We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was produced, the Galligle people of the Urination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.

We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was produced, the Galligle people of the Urination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.

It's twenty fifteen and we're in gray, wintery Amsterdam. It's cold outside, but it's even colder in here, the cryotherapy studio, where Johannes Egberts is putting on his hat, gloves and boots. He's here at the suggestion of his brother. He's working in the new health facility alongside a man called whim Hoff. Johannes's brother is desperately attempting to make him feel better.

It's twenty fifteen and we're in gray, wintery Amsterdam. It's cold outside, but it's even colder in here, the cryotherapy studio, where Johannes Egberts is putting on his hat, gloves and boots. He's here at the suggestion of his brother. He's working in the new health facility alongside a man called whim Hoff. Johannes's brother is desperately attempting to make him feel better.

Johannes is at rock bottom.

Johannes is at rock bottom.

He was recently arrested and detained in Sri Lanka, a traumatic experience that also led to the fracture of his relationship at just twenty years old. Johannes can't see a way out. He's been feeling and empty for months. The chamber is minus ninety degrees. He steps in, the rush of adrenaline hits him. Johannes is back in his body. He feels like himself again. Tears rolled down his face, instantly freezing. This is the moment that will change the course of you Hannas's life forever. I'm at Middleton and this is headgame today, one of the world's leading cold therapy experts on the moment that saved him. Johannas, how are you, buddy?

He was recently arrested and detained in Sri Lanka, a traumatic experience that also led to the fracture of his relationship at just twenty years old. Johannes can't see a way out. He's been feeling and empty for months. The chamber is minus ninety degrees. He steps in, the rush of adrenaline hits him. Johannes is back in his body. He feels like himself again. Tears rolled down his face, instantly freezing. This is the moment that will change the course of you Hannas's life forever. I'm at Middleton and this is headgame today, one of the world's leading cold therapy experts on the moment that saved him. Johannas, how are you, buddy?

Oh, very well, I'm very happy to be here with you.

Oh, very well, I'm very happy to be here with you.

May I love your calming, very soothing approach. I'm sort of the opposite. I'm super energetic. I need some of that calming aura and energy so I can stay grounded in my seat. Now tell me your Hannas, what is breath work?

May I love your calming, very soothing approach. I'm sort of the opposite. I'm super energetic. I need some of that calming aura and energy so I can stay grounded in my seat. Now tell me your Hannas, what is breath work?

Breath work so conscious modulation of our respiration and then the role that that has to play in human transformation. And that is a very fancy way of saying any time that you change your breathing in order to change your state of mind, your state of being. So, I mean, it's something that's all this time itself, right. People have always known about the power of the breath, the power that resides in the human respiratory system. But I think really in the last twenty maybe forty years or so, breath work has made its way to the west, and we're seeing this convergence of east and west of old and contemporary of ancient and science and spirituality can sort of meet in this point of the breath. That's how I see it. So the breath is a bit of a bridge, and that's what breath work, I think also is, and I think that's why it's here today. That's the role that it has to play in our society now, is to sort of reconnect us in a certain way. Yeah.

Breath work so conscious modulation of our respiration and then the role that that has to play in human transformation. And that is a very fancy way of saying any time that you change your breathing in order to change your state of mind, your state of being. So, I mean, it's something that's all this time itself, right. People have always known about the power of the breath, the power that resides in the human respiratory system. But I think really in the last twenty maybe forty years or so, breath work has made its way to the west, and we're seeing this convergence of east and west of old and contemporary of ancient and science and spirituality can sort of meet in this point of the breath. That's how I see it. So the breath is a bit of a bridge, and that's what breath work, I think also is, and I think that's why it's here today. That's the role that it has to play in our society now, is to sort of reconnect us in a certain way. Yeah.

Yeah, It's something that we take for granted, don't we, because we subconsciously just breathe in and out, and you know, when we get a bit more tired or a bit more active, we breathe a lot heavier, and we don't think about controlling it because it almost controls itself, so we don't think about it. But when we subconsciously think about our breathing techniques and you know, the oxygen and the air that we're breathing, that's when it really comes into light, isn't it.

Yeah, It's something that we take for granted, don't we, because we subconsciously just breathe in and out, and you know, when we get a bit more tired or a bit more active, we breathe a lot heavier, and we don't think about controlling it because it almost controls itself, so we don't think about it. But when we subconsciously think about our breathing techniques and you know, the oxygen and the air that we're breathing, that's when it really comes into light, isn't it.

One hundred percent? Yeah, I'm actually curious to also talk to you about the career that you've had and the role that breath has had to play in that. But you're spot on with that. This is what makes breath so unique. It's both happening to you moments and moment, but you can also step in and control and so it is one of the only functions, one of the only parts of the autonomic nervous system, if you will, that has a bridge also with the somatic nervous system. In other words, you can consciously control your breathing, but it is also happening to you moments a moment. And I like to say sometimes that your breath is there for either your best friend if you do have control over it, or your worst enemy, because, as you sort of alluded to, in the worst moments, your breath is taken away from you. When when you lose your breath, you are out of control, right and unfortunately the world is breathless today. There's a lot of people walking around with really poor breathing habits. And yeah, it is in that way. It is a little bit like you do not have control over your state of being. The flip side of that is that when you do learn some of these simple techniques, and maybe we get a chance to discuss some of them today, it is literally like someone has given you the remote control to your body, to your nervous system, and you're back in. You're back in the player seat.

One hundred percent? Yeah, I'm actually curious to also talk to you about the career that you've had and the role that breath has had to play in that. But you're spot on with that. This is what makes breath so unique. It's both happening to you moments and moment, but you can also step in and control and so it is one of the only functions, one of the only parts of the autonomic nervous system, if you will, that has a bridge also with the somatic nervous system. In other words, you can consciously control your breathing, but it is also happening to you moments a moment. And I like to say sometimes that your breath is there for either your best friend if you do have control over it, or your worst enemy, because, as you sort of alluded to, in the worst moments, your breath is taken away from you. When when you lose your breath, you are out of control, right and unfortunately the world is breathless today. There's a lot of people walking around with really poor breathing habits. And yeah, it is in that way. It is a little bit like you do not have control over your state of being. The flip side of that is that when you do learn some of these simple techniques, and maybe we get a chance to discuss some of them today, it is literally like someone has given you the remote control to your body, to your nervous system, and you're back in. You're back in the player seat.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, I love that.

Have you always been like this as a youngster or have you learnt you know that this is the way, This is what life is.

Have you always been like this as a youngster or have you learnt you know that this is the way, This is what life is.

The essence of life is truly about, is breathing.

The essence of life is truly about, is breathing.

Yeah, I can say absolutely not, meaning that I was out of control in a really big way, and it started very early. I've traced this back all the way to my first few years right in this kind of game of following back RUMs is to like where did this begin? But you know, life was difficult for me at a young age. I struggled. I struggled to concentrate, I struggled to just be in my body, to be in my experience, and it's always felt like things were hard. Things were harder for me somehow, is how I used to you know, the words I used to speak all the time. And I mean this all came to a head in my teenage years. To give you a picture of being out of control, probably from about you know, thirteen onwards. I couldn't quite be in school anymore, and so that was a difficult thing for me. I basically was set astray right like a ship without a rudder. For a number of years. It was a lot of drugs, and basically that time feels almost like a bit of a black hole to me even thinking back about it now, I don't right up to about sixteen years of age and working menial jobs night shifts, factories, car factory, I did all sorts of things right, just to kind of get by. And at this point I really had this sense of like, what is the point, right you are just a cog in the machine here? I remember showing up to some of these jobs, right, and you're wearing an overall and you have a number on it and people actually call you by your number. I remember things like that and thinking this is this is a low point.

