hell. The whole room is like people drop the egos. The whole room is full of love, really, really giving. And I, and I know for me for many, many years when I was married especially, I was expecting my woman to give the love to, to like bring all the love into the household. That was my just my
expectations. I suppose we've been brought up. But actually, as soon as I learned it was, it was up to me to bring the love. And as soon as I brought that love in, because the the masculine brings he gives, then she would receive and then there'd be fucking in flood. There'd be loads of love throughout the whole household because she would open up, right? And I learned that Same in men's spaces, guys, they give.
Yeah, I think it's, it really speaks for me at least to in spaces like that, how much men want to drop the mask but struggle to until they're given almost a space to do it. But when they are given the space to do, it happens quickly. And then it happens collectively. And everyone's like, it's like a collective sigh of relief, fucking out. Jesus. Like, I can, I can relax. Because I think there is this
pressure. And it's something I think about a lot with Stoicism as a concept and as a philosophy, because I think somewhere along the way it got muddled and we interpreted Stoicism as this like stiff upper lip, non feeling peace. I think it's like cutting yourself off from your feelings rather than actually emotional mastery, which is the capacity to feel it all and still remain relatively balanced and give yourself space to feel, but also hold that and be be strong and,
and stoic within that. And so I think it's this slight legacy of that where we feel a pressure to show up unwaveringly without feeling. And then we end up repressing stuff and repressing stuff and repressing stuff and wondering why we feel so terrible. And so I think it's just actually rewiring and rewriting this concept of, you know,
openness. And, you know, I know people get rubbed up the wrong way by the word vulnerability, but real, real vulnerability of the capacity to feel it all, to show up authentically. There's nothing more vulnerable
than showing up authentically. And the strength that then comes with that when you allow yourself to to do that, to not be affected by things in the same way, to have that regulation, to have that kind of understanding of yourself and just be able to continue to show up in a way that's consistent for everybody around you. 100% talking about regulating and let's go into a little bit how to write for some of the guys, whether they're just starting out or whether they've been
doing it for a little while. Where's the best place to start with beginning breath work? Yeah, I think if we come back to those 3 pillars, the, you know, the most fundamental place to start is, is awareness. So this is about, you know, hopefully through the course of this conversation, there've been a couple of moments where someone's just going, oh, how am I actually breathing? What, what is my breath doing?
And whether it's been 30 years, 40 years, 50 years of never having done that, to do that is quite a powerful first step. And all of a sudden you just realize whether it's when you feel good, whether it's when you feel shit, whether it's when you feel tired, anxious, angry, whatever it might be, how are you breathing? And you just start to notice that. You start just checking in with it more as a bit of a reference point as to how am I feeling?
And often for me, powerful place as well as if I'm not quite sure what's up, if I'm just like, oh, I don't feel my best, but I can't quite put my finger on why. How am I breathing? And just using that as almost your your marker of what is going on for me. Can I come back to myself over and over again and just start, start again? How am I breathing? And so that first piece of just checking in with it, I think is
step one. And then it's starting to implement and integrate very, very simple, but very, very effective ways of shifting your breath. So that could be you take one of those moments where you check in with your breath, could be on the tube, you could be answering emails, you could be in the gym and just starting to slow the breath down, Starting to again, maybe for the first time, consciously, intentionally engage with your breath.
All of those principles of functional breathing, of breathing slowly through the nose, deeply, gently, just starting to gradually slow it down and noticing how that feels, noticing how the body responds, how the mind responds. There are, you know, we could list off technique after technique, but I think those two are probably the starting point. The only thing I'd probably throw in there is as an extra pieces, probably my go to in terms of regulation techniques
of extended exhale. Breathing really simple. I would usually go in through the nose, blow the exhale out of the mouth, make the exhale longer than the inhale. If we make our exhale longer than our inhale, then heart rate starts to slow, nervous system starts to settle, and your whole
body just starts to decompress. And so that one, you know, if people just want like one thing, don't want to overcomplicate it, that would be kind of where I would start people with the awareness, gently slowing your natural breath, extended exhale, breathing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The extended exhale is such an easy one. Just to calm down. Yeah. Just to chill out internally, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's universal. You know, there aren't many people. I'm yet to find a person rather
than saying everybody. I'm yet to find a person in, you know, six years of doing this work who doesn't feel better in whatever form that is more balanced, more calm, less anxious from doing 3 to 50 cycles of that breath. It seems to be the one that scratches most itches, particularly at a time where most of us are struggling with stress and anxiety in some form. Yeah, what about? What about for mental performance and energy enhancement? Focus.
So this is where I guess we're talking about these two levers that we have with the breath within the nervous system, extended Excel very much kind of the brake pedal. And then we've got this other side, which is how do we introduce a level of activation into the nervous system to create energy, to create focus, to create flow. And also if you find yourself feeling a bit sluggish and lethargic and stagnant, like how do you lift yourself out of that
state? And so this is where we'd go with something a bit quicker, a bit more active, a bit more, let's use the term lightly, a bit more aggressive in terms of how we breathe. So something like probably the more extreme end of that spectrum, like the Wim Hof method, sort of super ventilation where it's in and out of the mouth, really starting to build that charge
within your system. But anything around that where you're breathing quicker at more volume, I really like sort of we call like a power breath in through the nose, out of the mouth or just just really starting to create that energy. And then also a really, really kind of universally famous one of box breathing, which is a bit more about balance and focus
rather than energy and focus. So for anyone who's not familiar with their in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four, and that's just going to help to bring you into a really nice kind of centered state. Those little breath holds help to just increase increase clarity and focus in the mind as well. So any of those where we're just starting to build the energy, but also sort of rebalance and refocus as well. Yeah, yeah, what am I?
I said to some of my guys this morning as I'm talking to Jamie, got any questions for him? There's a few that came through, but one of the interesting ones, there's no number of the guys in one of our groups, they have focused on their performance, their mental performance and one of them asked about how to optimize his HIV. Is that is that any? Would you would you suggest anything around that for optimizing that sleep performance?
Yeah, it's an interesting one with with HRV because it's it's so HRV heart rate variability, it's probably our best measurable metric of autonomic nervous system regulation. So all the stuff we talked about about balance and focus and calm. One thing that I would say kind of my right, my real blunt answer to that question would be the more that you've obsessed over your HRV, the worse your HRV is going to become. I, I'm a firm believer that we're too obsessed with our health.
And it's actually what did I write yesterday? No amount of bio hacks will overcome your obsessive stress about your health. And so that's probably the first piece. But if, if we wanted to go right, what, what could you do if you wanted to improve HRV would be a lot of the stuff that we talked about South, typically low HRV is where we're seeing poor autonomic regulation, usually chronic stress, poor sleep, things like that. And so if we wanted to increase HRV, we'd want to move towards
greater regulation. So if you are chronically stressed, anxious, low HRV, then extended exhale, breathing, box breathing, anything that's more balancing a daily practice of 10 to 20 minutes, thirty minutes, 40 minutes, depending how much time you've got. And that built up over time will have a positive knock on effect on HIV.
So it's a helpful metric, but also checking it daily doesn't really tell us much because it's more about the trend of HIV to see what kind of direction you're going in when it comes to overall regulation. Yeah, Yeah, that makes sense. OK, Jay, I'll tell you what, let's one one thing because I'm going to wrap this up and then we'll do another one. Then we'll go a little bit deep on something else. If guys want to find you, where do they go?
Thebreathspace.co.uk and Jamie Clements under score on Instagram. OK, right. And team, we're going to do another one. So TuneIn to the next one.