Ed Harrold and Martin McPhilimey discuss breathing protocols within a broader conversation about stress-related health and daily resilience.
Ed Harrold with Martin McPhilimey. Originally published on YouTube July 14, 2021. Watch the original conversation on YouTube.
Ed Harrold and Martin McPhilimey discuss breathing protocols within a broader conversation about stress-related health and daily resilience.
00:04.9 Hello again, friends. Ed Harold here, your fearless leader. Welcome to another great edition of our Life with Breath Expert series. Hello again, friends. We have an amazing guest for you this week, and he's doing transformational work. And we're so excited to have Martin McFillmee with us. But before we get into the meat and bones of what we're gonna drop into today, let's just take a couple minutes for ourselves and do a little controlled breathing, a little guided meditation, and see if we can get centered and grounded so we can hear this information with every cell in our body, not just our ears. So if you can sit up tall, plant your feet firmly down onto Mother Earth, and
01:16.2 then hinge forward like you're going to stand up, and press down through your thighs. But don't stand up. Now hinge the spine back to its neutral position and see if the brain enjoys that neutral spine, not leaning forward, not leaning back. Take a moment to roll those shoulder blades up back and down a couple rounds, and just open up the top of the lungs, the trunk of the neck, the front of the throat. Open up that deltoid. Crack open that amazing human heart. And then hold those shoulder blades back and down. Close the scapula and feel the sternum open with the feet pressed down. Bring your awareness to your face and let your eyes rest back in the sockets.
02:02.8 Release and relax your low jaw, and allow your tongue to rest on the upper palate. Become aware of your breath and begin to slow it down and breathe in and out through your nose. Letting go of all external distractions and tuning your awareness to the felt sense of the rise and fall of energy of each in and out breath that we take every moment of our life on Earth. Try to stretch a little more air in and out without straining, and notice how that makes you feel. Working these inspiratory and expiratory muscles, opening up lung tissue. And then if you wish, you can shift your awareness to your throat behind your vocal cords.
03:19.9 You'll find a piece of cartilage there called the epiglottis at the top of your trachea. And if you can contract that while you're breathing, you'll hear the ocean off in the distance as if you're holding a seashell to your ear, and this helps stabilize the mind, relax the body. This ocean sound allows us to take less breaths per minute, strengthening cardiovascular function, optimizing neurochemistry, kick-starting fat metabolism as our primary fuel source in the body so we're becoming more efficient. And then let's hold the breath in and out for two or three seconds after the inhale is complete and after the exhale is complete. And during those holdings, see if you can create a little gap in your mind where the pictures
04:36.1 stop or the words stop, and you can enter a gap in your mind. Slow-motion breathing, brief retentions, sitting up tall in your mind's eye and ear. And start to eavesdrop on that deeper conversation that we all need to have with ourselves on a daily basis. If you wish to hold in or out a little longer, it's okay, but just don't rush the inhale and don't rush your exhale. Ocean sound in the throat, nostril, diaphragmatic breathing. Feel your energy body and your emotional and mental awareness refining itself, purifying itself as you become lighter inside a human body. Just another minute or so. Sense yourself doing your finest work.
06:11.9 And when you feel ready, release any control of the breath and let the body breathe on its own based on the wisdom of your autonomic nervous system. And when you feel ready to leave the meditation, just gently open your eyes and relax. And Martin and I are gonna begin. Welcome. Thank you. Today's guest, Martin and I are gonna discuss chronic disease conditions such as cardiovascular issues, diabetes, hypertension, and anxiety, and how we can utilize breath as a non-pharmacological means to manage these issues and the human physiology in general. Super excited. Now, here's who we have with us this week, everyone. Martin McPhilamy is an international accredited respiratory and sleep scientist with more than 10 years of clinical experience.
08:04.4 Having worked with thousands of individuals to improve their health and wellbeing, he now offers life coaching services for growth-minded individuals looking to enhance their wellbeing, finding their purpose, and achieve their life's goals. With specific focus on stress relief and anxiety management, Martin's coaching programs are designed to help you achieve your highest performance in any areas of your life. He teaches behavioral habits, tools, and practices that support people to live a more stress-free and focused lifestyle while minimizing the risk and burdens, uh, such as anxiety, burnout, and chronic disease. With a background in exercise physiology and years of practice in the health industry, Martin combines his knowledge and experience by using the latest evidence-based
08:58.7 and practical principles to maintain a high level of perform- performance with a healthy mind and a healthy body. His services include one-on-one mindfulness coaching, breathwork, sleep management, athletic recovery. Martin offers tailored mentorship programs for clients who wish to complete change of lifestyle and improve their mindset and achieve emotional transferta- transformation. And you can get Martin at www.performancethroughhealth.com, or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/performancethroughhealth, or Facebook, www.facebook.com/performancethroughhealth, or on YouTube. He's got an amazing YouTube channel with a lot of information on there that can change your life in seconds, and you can get out of your own way and smile and strive for more. So welcome, Martin. Ed, thank you very much for that introduction.