Yeah, I can say absolutely not, meaning that I was out of control in a really big way, and it started very early. I've traced this back all the way to my first few years right in this kind of game of following back RUMs is to like where did this begin? But you know, life was difficult for me at a young age. I struggled. I struggled to concentrate, I struggled to just be in my body, to be in my experience, and it's always felt like things were hard. Things were harder for me somehow, is how I used to you know, the words I used to speak all the time. And I mean this all came to a head in my teenage years. To give you a picture of being out of control, probably from about you know, thirteen onwards. I couldn't quite be in school anymore, and so that was a difficult thing for me. I basically was set astray right like a ship without a rudder. For a number of years. It was a lot of drugs, and basically that time feels almost like a bit of a black hole to me even thinking back about it now, I don't right up to about sixteen years of age and working menial jobs night shifts, factories, car factory, I did all sorts of things right, just to kind of get by. And at this point I really had this sense of like, what is the point, right you are just a cog in the machine here? I remember showing up to some of these jobs, right, and you're wearing an overall and you have a number on it and people actually call you by your number. I remember things like that and thinking this is this is a low point.

I've been there as well. I've been yeah as well.

I've been there as well. I've been yeah as well.

It's drab, isn't it?

It's drab, isn't it?

Yeah?

Yeah?

Gray? And you I've seeing people there that have been doing that. Ah, that possibility of is this going to be me for the next twenty thirty years If I don't figure this out? You know, the consequences of have I missed some of the forks in the road here right then? Am I just now on this track to nowhere? But I did. I did keep searching, and I was quite early to start traveling at that point. So at sixteen I figured out that I could actually go. It was quite an experience, and so I did you know, I kind of roamed around the south of France for a while with a bunch of gypsies. We picked grapes, We went in all different adventures. The coast of Spain. I saw a quite an early age, which was quite an experience, as you can imagine. And then I actually found way to Thailand, and then I spent six months there and that was like a nourishing for the soul. At the time, I worked as an English teacher. I volunteered. I figured that if you work as a volunteer, you can actually travel, you can get a special visa at that age, and that was that was like the light came back into my eyes. You know. There was a real sense of appreciation of belonging, of having purpose, of doing something of value, of meaning. It was a very healthy environment to be in as well with other people my age, you're a little bit older, and and and at that point my mission became how do I write, how do I how do I keep this going? How do I stay on this track?

Gray? And you I've seeing people there that have been doing that. Ah, that possibility of is this going to be me for the next twenty thirty years If I don't figure this out? You know, the consequences of have I missed some of the forks in the road here right then? Am I just now on this track to nowhere? But I did. I did keep searching, and I was quite early to start traveling at that point. So at sixteen I figured out that I could actually go. It was quite an experience, and so I did you know, I kind of roamed around the south of France for a while with a bunch of gypsies. We picked grapes, We went in all different adventures. The coast of Spain. I saw a quite an early age, which was quite an experience, as you can imagine. And then I actually found way to Thailand, and then I spent six months there and that was like a nourishing for the soul. At the time, I worked as an English teacher. I volunteered. I figured that if you work as a volunteer, you can actually travel, you can get a special visa at that age, and that was that was like the light came back into my eyes. You know. There was a real sense of appreciation of belonging, of having purpose, of doing something of value, of meaning. It was a very healthy environment to be in as well with other people my age, you're a little bit older, and and and at that point my mission became how do I write, how do I how do I keep this going? How do I stay on this track?

It sounds like that that Thailand was a place where you could take off all this body arm I sort of get rid of all these masks. Did tile Did you feel like that that was the start of your journey in Thailand where that where all of that could come off and you could just be one hundred percent yourself and then grow, you know, obviously grow and evolve that.

It sounds like that that Thailand was a place where you could take off all this body arm I sort of get rid of all these masks. Did tile Did you feel like that that was the start of your journey in Thailand where that where all of that could come off and you could just be one hundred percent yourself and then grow, you know, obviously grow and evolve that.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. At the time, that was definitely like a crossroad. I remember going out there and sitting on the airplane and just think to myself, nobody is going to know me on the other side of the world, Like I get to decide here, right, And that also is that coming of age moments of course, of you know what, if I am none of these things, and if I'm none of these masks that I've been wearing, I get to play right. And there's such freedom in that to just explore and then to basically craft a new identity or sorts right and crafted around a new set of belief the new set of principles and ideas and values, and to also have that environment feed it back to you. That that was wonderful and that went on for a period of time, which is a really beautiful thing. And then eventually the integration of both of those worlds and that is probably a chapter that I'm only really coming to terms within the last couple of years to go what is really underneath all of this? I spoke to it earlier, following the bread crumbs all the way down to the beginning and figuring out that actually, like all of these parts and all of these masks and all of these pain points, like they all have incredible value, right, and they integrated they become right this this new version. I mean, I'm thirty, right, and so I'm a little bit probably less ahead on the journey as you are, but it is also a really beautiful time. It is also the grade in my bed.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. At the time, that was definitely like a crossroad. I remember going out there and sitting on the airplane and just think to myself, nobody is going to know me on the other side of the world, Like I get to decide here, right, And that also is that coming of age moments of course, of you know what, if I am none of these things, and if I'm none of these masks that I've been wearing, I get to play right. And there's such freedom in that to just explore and then to basically craft a new identity or sorts right and crafted around a new set of belief the new set of principles and ideas and values, and to also have that environment feed it back to you. That that was wonderful and that went on for a period of time, which is a really beautiful thing. And then eventually the integration of both of those worlds and that is probably a chapter that I'm only really coming to terms within the last couple of years to go what is really underneath all of this? I spoke to it earlier, following the bread crumbs all the way down to the beginning and figuring out that actually, like all of these parts and all of these masks and all of these pain points, like they all have incredible value, right, and they integrated they become right this this new version. I mean, I'm thirty, right, and so I'm a little bit probably less ahead on the journey as you are, but it is also a really beautiful time. It is also the grade in my bed.

Yeah, when did you connect this sort of spiritual journey that you were going on with breath work? When did that sort of come into fruition? When did or was that a natural progress into that of self discovery?

Yeah, when did you connect this sort of spiritual journey that you were going on with breath work? When did that sort of come into fruition? When did or was that a natural progress into that of self discovery?

To school it?

To school it?

No, I had to go really low to be open enough to really like try on these practices and things. And when I say really, I was twenty one years of age, right, I spent half a decade at this point essentially running away from myself and running towards something new. Also, as we discussed, but there was a lot of patterns that were building along the way also, and so I just took on way too much. In those first couple of years in Australia.

No, I had to go really low to be open enough to really like try on these practices and things. And when I say really, I was twenty one years of age, right, I spent half a decade at this point essentially running away from myself and running towards something new. Also, as we discussed, but there was a lot of patterns that were building along the way also, and so I just took on way too much. In those first couple of years in Australia.