10:04.8 That's, uh, that's very kind of you. And the, the meditation was very grounding as well. I actually really enjoyed that to, to get up this first thing this morning to talk to you, so I appreciate that. So where are you on the planet right now? I am over in Perth, in Western Australia. It's, uh, just gone past 5:00 AM. It's still dark here, and it's actually cold. We don't get the cold that much in this, this part of the world, but, uh, yeah, we're, we're down to about five or six degrees at the moment. How'd you ever end up in Perth, Australia? Oh, look, I'm originally born in a place called Coventry over in the UK, in England.
10:39.4 Yeah. Um, but I've always wanted to live in Australia. So I'm, I'm... I've always been fascinated with exercise, fitness, sports. And when I was about 11 years old, the Sydney Olympics was on in year 2000, and I became obsessed with the Olympics and what it was. And it, it was this big celebration of, uh, of, you know, the, all the athletes, the best sportsmen in the world getting to- together to compete. And I was like, "Wow, that looks like it's amazing." So it kinda cemented this idea that, uh, Australia was gonna be fabulous for sport. And then a couple of years later, England went to win the Rugby World Cup in Australia, when Jonny Wilkinson dropped the, uh, scored the drop goal at the very end, and I was a, a huge rugby player at the time.
11:16.8 So when I was 15 years old, I just told myself that I wanted to be a scientist and that I wanted to live in Australia. So as soon as I got the opportunity when I was 21, and I'd finished my degrees, uh... Sorry, I was 24, finished my degrees, and I'd finished up training as a clinical scientist over in Nottingham in the UK. I looked for a job on the internet, and here there was a job going in Perth, like Western Australia. I went to my dreams, applied for it, and ended up moving away, and here I am now, six years later. So you're living your finest life?
11:46.9 I sure am. I always tend to, like with my mentorship programs, I try to teach people to go for their dreams and be confident to go for what they, what they love. Go for their heart, go for their passion, and, uh, that's what I'm doing now. So in fact, in, Tuesday next week, I'm over, moving over to Bali over in Indonesia, where, where Ed Dangerfield, who we, who you spoke to last week is. Um, so I'm gonna be probably, uh, con- connecting with him to go and learn more about the breath from the free divers, from the breathwork facilitators, and the yoga communities. Do you get out in the ocean at all in Perth?
12:19.7 Is there surfing out there and swimming and all of the traditional, uh, water sports? Yeah. Look, the, the, the beaches over here are absolutely beautiful. If you ever get an opportunity to come to Perth, we've probably got some of the best bea- beaches in the world. Um, the ocean is, is, is amazing. It's fabulous. You can travel all the way up the north coast, the west coast of Australia, and you've got some fantastic places, surfing, uh, free diving, getting out in the ocean. A lot of, a lot of wind surfing as well, 'cause it's quite windy up over here in the, in the, in, in the, in the summer months.
12:47.6 We get something called the Fremantle Doctor come through, which is basically a, a draft of wind at round about 2:00, 3:00 PM, and it just cools the, uh, the air, the air down. So it makes everyone get out there to the ocean. But y- you look like you're in great physical condition. There's a lot of clarity in your eyes. You speak very clearly. How do you think focusing on your breath and using different breath protocols have, have brought you this particular spot in your life? Oh, look, Ed, um, I've been a respiratory scientist for nearly 10 years now. So I've worked with people who have, uh, you know, COPD, uh, emphysema, asthma, issues with breathing.
13:27.1 So, uh, I, I know a lot about the lungs, but it wasn't, I would say, until five years ago when I moved to Australia. I went through a bit of a, a dark patch of, of real tough anxiety and depression because, um, I, I went down a bit of a path that led me, you know, into, into the wrong areas of life. And obviously having the family away from you, that was a bit of a struggle. Mm-hmm. And I, I came across, um, uh, s- slow breathing and meditation kinda serendipitously through, um, uh, a bit of a yoga practice, a yin yoga practice that I was following on, on- online to try and improve my mobility, because I'd noticed that I'd got a bit tight in the hips.
14:04.6 And during this slow breathing br- breathwork that they got you to do, it was an eight, uh, eight, eight-second count in and a ten-second count out whilst you're in these, uh, you know, long five-minute yin, yin poses. I felt myself, my mindset shift in terms of I'm an extroverted individual, but I found this internal world. I found an- Mm-hmm ... internal narrative running through my mind, and it was all of a sudden I would become aware, become more self-aware, and I become more aware of my thoughts, and I become more aware of how my thoughts are contributing to my anxiety. And, and that led to this journey of self-development and this journey of, you know, and in a spiritu- a spiritual journey, should I say, of, of delving into my own mind.
14:44.4 And I started to study, um, psycho, uh, psychoanalyt- uh, uh, like Carl Jung, Jordan Peterson- Mm-hmm ... some of the depth psychology, and really delving into practices that could get me out of this anxious state. And I would say f- compared to four or five years ago, my, my, um, you know- My, my, yeah, my confidence, my, my ability to talk, my practice online chatting has just been drastically improved, and that's some of the practices that I help, I now help people with in terms of mentorship, mentoring people, um, and, and just basically governing people to, to, to be better at what they wanna do as well.
15:24.6 I love that. I, I think that's one of the most efficient ways for human beings to begin to rewire how we navigate the internal landscapes of the mind and body, where we, we put ourselves i- in, in a gentle yoga posture, we slow our breath down, and we just face the music. Mm. And we try to stay in it as long as we possibly can. And I've worked with a lot of hardcore super athletes, you know, and, and they come into this with, uh, you know, "This is gonna be easy." You know? Mm. Yeah. "I, I can do this. This... You know, I don't have to run a five-minute mile or ride my bike at 35 miles an hour, or I don't have to hike up, you know, the highest mountain in my neighborhood.
16:09.8 This'll be simple." You drop someone in a squat or you put them in a bridge posture for five minutes, you tell them to slow their breathing down, they can't come down. All of a sudden, everything starts to come up that's unintegrated or heal- or unhealed. Mm-hmm. And it's just hanging in there with that experience and showing the mind that the body can do it. You know, the mind's like, "This is hard," or, "My legs are on fire," or, "I'm not flexible enough," or, "I'm not strong enough." And you just say to your mind, "Just one more breath. Just one more breath. Just one more breath." And then all of a sudden, you know, that was, like, 10 minutes ago.
16:49.5 Mm-hmm. And you're in... Your body starts to shake, and you come out of it and there's this euphoria of excitement and relaxation that merges together. That was my experience with it. I, I find it a great way to go find the truth, uh- 100% ... on a, on a regular basis. I 100% agree there. Look, I, um... When I first started practicing, I think I could hold 30 seconds, and then I would be holding my breath at the same time. And- Right ... to try and, to try and integrate the breath into yoga when you're, when you've not ever done it before, it was almost just, like, holding that stretch.
17:25.5 And then, um, I remember, like, 30 seconds being tough. It was like, okay, this is real hard. And this is someone who is... Now, I'm a very athletic ind- individual. When I, I hit heavy weights in the gym. Like you're just saying, I, I like to go hard. So trying to slow down at that time was actually quite tough for me. But after a year or two practice, you know, I could... I was able to then learn to connect the mind, the breath to the body, to be able to deactivate the nervous system, to, to slow down as much as possible. And even at points, you kind of forget that you're in the pose because it's almost like you're, you're, you're- Right ...
17:59.4 you're in such a meditative state that you're... Y- you, you be- I was at points bec- And unaware of my body. Like, I was slightly disconnected. I wouldn't say that I was always there, but I was able to get that, to that point at night time before bed, and that allowed me to have some great sleep as well. What a great awareness for folks who might be having trouble sleeping, because really success or the perception of success most of the time comes with proper preparation. Mm-hmm. And either you're being prepared to succeed or you're being prepared to fail. You know, we... It's very, it's a razor's edge.
18:34.3 And I, you know, I never thought about doing a technique like that prior to bed, but I'm gonna try it tonight, and I think that's a wonderful way for folks to, to set in motion that, that sleep cycle, 'cause there's such a deep release taking place all over the place. Mm-hmm. When... People think you just use your body weight with breath control against gravity for several minutes. It's hard. Yeah. Look, it, it was, it was something that, um, at the time, because of the anxiety, I was struggling with sleep. You know, you get the rumination, you get the thoughts going, and you, you're laying there in bed and you're like, "Oh, God, this is great.
19:15.8 Another night like this." But then, uh, obviously being a sleep scientist, this is where I started to delve into more of the behavioral aspect of it, trying to get to sleep and improve sleep. And it is more... It's, it's about the routine. It's about making sure that you are implementing a, a, a continuous routine to anchor a state into your mind that you're gonna start feeling sleepy. So I decided that, you know, a herbal tea, a little bit of, um, uh, slow breathwork with some yin yoga and using like a scented candle- Mm-hmm ... in a dark room before bed. If I did that repetitively and com- and ov- over time, that was able to, to allow me to slow down enough that I pretty much would just roll over to bed and then just
19:59.2 go to sleep, and it was some of the best sleep I, that I, I would ever get. So if anyone's out there and is struggling with issues like that, then certainly I would be implementing some kind of practice like that into, into your life to, to improve sleep. You know, when you, you come to it from, you know, the, the weightlifting experience- Mm ... where I was taught where, you know, basically, you know, you take your mind and you focus your mind on the muscles- Yeah ... that are active while you breathe. That's it. Now, there's really no difference in that than there is going into a yin yoga posture and letting your breath and mind weave into one sense organ and just go directly
20:40.4 in to where you're feeling the contraction. 100%. And you, and you're trying to release it. You're trying to do the opposite. So it's- Right. It's- ... it's almost, it's almost the opposite of what you're getting taught as a weightlifter. It's, it's... And it- it's focusing on the exhalation breath. So if you... You know, when you're trying to lift or something or you're bracing, you're taking a big inhalation, you're getting ready, you get the sympathetic nervous system active. Whereas in the, you know, as the yin yoga, you're the... If you're trying to re- relax the n- the, the, the, the muscles or the tension in your body or the tension in your mind, it's focusing on releasing during that pr- exhalation, prolonged exhalation,
21:15.1 which is allowing the body to then go, "Ha, okay, I can relax." And if your body's relaxed, then you start... Your mind obviously start to relax. That's a great aware- Folks need to remember that. Play this part of the video back so that you bring that to memory from Martin, because that's a, a really important piece of the puzzle, especially during going through these high states of anxiety that we all seem to be in, in, in 2021, where we all seem to have temporarily lost our mind. Uh, so staying on that exhale, it forces that body to release relaxation chemistry, relaxation hormones. It forces relaxation neurochemistry.