I.

I.

Wasn't a relationship. I had a number of full time jobs and positions sometimes too at the same time. Right, I was working as a hedchhev in a cafe. I was working as a sculptor. I was making bronze sculptures. An apprenticeship is that. And I was having I was having a great time, but it was it was a lot, right. I was basically living on the precipice of burnout. And in the Netherlands we say this, this thing about the drip that makes the bucket flow over. I had one of those moments, and it is it is not a great story, but me and my partner at the time, I traveled to Sri Lanka to try and repair our relationship and to try and make it work right and safe to say that wasn't succeeding. And really at the lowest moment, something quite tragic happened. She had a tattoo of a Buddhaut. It's quite a quite an odd scenario, but that is not it's not just frowned upon. It as a crime in Sri Lanka and we were aware of that, but we went surfing one day she took off her leggings and it was it was spotted, it was seen, and went en. Shoot. Were seven of the worst days in my life. We were basically assaulted right then and there, and we tried to get away from it, but it erupted into a big confrontation and we were in prisoned. We had much information about what this meant. We found a you know, an article, and there was a lawyer that was presented to us who told us this story about a DJ who had spun at a trans party, spawned like a Buddha's head on one of his sets, right, and he spent nine months in prison in this jail cell and my spiral I went into quite a dissociative state, and the maltreated us quite badly in this prison. The entire village was very upset. I stayed with her the entire time, but I wasn't I was physically there, but I was. I was like I was living behind myself, right, And very quickly this adopted into something out of a movie. You know, we were being sped upon, were they were sort of telling us all these stories, but are you just come to court for one moment and you know tomorrow I will let you go and you just hand in your passport and then you know you have it back. And it was just lives upon lives upon lies, and it turned out very quickly, even the lawyer and things, there's nobody we could trust, right, And then luckily we had I had met this Dutch gentleman on the beach when a couple of days before I played the game of backgammon with him, and he happened to own half the hotels on this side of the island's coast, and so we managed to get into contact with him, and he essentially came to ourselves like you know, one in the morning or something and said, you're coming with me right now. You're speaking to this person. When you get to the airport, you're getting on this bus. You will never ever come back to Sri Lanka. And off we went, and and it was quite it was it was intense.

Wasn't a relationship. I had a number of full time jobs and positions sometimes too at the same time. Right, I was working as a hedchhev in a cafe. I was working as a sculptor. I was making bronze sculptures. An apprenticeship is that. And I was having I was having a great time, but it was it was a lot, right. I was basically living on the precipice of burnout. And in the Netherlands we say this, this thing about the drip that makes the bucket flow over. I had one of those moments, and it is it is not a great story, but me and my partner at the time, I traveled to Sri Lanka to try and repair our relationship and to try and make it work right and safe to say that wasn't succeeding. And really at the lowest moment, something quite tragic happened. She had a tattoo of a Buddhaut. It's quite a quite an odd scenario, but that is not it's not just frowned upon. It as a crime in Sri Lanka and we were aware of that, but we went surfing one day she took off her leggings and it was it was spotted, it was seen, and went en. Shoot. Were seven of the worst days in my life. We were basically assaulted right then and there, and we tried to get away from it, but it erupted into a big confrontation and we were in prisoned. We had much information about what this meant. We found a you know, an article, and there was a lawyer that was presented to us who told us this story about a DJ who had spun at a trans party, spawned like a Buddha's head on one of his sets, right, and he spent nine months in prison in this jail cell and my spiral I went into quite a dissociative state, and the maltreated us quite badly in this prison. The entire village was very upset. I stayed with her the entire time, but I wasn't I was physically there, but I was. I was like I was living behind myself, right, And very quickly this adopted into something out of a movie. You know, we were being sped upon, were they were sort of telling us all these stories, but are you just come to court for one moment and you know tomorrow I will let you go and you just hand in your passport and then you know you have it back. And it was just lives upon lives upon lies, and it turned out very quickly, even the lawyer and things, there's nobody we could trust, right, And then luckily we had I had met this Dutch gentleman on the beach when a couple of days before I played the game of backgammon with him, and he happened to own half the hotels on this side of the island's coast, and so we managed to get into contact with him, and he essentially came to ourselves like you know, one in the morning or something and said, you're coming with me right now. You're speaking to this person. When you get to the airport, you're getting on this bus. You will never ever come back to Sri Lanka. And off we went, and and it was quite it was it was intense.

It's a period of time that you you were.

It's a period of time that you you were.

As close to a week. Yeah yeah, yeah.

As close to a week. Yeah yeah, yeah.

So you go, you go to the beach surfing, thinking that you're going to be back at the hotel, you know, you're figuring things out with your.

So you go, you go to the beach surfing, thinking that you're going to be back at the hotel, you know, you're figuring things out with your.

With your with your partner.

With your with your partner.

You're in a really good place, and then all of a sudden, and I can relate to what you said, then you were you were there physically, psychologically you were just disconnected.

You're in a really good place, and then all of a sudden, and I can relate to what you said, then you were you were there physically, psychologically you were just disconnected.

You were you weren't there.

You were you weren't there.

Does it feel like a bit of a blur psychologically or was it just pure survival in that moment?

Does it feel like a bit of a blur psychologically or was it just pure survival in that moment?

The way I describe it is third person video game. You have a character in the movie from that moment on, but you were far behind yourself. And the moment this was very real was when we landed in Singapore airport. Now to describe the state that we were in, we were so the shoveled that we immediately got arrested again. I thought we had finally gotten to safety, right, so we'd we'd been awake like the whole night at this point, and we got in there and almost wanted to kiss the ground.

The way I describe it is third person video game. You have a character in the movie from that moment on, but you were far behind yourself. And the moment this was very real was when we landed in Singapore airport. Now to describe the state that we were in, we were so the shoveled that we immediately got arrested again. I thought we had finally gotten to safety, right, so we'd we'd been awake like the whole night at this point, and we got in there and almost wanted to kiss the ground.

Right.

Right.

I was like, oh my god, we made it through. And they as soon as we walked into the lobby, they said, please come with us, right, And the reason why is because of how we looked. I mean, my clothes were torn, I were sowed the shovel that they were convinced that we had swallowed drugs. Because of the state that we were in. There were one hundred percent sure, and so they told us later, we were convinced that you guys were smugglers and that you had you know that something had gone wrong, and so we actually were wanting to basically give you guys medical attention. And after we'd explained what had happened, everything was fine. But the moment of that moment when it was like we're safe and then we were not, that was when I just went up to the ceiling. And it was from then on, and this went on for a couple of weeks. It was like I was just looking down upon myself from behind myself, right, and that was the dissociative state. And I recognize this in certain parts of my life that perhaps I was not quite present right. And this is a nervous system function of freeze. We call it right. It's as survival response with the body the sides. I can't fight, I can't fly, I can't quite use my normal survival mechanisms to make my way out of this day. And so the only way that I can make it through is to relegate it to the unconscious and to choose a more less energy intensive form of coping, right, which is this dissociated freeze. And of course it's there to protect you, it's there to survive you. It's a heroic act, is one of my mentors describes it, right, is the body saved the day right there for you. But it doesn't feel like that in the moment. And to cut the story short, right, it went on for a while longer. It was more tragedy, more things. Eventually I tried a number of different things to cope, right. I did a lot of yogay, did a lot of things fasting, you know, float tanks, you name. I read all of the possible audiobooks in the world. I meditated. Eventually I medicated and the stress had gotten so bad that my physical body started to call them come apart. I was diagnosed with all sorts at one point, couldn't really process my food anymore. When big into this isolated state and didn't know how to ask for help, didn't know how to tell people about what had happened. At the point, there was no empathic witness there for me. I went back to the Netherlands after taking the full bottle of medication one night and essentially sleeping almost three nights and that was the lowest point. So I'm there. I hadn't been there in a number of years. My life back overseas in Tetters, there's a heaps of things for me still to resolve. And this is when I was lucky to be taken in by my brother. He worked for the first cryotherapy studio in Amsterdam.