21:54.8 And guess what? Who doesn't need to relax a little bit more? Who, who can't let go a little bit more? And it's all right there on our exhale if you care to feel a little bit more than you normally do. You're, you're right, Ed. Uh, you know, the world has gone, uh, pretty manic with, with stress and anxiety, and, uh, it's, it's something that has been coming for a while, and I think it's gonna continue to get worse as we go into this t- technological age, and we, we lo- we are disconnecting from our bodies further and further. And it's practices like breathwork that bring you back into the body, that can help you regulate, you know, the nervous system, the physiology, the, the, the, the
22:39.6 means to be able to sit there and go and tap in and go, "How am I feeling today?" Mm-hmm. "What's going on for me today?" You know, I, I've got... Personally, I've got a, you know... Moving over to Bali, uh, I've, I've quit my, my part-time job in the medical field to go full in with this breathwork stuff, to full into the mentorship, and I can... I s- I noticed that I was becoming more in my head, more and more f- thinking, logical, but less intuitive. Mm-hmm. And I was lay... I was sat there the other day and I was thinking, "Okay, well, I need to, I need to come back into my body because I'm noticing that I'm getting tense.
23:12.1 My shoulders are aching. My..." I'm just constantly thinking. And I'm like, "Right, I need to be focusing more on this, on this exhalation-based breath, breathwork, I need to get into my parasympathetic nervous system." Because it stops you from being creative. Now, if you wanna, if you wanted to change your life, if you want to... If you're, if you're looking to... You know, for, for me, for example, looking to move to Bali, I need to be creative to be like, "Okay, what's the next steps for me?" My vision in my mind's eye of where I'm gonna go. And I think that's the, the... Also one of the benefits of being able to, to tap into this sort of, this breathwork is, is, is that intuitive state that you can, you can all go into.
23:46.4 You know, speaking of breathwork, you know, we speak of the, of the cardiovascular system. Mm-hmm. And it, the, it's a vast system where, where we have the heart health and then we have, we have respiratory health. And in conventional medicine it seems to be there's two separate branches where we don't really talk a lot about how the respiratory function is either supporting or impairing heart health. Then when we start to break that down into two branches and then we, we begin to build a breathwork routine, we begin to see that the lungs are these two huge, huge organs that are available to us to support a healthy heart rate, to get
24:34.3 us beyond states of hypertension in the heart. Can you explain a little bit about how you work with folks in regard to supporting the heart by strengthening lung function? Yeah, sure. Thank, thanks Ed. There's a... no, there's a, there's a few aspects that we t- tend to look at. Well, look, you've gotta, you've gotta think at the connection between the two, and you're correct in, in medicine that they look at cardiologists and then the, the, you know, you've got respiratory specialists, and they tend to separate it. Whereas wh- when we breathe, obviously the diaphragm contracts and that creates some more volume into the, in the lungs.
25:07.7 The actual heart then drops slightly, so the heart's slightly enlarged. Now, the blood pressure that then goes through the heart tends to slow down. We've got receptors in the heart that can detect the pressure. That then sends a signal through the i- uh, sinoatrial node, which is the node that's setting the pace of the heart, to then send more sympathetic activity to increase the heart rate. So when we breathe in, we get an increase in heart rate, and the opposite happens when we breathe out. So when we breathe out and we get that, a decrease in heart rate, well, what we're actually doing is we're actually able to, uh, increase heart rate variability.
25:43.2 Mm-hmm. Now, with, with heart rate variability there's, uh, t- particularly free- frequencies that we're looking at. We've got very low frequency, which we would only u- really use when someone has had, uh, a cardiac arrhythmia or if they've got a, um, a, you know, a postca- a myo- myocardial infarction, so a heart attack. And we can use that measure to predict long-term outcomes of their, their, their mortality really. So the higher the heart rate variability in low, very low frequency in those two areas, the greater chance they have of long-term survival. Mm-hmm. So if we can utilize the breath to start to improve that, then we have an opportunity therefore to improve their recovery following heart attack.
26:26.3 Now, we also have the changes in blood pressure that occur f- from, you know, standing up, from sitting down, from movement with exercise. Obviously when we're exercising we need increase in heart rate. Someone goes for a walk, we need to increase the blood pressure so we need to get the oxygen around the body. If the heart's not able to detect these changes in blood pressure, which we call the baroreflex, then we're gonna get issues, and these issues in the long term, they lead to hypertension. Uh, we get high blood pressure because the bo- the heart can't detect the pressure changes or it's has a hi- uh, less sensitivity to these ch- pressure changes, and we become more
27:04.6 sympathetic dominant. And if we become more- dominant in the sympathetic nervous system, what that does is it actually increases the risk of burnout, fatigue, cardiovascular events, uh, you know, poor health conditions. So if we, if we can focus on exhalation-focused breathwork or breath pauses or slowing the, the body down, then, you know, the American Cardia- Cardiac Association has actually said that this is a type 2A, um, evidence B, uh, yeah, protocol for lowering blood pressure. The, the evidence is out there in the scientific litera- literature that if we take 10 to 15 minutes a day of slow breathing at a breath rate of five to six breath per minute,
27:45.5 on average we can bring someone who has stage two hypertension down by 13 over 7 systolic and di- diastolic millimeters of mercury, which is two categories lower in blood pressure, which is almost adding maybe 10, 15 years of life expectancy onto, onto an individual. And that's just 10 to 15 minutes of slow breathing per day. And why is this not taught by every single med- medical practitioner? Because the, you know, it's, it's something that's not integrated into the medical, medical community because we're fo- so focused on pharmacological ne- needs to, means to improve health rather than looking at, okay, what can our own physiology actually do?
28:22.4 And that's what, you know, the likes of yourself and myself are trying to, trying to do with the, the individuals out there is that we can take care of our own body, but we just have to learn how to use our own physiologies to do that, and that's where the, the, the practitioners like myself and yourself come in. Well, how's it feel to be someone i- in this, in this field when folks can come and see you, and then within the first session, if they need to, they can have a little gizmo, a little, um, uh, measuring device where they can actually see their heart rate and blood pressure drop the
28:57.8 first time they come in contact with you. It, it must feel amazing. It's... For some people, it looks like it's magic. Honestly, I had a, I had a p- a guy the other day come in, and he... We, we took his blood pressure, and he's like, "Oh, my blood pressure's always an issue when I come in to see s- uh, specialists or practitioners." And we took his blood pressure, and it was like 152 over 90 or something that. And I was like, "Okay, well, let's just sit there. Close your mouth. Breathe through your nose. I want you to three seconds in, six seconds out. I want you to count that in your mind.
29:27.1 I want you to relax your shoulders, and then just give it five minutes and I'm gonna take it again." Bring it down to 125 over 80. Almost text- textbook bre- blood pressure. And he just laughed. He's like, "How have you managed to do that?" And I was like, "Simple, the breath. Exhalation-focused bre- breathwork can relax the body, r- relax the mind, and it's gonna bring your blood pressure down." And he's like, "I'm gonna do that every time I go to see my doctor now because they're thinking about putting me on the, all these medications." It's like you- Right ... don't need the medications. You just need to learn that you can relax.
29:54.0 That is just so empowering for people on so many levels, that there's something inside them that they can turn on to override the stress response that's coming up when there's no, when there's no need for stress. And I love that technique. Exhale twice as long as the inhale. So if you inhale three, exhale six. Inhale four, exhale eight. Inhale seven, exhale 14. I think that's a solid map that folks can wrap their, their math brain around to remember that that is one of the major keys to rebooting the system on the fly because life's not gonna wait for us, you know, to de-stress. We have to learn these skills on the fly in the m- You can't fix stress when you haven't been triggered, because there's a part of the mind that thinks you're never gonna
30:48.1 be stressed again. So having the tools that you're teaching to your folks to have in their, their wellness holster, Martin, it's awesome. Yeah. There's a, there's a lot of scientific, um, evidence behind it. I think there was a, a study by, uh, Le Bouffet et al in 2014, and they basically looked at, uh, inhalation versus exhalation ratios, so whether it was one to two, one to three, one to four, and at a frequency of 12 breath per minute or six breath per minute. And they found that heart rate variability increased the most at six breath per minute at the ratio of one to two from inhalation of exhalation.
31:25.5 So if you've got someone who, with low heart rate variability, which is in the high-frequency domain, which means they're very sympathetic dominant or have a lack of parasympathetic control, if we're to implement daily, um, e- exhalation-based focused breathing on a ratio of one to two, then we can actually... Over eight weeks, I've had people double their heart rate variability, going from 22 SSID to, uh, 44, 46. The blood pressure coming down from 140 over 90 down to 120, 112 over 68. Um, resting heart rate going from 64 beats per minute down to 58 beats per minute. So we can see how just from those clinical markers that are on these watches, you know, we can get all this data from these watches nowadays.