I was like, oh my god, we made it through. And they as soon as we walked into the lobby, they said, please come with us, right, And the reason why is because of how we looked. I mean, my clothes were torn, I were sowed the shovel that they were convinced that we had swallowed drugs. Because of the state that we were in. There were one hundred percent sure, and so they told us later, we were convinced that you guys were smugglers and that you had you know that something had gone wrong, and so we actually were wanting to basically give you guys medical attention. And after we'd explained what had happened, everything was fine. But the moment of that moment when it was like we're safe and then we were not, that was when I just went up to the ceiling. And it was from then on, and this went on for a couple of weeks. It was like I was just looking down upon myself from behind myself, right, and that was the dissociative state. And I recognize this in certain parts of my life that perhaps I was not quite present right. And this is a nervous system function of freeze. We call it right. It's as survival response with the body the sides. I can't fight, I can't fly, I can't quite use my normal survival mechanisms to make my way out of this day. And so the only way that I can make it through is to relegate it to the unconscious and to choose a more less energy intensive form of coping, right, which is this dissociated freeze. And of course it's there to protect you, it's there to survive you. It's a heroic act, is one of my mentors describes it, right, is the body saved the day right there for you. But it doesn't feel like that in the moment. And to cut the story short, right, it went on for a while longer. It was more tragedy, more things. Eventually I tried a number of different things to cope, right. I did a lot of yogay, did a lot of things fasting, you know, float tanks, you name. I read all of the possible audiobooks in the world. I meditated. Eventually I medicated and the stress had gotten so bad that my physical body started to call them come apart. I was diagnosed with all sorts at one point, couldn't really process my food anymore. When big into this isolated state and didn't know how to ask for help, didn't know how to tell people about what had happened. At the point, there was no empathic witness there for me. I went back to the Netherlands after taking the full bottle of medication one night and essentially sleeping almost three nights and that was the lowest point. So I'm there. I hadn't been there in a number of years. My life back overseas in Tetters, there's a heaps of things for me still to resolve. And this is when I was lucky to be taken in by my brother. He worked for the first cryotherapy studio in Amsterdam.

That's that's where the breath work started.

That's that's where the breath work started.

That's where it started because he was connected to a guy got whim Hoff, right, and you've probably he came to play a really big part in my life. For the five years to follow. He became a close friend and mentor. We traveled around the world together. But this first encounter was the most significant one. Right. I remember stepping into that cryotherapy studio for the first time. I wasn't even there again. I was walking behind myself. I flat empty, dejected, but it awoke something in me, right, it cracked some sort of a layer. And then the breathing exercises that we practiced. I was given very little instructions. The only thing they said was don't fucking stop breathing.

That's where it started because he was connected to a guy got whim Hoff, right, and you've probably he came to play a really big part in my life. For the five years to follow. He became a close friend and mentor. We traveled around the world together. But this first encounter was the most significant one. Right. I remember stepping into that cryotherapy studio for the first time. I wasn't even there again. I was walking behind myself. I flat empty, dejected, but it awoke something in me, right, it cracked some sort of a layer. And then the breathing exercises that we practiced. I was given very little instructions. The only thing they said was don't fucking stop breathing.

So is your brother that recognized that you were in a dark, bad place. You you didn't go and ask for help. I suppose he was so connected that he recognized your disconnection. Was that safe to say?

So is your brother that recognized that you were in a dark, bad place. You you didn't go and ask for help. I suppose he was so connected that he recognized your disconnection. Was that safe to say?

Ah, he's an angel. He's been an angel throughout my life. He's the one that when I was driving the forklifts in the middle of the night, he died through my iPod shuffle full of audiobooks by Eckartole and you name it, and always giving me the nudges in the right direction and planting the seeds ready to be picked up for me whenever I was ready. And you're right, he had a ten year meditation practice at this point, and he had a level of connection and it was beyond words. I think again, I could not really express what had happened to me, and I didn't have the words. It was too much, It was too much for me to process. Right. I was dissociating it out of my awareness for a reason, and so I didn't want to go back there. I was in a state of shell shockness almost right.

Ah, he's an angel. He's been an angel throughout my life. He's the one that when I was driving the forklifts in the middle of the night, he died through my iPod shuffle full of audiobooks by Eckartole and you name it, and always giving me the nudges in the right direction and planting the seeds ready to be picked up for me whenever I was ready. And you're right, he had a ten year meditation practice at this point, and he had a level of connection and it was beyond words. I think again, I could not really express what had happened to me, and I didn't have the words. It was too much, It was too much for me to process. Right. I was dissociating it out of my awareness for a reason, and so I didn't want to go back there. I was in a state of shell shockness almost right.

And I love when you said about that first session. Put me in your skin well for that very first moment, because it's such like you said, within thirty minutes, it transformed your life. Just to talk us through how that looked and how it felt, and you know, because it's such a pivotabal point on you being who you are today.

And I love when you said about that first session. Put me in your skin well for that very first moment, because it's such like you said, within thirty minutes, it transformed your life. Just to talk us through how that looked and how it felt, and you know, because it's such a pivotabal point on you being who you are today.

Let's begin with the breath work, and that's where it started. It was very simple, early morning, laid down a few instructions and the process begins. Right, you take deep breaths in and again I was a free diver at this point already, right, I could do yoga, I could drop into the splits right these I had these ideas about myself and about what breathing meant, you know, but this was completely different. Within five minutes of the rapid breathing, I felt my senses come alive, right tingling sensations throughout my fingers and arms, pressure in my chest. It was almost like all the anxiety that had mounted and built was actually intensified first and foremost before it was released. Right. So, but I had this voice in my mind of like, don't fucking stop breathing, and so I did continue to push past. The most remarkable thing happened probably right there about between five to ten minutes into this experience. It was like I'm still looking down from the ceiling upon myself right, and it was almost like we did this thing where you you hold your breath, and you could hold your breath for minutes at a time, and this was really significant for me. It was like a very peaceful place. And then I was like someone put a defibrillator on my soul, on my chest, and I could see myself climb back into my body and I actually remember getting up. I stood up in the middle of the exercise and I was like looking at my fingers and going, I am alive again. And I said, oh my god, you know you've you've healed me. And tears were coming down my face, which is something that had not happened in a long time. And I was sort of laughing at the same time, and I got a very dry stare saying, idiot, laid back down, We'll only just be gone. And then and they were right. And this was this was something that would continue for years where I would continue the breathing exercises in the morning, but towards the end of that experience, I ended in this really serene, peaceful state and in that state where in my physiology my nervous system had somehow been able to complete that truncated survivor. Right, that that energy that had mounted but had been relegated to the unconscious, say, that had somehow been processed. The tears had been cried without much cognition. It wasn't that I was feeling sad or griefing. It was more that the body was able to move through the motions that it couldn't weeks before that. And after that had happened, I could then lay there and in some sense of peace, in at least pure physical comfort, a states of almost floating inside of my body, being extremely present and comfortable, I could see the event's processing before me. I could more clearly see what had happened and how it wasn't my fault and this story if I can't meet the mark and I am a black hole and everything is ruined. It was like the internalization of the negative emotions which had come to be accompanied with the stored survival responses unlocked in the same moment through this one breathing exercise. And I mean, this is the goal of therapy, right, This is this is what people spent years trying to achieve through like a dedicated process of real life safety. And I had no idea about any of this right, And I'm just laying here as a twenty year old going through these breathing exercises and having this really profound awakening. And at the point I was watching myself again, but this time I was watching from a very peaceful place of observation, where I was seeing myself with compassion. I was being the witness that I didn't had in the worst moment. So it was almost like I was now watching myself go through the same motions, but with like a loving attention and like a real compassion and like crying these tears for myself. And all of this took place in like a five minute stillness meditation at the end of a breathing exercise, so safe to say, I opened my eyes and I don't know what it was, and I didn't know how it worked, and nobody could really tell me at the time. I spent a decade figuring out how something so seemingly simple can have such a profun effect. And that's been my journey, you know, in the last ten years, and studying this like all over the world and doing the research and things of that nature, because I was dumbfounded that something like could give me that profound effect. And mind you, I had been trying a lot of other things. So that was the moment and I got up and I had this hope, right, and I had this commitment, this conviction of like I don't care I throw the medication in the bin. I'm going to do this breathing exercise. It also then primed me for that cryotherapy experience, which was next, right, And that was the thing that the breath were cleared out something and the cryotherapy put something back in. Right. It was like standing there. And so to go back to the picture, you have these two freezers, right, there's different ways of doing it, and this was in the Amsterdam Arena, and they had quite an intense way where you walk into a freezer that is about the size of a commercial kitchen freezer, and you stand there for about a minute and it is minus ninety degrees, right, and then a door opens and this this hydrogen myst comes out and you walk into it and in his minus one hundred and thirty degrees and you stand there for about two and a half minutes. And that is the real experience, right. And they've played this silly music of like eye size, and I'm still feeling a little bit, you know, out of it. But something happened where again I actually recall this one moment of like, what's happening. I could feel that there was a frozen tear on my face, right, and so it awoke a part of me, right, It brought me back to my senses in quite a powerful way. And here's the thing about the cold. When you get out of the experience, it really begins, right. You get this rush of endorphins. And in recent years they've discovered that the dopamine releases two hundred and fifty percent of your average numbers for three hours afterwards, and that is a massive mood booster, right, It's one of the biggest ones I know that you can get as a natural hit and natural high. But that is also your neurochemistry, of motivation, of initiating new tasks, and of really you know, we're just a makeup of neurochemistry, right. So to be able to consciously control that, that was what those experience together had done for me. First the breath work and then this this cold exposure on top of it. I was a new man. And the amazing thing about this is really, if you ask me, was that I hardly even spoke to anybody about this that day ended, and I'm still I still didn't quite find the words to sort of tell people what happened. It took me years to actually learn to speak this story out without sort of having that emotional well and and and finding that piece within myself. Right. But I went back to Australia and there was a lot of loose ends for me to tie together, and and I had this new vigor in my step, right, And I think I left the day after this experience. I got back on a plane and I just want to here we go again. We're broke, We're in that, we don't have much going for us right now. I spent I spent a couple of months living in a storage unit. I had a full time job, I had a lot of a lot of stuff to work out. But every morning I did this simple breathing exercise, right, and then I jumped into a cold shower. And it was so remarkable because there was hardly anything else that I did that would normally be you know, if I talk to my therapist now and I explain this process, that would go, oh my god, you know, that's not how you go about it right. And I would actually say the same thing to people if they were coming to me to learn how to practice these things. To make sure that you are increllibly resourced right, make sure that you have a support network, make sure that you have safety around you, make sure that you're grounded. Make sure that you know you don't put too much pressure on myself. But I had burned the boats to a certain extent.