32:09.4 Over eight-week programming, we can see that come down without touching the medication, without increasing exercise. We're just simply t- 15, 20 minutes a day of, of breathing and m- potentially adding in after exercise some breath control in terms of taking control of that breath and slowing it down as well. Yeah, I think the breath control itself is a standalone exercise all on its own. Mm. It is the inner gym. Now, you can add all sorts of accoutrements to that to even amplify and, uh, allow these programs to become even more powerful. But just the breath on its own, like if you have a day where you can't exercise for yourself and you can't get time for yourself, just doing these protocols while you're at your workstation,
32:56.5 you're getting pretty much the same benefits as someone who's going to an exercise facility. Mm-hmm. Sure. It's really cool. Sure. Uh, and it's fascinating. And, and when we... And we can use the opposite to, to, to, you know, to stimulate our body. You know, if you, if you wake up in the morning and you're, you're feeling a little bit like you've had a poor sleep, you can probably do an inhalation f- focused breathwork, a Tummo breathwork, a Wim Hof breathwork. And that's going to increase your energy. It's going to release more, it's going to be more sympathetic dominance. So you're going to have more glucose going into the body, going into the brain.
33:34.3 You're going to feel more alert. You're going to wake up feeling more fresh. I just jumped in the cold shower just before I jumped on here just to wake myself up a little bit. But you could just go for 10, 15 minutes and have the same effect. But what I love about the programs that I try to help people manage with their stress and anxiety is really have four aims. Now, the number one aim is ensuring that they have appropriate breathing mechanics to begin with, because a lot of people who are stressed and anxious, they're tight across here, across their back, and they're breathing up into their chest.
34:09.4 They're breathing at a fast rate. And that is like that sort of breathwork I just told you about. It's high sympathetic. It's high energy breathwork, which if you're constantly like that, that's sending signals to your brain that is going, okay, hey, look, your perception is looking for fear all the time. And people with anxiety, they already have a threat detection bias. They already go into a room and think everyone's staring at them and talking about them. They have that kind of story running in their head. And it's true. I've been there. But if you could take away and you can drop the shoulders, breathe into your diaphragm, now allow your ribcage to expand, sit upright and breathe in, close your mouth in
34:47.3 and out the nose, just maybe even do a few sighs, just a double inhale, just let it go. That's going to send the signals to the brain to say, hey, we're safe. Actually observe around you. You can be socially engaged. You can actually pay attention to the outside and stop worrying what's going on here. And in a moment you can change that. So the first part of any kind of breathing protocol I take people through with stress and anxiety is to just spend time doing that. Spend a week, two weeks, just focusing on just being able to improve that part of your breath, because that's going to have the most significant impact.
35:22.7 And it's the most basic form of breathing that we can do to get a large outcome. And then obviously we're trying to improve parasympathetic activity. You've also got the relationship between the mind and the physiology. So when people are feeling anxious and when they're feeling short of breath, we can teach them that through breath control after exercise or say, for example, you might get someone to do 10 burpees where they're feeling like in that higher arousal state, but then try and close your mouth and take control of that breath and slow it down. Now that's going to feel a little bit like someone's going into a bit of a suffocation, but if over time people can learn to adapt to that
36:06.4 psychological sensation of feeling Out of breath, short of breath, in under duress, under stress, it builds their tolerance to, uh, that panic kind of system, which then builds resilience. So when they come into a, a situation where their breath starts to increase, they barely notice it because there's more of a psychological improvement in terms of their, their relationship, their physiology. They just know, "Okay. Well, I'm just a little bit stressed now. That's fine. I can just control my breath. I can take control of it. I have the power over my body and over my mind through conscious control." Mate, you know, it's amazing just this movement of this thoracic
36:46.4 diaphragm down into the abdomen. Mm. It, it's amazing how many things that it's responsible for. It, it's almost, it's almost like an organ in regard to how it interacts with the various nervous systems, the organs of the upper gut, the psoas muscles that connect the legs to the upper torso, connecting the lumbar spine so that we have that erect posture, and the shoulder blades, you know, will fall back and down. This diaphragm is the most important muscle out of all 610 muscles, and we're never gonna see it in the mirror. It's, it's fascinating. Um, and, like, evolutionary how it's, how it's evolved to be, um...
37:28.8 You know, it's, it's primarily like 76% type one muscle fibers, so it's, it's an, it's, it's an, it's an endurance muscle that has been adapted to have conscious control as well as autonomic control. And if we look at the actual muscle itself, it's the only skeletal muscle that we have that's actually inside our body that is unau- u- under control that is, like, you know, just... If... We don't even have to think about it. So to say that it's a skeletal muscle like our legs, like our quadriceps, like our biceps, over time, o- over the thousands of years, millions of years, that there has to have been some kind of conscious practice to, to develop it into that type of, type of muscle.
38:10.4 And I think there's a... You know, like James Nestor says in his book Breath, there's a, a, that we... It's a forgotten tool. There's, there's cultures out there who have practiced breathwork for thousands and thousands of years and knew, and knew that there was this, an importance of this diaphragm to, to, to our natural healing mechanism, and we need to integrate that back into the West because I think that's what's gonna save... You know, I personally do think it's what's gonna save humanity, being able to go back to these old principles of old cultures and these techniques that were used, that it's gonna allow us physically,
38:44.5 mentally, and spiritually to, to improve and stay grounded as we go into this technological age that we're moving to. Yeah, I think that, you know, when we start to work with folks that are under a lot of hypertension, uh, you know, it's all locked up. You know- Mm ... around rib, rib one and two. The, the deltoid is pulled, and the, the back is rounded over almost, you know, like a, like an ape. And, you know, there's no movement of the diaphragm down or up because the breath is so shallow, and we're just exchanging this sympathetic cortisol on these receptors at the top of our lungs.