Let's begin with the breath work, and that's where it started. It was very simple, early morning, laid down a few instructions and the process begins. Right, you take deep breaths in and again I was a free diver at this point already, right, I could do yoga, I could drop into the splits right these I had these ideas about myself and about what breathing meant, you know, but this was completely different. Within five minutes of the rapid breathing, I felt my senses come alive, right tingling sensations throughout my fingers and arms, pressure in my chest. It was almost like all the anxiety that had mounted and built was actually intensified first and foremost before it was released. Right. So, but I had this voice in my mind of like, don't fucking stop breathing, and so I did continue to push past. The most remarkable thing happened probably right there about between five to ten minutes into this experience. It was like I'm still looking down from the ceiling upon myself right, and it was almost like we did this thing where you you hold your breath, and you could hold your breath for minutes at a time, and this was really significant for me. It was like a very peaceful place. And then I was like someone put a defibrillator on my soul, on my chest, and I could see myself climb back into my body and I actually remember getting up. I stood up in the middle of the exercise and I was like looking at my fingers and going, I am alive again. And I said, oh my god, you know you've you've healed me. And tears were coming down my face, which is something that had not happened in a long time. And I was sort of laughing at the same time, and I got a very dry stare saying, idiot, laid back down, We'll only just be gone. And then and they were right. And this was this was something that would continue for years where I would continue the breathing exercises in the morning, but towards the end of that experience, I ended in this really serene, peaceful state and in that state where in my physiology my nervous system had somehow been able to complete that truncated survivor. Right, that that energy that had mounted but had been relegated to the unconscious, say, that had somehow been processed. The tears had been cried without much cognition. It wasn't that I was feeling sad or griefing. It was more that the body was able to move through the motions that it couldn't weeks before that. And after that had happened, I could then lay there and in some sense of peace, in at least pure physical comfort, a states of almost floating inside of my body, being extremely present and comfortable, I could see the event's processing before me. I could more clearly see what had happened and how it wasn't my fault and this story if I can't meet the mark and I am a black hole and everything is ruined. It was like the internalization of the negative emotions which had come to be accompanied with the stored survival responses unlocked in the same moment through this one breathing exercise. And I mean, this is the goal of therapy, right, This is this is what people spent years trying to achieve through like a dedicated process of real life safety. And I had no idea about any of this right, And I'm just laying here as a twenty year old going through these breathing exercises and having this really profound awakening. And at the point I was watching myself again, but this time I was watching from a very peaceful place of observation, where I was seeing myself with compassion. I was being the witness that I didn't had in the worst moment. So it was almost like I was now watching myself go through the same motions, but with like a loving attention and like a real compassion and like crying these tears for myself. And all of this took place in like a five minute stillness meditation at the end of a breathing exercise, so safe to say, I opened my eyes and I don't know what it was, and I didn't know how it worked, and nobody could really tell me at the time. I spent a decade figuring out how something so seemingly simple can have such a profun effect. And that's been my journey, you know, in the last ten years, and studying this like all over the world and doing the research and things of that nature, because I was dumbfounded that something like could give me that profound effect. And mind you, I had been trying a lot of other things. So that was the moment and I got up and I had this hope, right, and I had this commitment, this conviction of like I don't care I throw the medication in the bin. I'm going to do this breathing exercise. It also then primed me for that cryotherapy experience, which was next, right, And that was the thing that the breath were cleared out something and the cryotherapy put something back in. Right. It was like standing there. And so to go back to the picture, you have these two freezers, right, there's different ways of doing it, and this was in the Amsterdam Arena, and they had quite an intense way where you walk into a freezer that is about the size of a commercial kitchen freezer, and you stand there for about a minute and it is minus ninety degrees, right, and then a door opens and this this hydrogen myst comes out and you walk into it and in his minus one hundred and thirty degrees and you stand there for about two and a half minutes. And that is the real experience, right. And they've played this silly music of like eye size, and I'm still feeling a little bit, you know, out of it. But something happened where again I actually recall this one moment of like, what's happening. I could feel that there was a frozen tear on my face, right, and so it awoke a part of me, right, It brought me back to my senses in quite a powerful way. And here's the thing about the cold. When you get out of the experience, it really begins, right. You get this rush of endorphins. And in recent years they've discovered that the dopamine releases two hundred and fifty percent of your average numbers for three hours afterwards, and that is a massive mood booster, right, It's one of the biggest ones I know that you can get as a natural hit and natural high. But that is also your neurochemistry, of motivation, of initiating new tasks, and of really you know, we're just a makeup of neurochemistry, right. So to be able to consciously control that, that was what those experience together had done for me. First the breath work and then this this cold exposure on top of it. I was a new man. And the amazing thing about this is really, if you ask me, was that I hardly even spoke to anybody about this that day ended, and I'm still I still didn't quite find the words to sort of tell people what happened. It took me years to actually learn to speak this story out without sort of having that emotional well and and and finding that piece within myself. Right. But I went back to Australia and there was a lot of loose ends for me to tie together, and and I had this new vigor in my step, right, And I think I left the day after this experience. I got back on a plane and I just want to here we go again. We're broke, We're in that, we don't have much going for us right now. I spent I spent a couple of months living in a storage unit. I had a full time job, I had a lot of a lot of stuff to work out. But every morning I did this simple breathing exercise, right, and then I jumped into a cold shower. And it was so remarkable because there was hardly anything else that I did that would normally be you know, if I talk to my therapist now and I explain this process, that would go, oh my god, you know, that's not how you go about it right. And I would actually say the same thing to people if they were coming to me to learn how to practice these things. To make sure that you are increllibly resourced right, make sure that you have a support network, make sure that you have safety around you, make sure that you're grounded. Make sure that you know you don't put too much pressure on myself. But I had burned the boats to a certain extent.

But you'd always done that. It sounds like that you've always done that to Johannah, that you've always gone out there. You know, you always dived in the deep end and figured it out. You know, are you're either tread water or you'd you know, you'd start to swim, get somewhere and you'd start to go down.

But you'd always done that. It sounds like that you've always done that to Johannah, that you've always gone out there. You know, you always dived in the deep end and figured it out. You know, are you're either tread water or you'd you know, you'd start to swim, get somewhere and you'd start to go down.

You know.

You know.

Talk about a motivation to keep on going and a purpose to to to keep on moving forward. And I love that in your story. So you mentioned the natural highs. So the natural highs for you is the breathing. And then you went onto the onto the onto the cryo therapy. How important is it to get cryotherapy right? You know you mentioned there roughly that you you jumped in the deep end to figure it out. But it's important that those things are done in the controlled manner, and you're lucky enough to have sort of wim Hoff and your brother as mentors, so you know you're you're getting it, you know. But how important is it is it to to really break this process down? And because it's a lifelong process, right, it doesn't doesn't really stop.

Talk about a motivation to keep on going and a purpose to to to keep on moving forward. And I love that in your story. So you mentioned the natural highs. So the natural highs for you is the breathing. And then you went onto the onto the onto the cryo therapy. How important is it to get cryotherapy right? You know you mentioned there roughly that you you jumped in the deep end to figure it out. But it's important that those things are done in the controlled manner, and you're lucky enough to have sort of wim Hoff and your brother as mentors, so you know you're you're getting it, you know. But how important is it is it to to really break this process down? And because it's a lifelong process, right, it doesn't doesn't really stop.

One hundred percent. And it's shown up to me in so many different ways over the years, and I've experimented with it from myself, and I have also spent time with someone like wim Hoff and you know, done things like climb the mountain without the shorts. We used to do these expeditions we still do actually where we take people into these extreme environments and there's some amazing lessons to be learned in these peak experiences, right, And so I would categorize it in that nature is the daily thing is probably what makes the biggest impact. Sometimes we need the peak experience to get us to the starting line, right. We need something that shakes us out of our routine, out of our rut and brings that aliveness back in.

One hundred percent. And it's shown up to me in so many different ways over the years, and I've experimented with it from myself, and I have also spent time with someone like wim Hoff and you know, done things like climb the mountain without the shorts. We used to do these expeditions we still do actually where we take people into these extreme environments and there's some amazing lessons to be learned in these peak experiences, right, And so I would categorize it in that nature is the daily thing is probably what makes the biggest impact. Sometimes we need the peak experience to get us to the starting line, right. We need something that shakes us out of our routine, out of our rut and brings that aliveness back in.

Right.

Right.

We need to go where we feel most alive. But then the question, of course is for the everyday person is like, how do you actually translate that into every day living with you know, ten fifteen percent more focus, more happiness, more energy, And these are the real things that move the need a ultimately, And so for me, the cold showers are a wonderful place to start. And what I'm trying to say here is you don't need to go to the extreme to reap the reward, right, It's very good to become inspired. I was very inspired by some of the things that I was seeing out there at the time, but I've had to unlearn a lot of that over the years to really figure out how do I actually create lasting, sustainable, positive impact on myself and the people I work with, right without sort of blowing the kennel on both ends and things like that.

We need to go where we feel most alive. But then the question, of course is for the everyday person is like, how do you actually translate that into every day living with you know, ten fifteen percent more focus, more happiness, more energy, And these are the real things that move the need a ultimately, And so for me, the cold showers are a wonderful place to start. And what I'm trying to say here is you don't need to go to the extreme to reap the reward, right, It's very good to become inspired. I was very inspired by some of the things that I was seeing out there at the time, but I've had to unlearn a lot of that over the years to really figure out how do I actually create lasting, sustainable, positive impact on myself and the people I work with, right without sort of blowing the kennel on both ends and things like that.

And so.

And so.