39:20.5 And then we say to these folks, "You know, try to let your belly swell first- Mm ... on the initiation of the inhale," or, "Try to exhale through your nose longer than your inhale." And all of a sudden, there's all this blockage psychologically where we have to retrain these muscles to remember how they were breathing when we were children. 100%. Yeah, it's, it's those learning patterns that we have as we get... Traumas happen through our life, as people get more stressed, as they become depressed. Then their body closes up. They become small. They wanna hide away. They don't wanna be open to the world, and I think that's also...
39:58.7 That then impacts their breath, and this is very important when we're utilizing things like inspiratory muscle training. So inspiratory muscle training is like strength training for your diaphragm. It's a way to improve the strength of your diaphragm so it becomes more efficient, and this has, have been proven as a tool j- as just as effective as exercise and, and, uh, you know, dietary means at bringing blood pressure down. However, if we're using a, an, a- an external mechanism, which is a tool that we can place in our mouth that's a resistance to breathe against, if we're doing that on a poor breathing pattern, we're only
40:30.5 strengthening a poor breathing pattern. Right. And this is, this is why it's always es- essential that the first key things that we're f- We, we're improving this breathing pattern to begin with so that we're not, uh, training, training in the gym or squatting with a poor technique. It's just gonna re- result in a back injury or hip injury or something like that. You know, if we're training our diaphragm- Mm-hmm ... and we're doing that inappropriately, we're gonna have negative effects if we do it, to do it appropriately. So the first key step is to ensure that we are getting appropriate dia- diaphragmatic breathing. Um, and then on top of that, we're adding this inspiratory muscle training.
41:05.3 You know, it's really interesting. If you look at the inhale and exhale as, as like this seesaw. You know, one comes in, one goes down, one goes up, one goes down. One of the tricks that I used with folks earlier on, uh, in the re-patterning of the breath, especially on the exhale, is that if I want to improve someone's exhale, I'll have them inhale till the lungs are filled, hold the breath in and let pressure build, and then they'll organically have more volume to psychologically break through that pattern so they can exhale longer than they normally do. Mm-hmm. If I want someone to improve their inhale, I'll have them exhale and hold the breath out, and that'll create a natural vacuum to allow more suction to take
41:51.9 place on the next inhale. And it's like y- you don't really have to do it. It'll, it'll happen on its own, and you're just sitting back in the mind watching the re-patterning. Yeah, like, that... I love that gr- I love that because on top of that, like, uh, you know, I like to use inhalation, full inhalation breaths because, uh, someone asked me, "Is, is, is there any benefit to that?" Because they hadn't heard of having any benefit for that. And, and for me- If we're focusing on exhalation-focused breathing for improving stress and im- improving anxiety, then if we've got a full chestful, a chest cavity, a thoracic cavity of air, then, you know, the body naturally wants to just release that.
42:32.8 It wants to let it out and wants to go get it out as soon as possible, especially if you're holding that breath for, you know, a significant period of 20, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, depending on the, uh, you know, how advanced one is in their breath work program. Then being able to actually still control that breath for eight or 10 seconds, once you, once you're at that, you know, fighting that elasticity of your lungs to come back, come back down again, it's almost like, "Okay, well, I'm stressed here. I'm holding this breath in, holding this breath in, but I've still got to control that breath out." It's then...
43:05.0 it's teaching the body still that even though your body is, your mind is saying, "I need to release this," that you still have control. Right. And a lot of people who, a lot of people who have anxiety, they believe that they don't have any control of their life. So if you can teach them to have just physical control of any part of their body, then it, it kind of like it, it, it expels out into their life sort of thing in, in other areas. It says, "Actually, okay, well, I now have control of who I am, what I can do, how I can control my mind and my body and, and my, um, uh,
43:40.9 my, my essentially es- essence of this, this, this part of me, I can then start to take more control of, of what's going on and happening around me in my life, too." You're... Well said. Well said. You know, I have this, I have this opinion that, that feelings, th- how we feel about something controls our cognition of that subject or object. So the more that we can feel our thoughts, which happens organically when we can lengthen our exhale, you will be forced to feel these thoughts longer. Mm. It's really powerful in, in neuroplasticity where you can feel thoughts, discard the part that you've become aware of that is now a non-truth,
44:24.1 attach yourself right now to the truth you just discovered, and then you've rewired your personal awareness. 100%. Look, it, it... there's, um... with a lot of the people that I take through programs, eight, 12 weeks, by the end of the eight or 12 weeks, the family and friends and I notice that they've changed significantly. Yes. And I've had multiple people decide that they need to get out of their careers and change their careers. Yeah. Because they've, they've discovered that it's their careers that are not... that's causing the majority of their stress, or it's their managers that are causing the majority of the stress, or it's their...