Look, it's become very commercially available today as well, the ice bathing, which is super powerful. We started a bit of a revolution in Australia with people doing it on the beach every morning and organizing these community type events, and that is really a wonderful thing if you can find yourself a weekly opportunity to do an I spot and the science has actually shown that you only need to do it for about two minutes as well. In fact, from about three minutes to five minutes onwards, there's a potential for diminishing returns. Oh really, So again, if we want to harness the natural high and the positive energy, yeah, it's actually important that we do it in a really sustainable way. Then maybe you challenge yourself every now and then. But I say to people, if you can have a cold shower every day right without negotiation, that is such a wonderful place to begin, you know, if you can turn that and you reckon two minutes, yeah, so you know, and if you need to build up, so we often say begin with thirty seconds at the end. To be totally honest, I found that the less you negotiate, the better. And so just learning to spend about a week crossing that initial hurdle and yeah, just get right on there that just step into it full force and learn to control your breath in that situation, and you're gain so much more from that than very like dipping the toe in the water, is my experience, this is training ground for your breath, right, which is really potent and powerful. And so learning to control your breath is such a powerful thing. And if you give yourself that stimulus to learn to like if you intentionally take your breath away, like life will on different points, you now are teaching yourself to also control it in the moment that it is out of your control. Nasal breathing is a really key skill here. You would know about this right from the performance elements, and nasal breathing has incredible benefits for human health, and one of the key factors is for emotional and nervous system regulation. Your nasal breathing is signaling to your body that you're in a state of safety. Another thing that can do that, which is a way to trick the brain into a state of relaxation. It's a bit of an evolutionary Bypolse is that your brain spies on your breathing, and so if you start breathing in a manner of relaxation, your brain starts to believe that you are in a manner of relaxation, regardless of what it is perceiving on the outside. And that's by lengthening your exhalations. So if you can breathe in through your nose and have a really slow, long exl through your mouth to begin with maybe blowing out a candle or through a stroll. That is a really good tech. Need to start in an overtime learning to count. We found that a one two breath, which is an in hell for about three seconds or four seconds and an exl for double the time, about six or eight is a really powerful technique that you can do anywhere, anytime. And if you reinforce this in a place like a cold shower or an eye bath, or you know, a difficult interview or really like whatever it is you're learning, you're teaching your system to stay you know, in the driver's seat in those situations. Even usually you can extend it further then and really learn that breath control and learn to I mean the breath is. There are no ends to this, right, I'm only ten years into this practice, and these tools are very real, and they're very tangible, and you can do it on your own. They're relatively free. You can find a good instructor. Yeah, yeah, and so do it on your freeman. It's the air that you breathe. It's your God given right and you know, back to the original discussion, it is also your connection with mother nature. It is the thing that will bridge your head on your heart and ultimately right the trees are exhaling all the carbon dioxide and they're taking the air that we breathe out and recycling it back to us. And I think even that gentle reminder of like, wow, you know I am one with nature in this moment. If I connect to my breath in a conscious way, is it can shift any thought into a more positive one, right, It can shift any state into a more optimalm one.

Look, it's become very commercially available today as well, the ice bathing, which is super powerful. We started a bit of a revolution in Australia with people doing it on the beach every morning and organizing these community type events, and that is really a wonderful thing if you can find yourself a weekly opportunity to do an I spot and the science has actually shown that you only need to do it for about two minutes as well. In fact, from about three minutes to five minutes onwards, there's a potential for diminishing returns. Oh really, So again, if we want to harness the natural high and the positive energy, yeah, it's actually important that we do it in a really sustainable way. Then maybe you challenge yourself every now and then. But I say to people, if you can have a cold shower every day right without negotiation, that is such a wonderful place to begin, you know, if you can turn that and you reckon two minutes, yeah, so you know, and if you need to build up, so we often say begin with thirty seconds at the end. To be totally honest, I found that the less you negotiate, the better. And so just learning to spend about a week crossing that initial hurdle and yeah, just get right on there that just step into it full force and learn to control your breath in that situation, and you're gain so much more from that than very like dipping the toe in the water, is my experience, this is training ground for your breath, right, which is really potent and powerful. And so learning to control your breath is such a powerful thing. And if you give yourself that stimulus to learn to like if you intentionally take your breath away, like life will on different points, you now are teaching yourself to also control it in the moment that it is out of your control. Nasal breathing is a really key skill here. You would know about this right from the performance elements, and nasal breathing has incredible benefits for human health, and one of the key factors is for emotional and nervous system regulation. Your nasal breathing is signaling to your body that you're in a state of safety. Another thing that can do that, which is a way to trick the brain into a state of relaxation. It's a bit of an evolutionary Bypolse is that your brain spies on your breathing, and so if you start breathing in a manner of relaxation, your brain starts to believe that you are in a manner of relaxation, regardless of what it is perceiving on the outside. And that's by lengthening your exhalations. So if you can breathe in through your nose and have a really slow, long exl through your mouth to begin with maybe blowing out a candle or through a stroll. That is a really good tech. Need to start in an overtime learning to count. We found that a one two breath, which is an in hell for about three seconds or four seconds and an exl for double the time, about six or eight is a really powerful technique that you can do anywhere, anytime. And if you reinforce this in a place like a cold shower or an eye bath, or you know, a difficult interview or really like whatever it is you're learning, you're teaching your system to stay you know, in the driver's seat in those situations. Even usually you can extend it further then and really learn that breath control and learn to I mean the breath is. There are no ends to this, right, I'm only ten years into this practice, and these tools are very real, and they're very tangible, and you can do it on your own. They're relatively free. You can find a good instructor. Yeah, yeah, and so do it on your freeman. It's the air that you breathe. It's your God given right and you know, back to the original discussion, it is also your connection with mother nature. It is the thing that will bridge your head on your heart and ultimately right the trees are exhaling all the carbon dioxide and they're taking the air that we breathe out and recycling it back to us. And I think even that gentle reminder of like, wow, you know I am one with nature in this moment. If I connect to my breath in a conscious way, is it can shift any thought into a more positive one, right, It can shift any state into a more optimalm one.

And you mentioned that when you know, this sort of epiphany happened when you realize that you were, you know, controlling your breathing, you're doing the choo therapy stuff. How did that change your life and what did you go on to achieve after Whether that was you know, connecting with the pelino, how did that, how did that change your journey moving forward?

And you mentioned that when you know, this sort of epiphany happened when you realize that you were, you know, controlling your breathing, you're doing the choo therapy stuff. How did that change your life and what did you go on to achieve after Whether that was you know, connecting with the pelino, how did that, how did that change your journey moving forward?

Yeah, look, I won't lie. I think in the first couple of years there was an element of it bolstering my bravado. Right as soon as I got my life back on track and the breathing was giving me this amazing like it was almost like I was stepping into a source that everybody should have had as to this. You know, here I am and the disease that I had encountered him my God went away without me taking any type of medication or intervention. That was the thing that really blew my mind. My concentration started to significantly improve to the point where I could now execute tasket. It seemed insurmountable for me beforehand with little effort, right, and I started to get this natural energy, this natural high, and you know, and then it was of course I started to learn from wim Hoff. I traveled over the world to learn from him. Eventually we worked with him, and that went very quick. Within six months of me being an instructor, we stood on stage in Sydney in front of a thousand people and here I am banging my chest without my shirt on and getting people to breathe. And this was the energy of whim right. And it was like that energy that had been stifled for so long had now been given a channel, right, and the world was listening. Breath work became incredibly popular. Women's largely to thank for that in this time, but I wrote the wave of it, you know, and there was a lot of you know, we did hundreds of workshops. I traveled all around the country to teach people, and people were listening, you know. Eventually we have a retreat center now in the snowy mountains. I know that you're familiar with dairy as well. I know back in twenty nineteen twenty you were there, when I was also there, we would have almost crossed baths, and so yeah, we started to train people how to use these methods, and again, like the world was listening, you know. And we now have clients and major corporations. We teach at government level, and we have brought this into high schools and primary schools and so it's become a really wonderful, wonderful field of work. And the breath work today is what I am most passionate about. We've published two research papers now and we've got two more in the making. In the process and the research that we're doing and that is happening around the world is almost revolutionizing our understanding of what well being actually means. And we're using a lot of different language. It's now physiology is becoming more important than psychology. People are starting to recognize that, hey, wait, if I can actually learn to listen and read the state of my body, that is a bottom up form of processing that can bypass the level of cognition. And it's almost a shortcut to improving my well being and my state of being in that sense, and also in the research we found just the state of the world. So one of the statistics was that since the pandemic, it was already sky high before that, anxiety levels are up by about thirty percent and they're only rising right, and the traditional forms of treatment are falling short. So when people do seek help for their mental health, very much like myself, there's three mainstay forms of treatment available to them.

Yeah, look, I won't lie. I think in the first couple of years there was an element of it bolstering my bravado. Right as soon as I got my life back on track and the breathing was giving me this amazing like it was almost like I was stepping into a source that everybody should have had as to this. You know, here I am and the disease that I had encountered him my God went away without me taking any type of medication or intervention. That was the thing that really blew my mind. My concentration started to significantly improve to the point where I could now execute tasket. It seemed insurmountable for me beforehand with little effort, right, and I started to get this natural energy, this natural high, and you know, and then it was of course I started to learn from wim Hoff. I traveled over the world to learn from him. Eventually we worked with him, and that went very quick. Within six months of me being an instructor, we stood on stage in Sydney in front of a thousand people and here I am banging my chest without my shirt on and getting people to breathe. And this was the energy of whim right. And it was like that energy that had been stifled for so long had now been given a channel, right, and the world was listening. Breath work became incredibly popular. Women's largely to thank for that in this time, but I wrote the wave of it, you know, and there was a lot of you know, we did hundreds of workshops. I traveled all around the country to teach people, and people were listening, you know. Eventually we have a retreat center now in the snowy mountains. I know that you're familiar with dairy as well. I know back in twenty nineteen twenty you were there, when I was also there, we would have almost crossed baths, and so yeah, we started to train people how to use these methods, and again, like the world was listening, you know. And we now have clients and major corporations. We teach at government level, and we have brought this into high schools and primary schools and so it's become a really wonderful, wonderful field of work. And the breath work today is what I am most passionate about. We've published two research papers now and we've got two more in the making. In the process and the research that we're doing and that is happening around the world is almost revolutionizing our understanding of what well being actually means. And we're using a lot of different language. It's now physiology is becoming more important than psychology. People are starting to recognize that, hey, wait, if I can actually learn to listen and read the state of my body, that is a bottom up form of processing that can bypass the level of cognition. And it's almost a shortcut to improving my well being and my state of being in that sense, and also in the research we found just the state of the world. So one of the statistics was that since the pandemic, it was already sky high before that, anxiety levels are up by about thirty percent and they're only rising right, and the traditional forms of treatment are falling short. So when people do seek help for their mental health, very much like myself, there's three mainstay forms of treatment available to them.

Right.

Right.

There's psychotherapy often mixed with drug therapy, which is medication, and then there's cognitive behavioral therapy, which has become fully integrated into clinical care in the last ten years. Only ten to twenty percent of people that seek help for things like depression, anxiety, the list goes on, are finding that their needs are met, and a lot of those people, we've got eighty to ninety percent of them simply falling through the cracks like myself. Also, and this is where we believe in our sort of hypothesis, is that breath has a significant role to play here. It is easily scalable, right, you can teach it to them asses. We've got a research project with Macquarie UNI at the moment where we've gone one step further and we've gone can a simple breathing recording?

There's psychotherapy often mixed with drug therapy, which is medication, and then there's cognitive behavioral therapy, which has become fully integrated into clinical care in the last ten years. Only ten to twenty percent of people that seek help for things like depression, anxiety, the list goes on, are finding that their needs are met, and a lot of those people, we've got eighty to ninety percent of them simply falling through the cracks like myself. Also, and this is where we believe in our sort of hypothesis, is that breath has a significant role to play here. It is easily scalable, right, you can teach it to them asses. We've got a research project with Macquarie UNI at the moment where we've gone one step further and we've gone can a simple breathing recording?

Right?

Right?

I do not even need to be there to teach you. It's simply a track of half an hour similar to the experience that I went through that thousands of people are going to listen to without any idea of what breathwork is. Will they have similar experience? Meaning can we even remove the element of that There's almost no cost here. It's incredibly scalable, it's incredibly effective, it works in a really short space of time, and I find personally it's incredibly empowering. And this is my honest opinion is this is for everybody. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea the way that it is often delivered, but there is a way that everybody can benefit from a conscious form of breathing. And again that lights me up to think about how do we translate this to people in corporations, to you know, high performers, first responders, to school.

I do not even need to be there to teach you. It's simply a track of half an hour similar to the experience that I went through that thousands of people are going to listen to without any idea of what breathwork is. Will they have similar experience? Meaning can we even remove the element of that There's almost no cost here. It's incredibly scalable, it's incredibly effective, it works in a really short space of time, and I find personally it's incredibly empowering. And this is my honest opinion is this is for everybody. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea the way that it is often delivered, but there is a way that everybody can benefit from a conscious form of breathing. And again that lights me up to think about how do we translate this to people in corporations, to you know, high performers, first responders, to school.

Teacher, everyone the thing about it to bet if you want to better your life and better you too, it's like everybody. This fits the human race, right, let's call it what it is and you've got you're the founder of Breathless Expeditions. Just talk to me about that and how we can jump on board with yourself. Yeah.

Teacher, everyone the thing about it to bet if you want to better your life and better you too, it's like everybody. This fits the human race, right, let's call it what it is and you've got you're the founder of Breathless Expeditions. Just talk to me about that and how we can jump on board with yourself. Yeah.

Absolutely, and this is you know, this has been the beautiful project really the last eight years or so since starting, and we essentially open the retreat center and also a training center, and we run trips around the world. So we do free diving expeditions to some of the most beautiful places in the world where people learn how to use their breath and how to scale the debts. We do mountain expeditions where we take people into these extreme environments and it's not only for extreme sports though, in fact, most of the people that we get are not usually interested in that type of thing, but are looking for a challenge that they can learn to surmount right to climb that inner peak, if you will. And then the training and the corporate work. What we do is what I'm very passionate about and what I had and so essentially it's a breath for company. We're currently we trent five ninred instructors in these methods and we're helping to scale that quite rapidly worldwide to really make this work available to anyone anywhere and really lift the standard of education in this field as well. And that is a big journey to be on because it is still new. It's a very new space. People have lots of different opinions about what breathing exercises mean, how it should work. There's still a lot of work to be done before this is fully integrated into things like clinical care. But we're working on that very hard at the moment, and I think some of the research that we do is incredibly exciting.