45:04.2 a family member or a friend that's m- causing the majority of stress because their, their, their heightened self-awareness, just like you were saying, Ed- Is through, through this practice, it's a mindfulness practice, but also through that exhalation practice, you have to face the truth. You've got- You know, one thing I, I really... Uh, excuse me. Yeah, sure. Excuse me. You, are you complete? Yeah, you go for it. Okay. You know, one of the things I really love about what you're bringing to the table is that when I started out in this field in, in the '90s, '95, '96, you know, we still were of the mindset that, you know, you could go for it in your life, in your workplace.
45:45.4 You could shoot for that big business, that big CEO and, and the paycheck and all of that, but you would have to sacrifice your health to get that. And one of the great things that I think has evolved in the last 25 years or so, and I think what you're trying to bring to the table, is that you can have it all. You can have high performance with solid health markers if there's just a few fundamental boundaries that you stick to during your workspace time. I, I, that's, that's why Performance through Health exists. The, uh, you know, from the, what I'm observ- what I'm observing in my clinical practice is that by the time that people hit 35 to 45
46:31.4 is they become so focused on their career, so focused on wanting to achieve the next thing in life that often they do forget about their health. And then they come to see someone like me that has to then, you know, put them on a, a CPAP machine because they've got obstructive sleep apnea. Potentially they've been smoking all their life and they've got lung damage, or they're overweight, they're obese, they've got diabetes. And then all of a sudden, you know, they're, they're spending all their money and their time in the, in, in the medical field on, put on medication. And their energy drops, their focus drops, and their performance falls off, and their career starts to fall away early.
47:06.9 Whereas I believe that if people value health first, then you've always got that performance tomorrow. So if you, you know, if you're making sure that you've got a correct sleeping habit, you're putting the breathing practice in there so that you can slow your body down, that you can see your mind, and you can, you know, you can, you can be more aware of, of, of where you're going. The practices that you're not... You know, the things that you need to let go of in life to c- to continue, continue going forward. Nutritionally, you've got a sound amount of calories, that you're eating nutritionally dense foods.
47:35.3 These three, three things are, you know, the, the, the, the, the basis of what our performance as a human is. It's what allows us to move forward. It's allowed us what to have the energy and focus to achieve. And once you've, once you've got that, you've got a solid physique, you've got a solid physical body, it gives you more confidence in your mind to say, "Hey, I don't actually need to forget... I, I don't need to worry about my health now because it's just a, a behavior, it's a practice that I continually have." And that then excels you through into higher performance because you can
48:07.2 focus more on moving towards that sort of stuff. Uh, definitely. You know, I think energy management and the awareness of the amount of energy that I have at any given moment plays a huge role in, in my self-awareness. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to rewire the subconscious brain, which is basically driving the car most of the time. So when our energy levels are low or we violated ourself in some degree during the day, we're gonna be in the old subconscious programming just moving files along. There's not a lot of creativity. You don't trust your intuition. And it's just, you know, kind of that mundane existence.
48:42.2 But when you can have a higher level of relaxed energy, it seems like we can rewire the subconscious brain almost instantaneously on a regular basis during the workday. Uh, uh, that's it. You know, if, if your subcon- subconscious mind is just driving you towards things, that's pulling you, pulling energy away from what you wanna achieve or your performance, then however you ever gonna peak, however you're gonna sustain that, you can't. You, you, you, you're gonna, you're gonna become ill or you're gonna become, have issues along the way. So it's, it's, it's about reprogram that, that unconscious mind. But how do we tap into an unconscious mind when we can't see it?
49:21.0 We do that through slowing the breath, going internal, and paying attention to what's actually coming up. And i- if it's challenging, if you feel something come up and you don't like it, you have to sit with it because it's, the truth hurts, but the truth is what allows us to break through and what allows us to remove things like shame, guilt. Mm-hmm. And it's often these... It's these emotions that are of- often moving us towards pleasurable things or moving us towards that, um, you know, going to grab the, the, the sugary foods or going to do the habit that's causing you to, to, to be distracted by the food and not be in the moment.
49:59.1 Or to, to raise your stress level and make you feel, "Oh, God, I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't, I shouldn't have gone to have that chocolate bar." And then all of a sudden you become caught in this kind of like a bit of a trap of a cycle of shame followed by, um, uh, guilt, followed by needing to do that again to get that pleasure hit, and then all of a sudden you've become distracted away from your work and you're not able to focus on moving forward towards your goals. Right. Right. It, it, it's so... It seems so easy on the surface. We can link the dots a- and we're all habit creatures.
50:35.8 And, you know, the breath is one of those ultimate hacks that give us that aha, I don't have to react to that event, person, place, or thing the same way I did last time if I choose not to. And I, I think a lot of people need to remember that they... Every time you change your breathing pattern rate, your... There's a, there's a part of your brain that lights up as soon as you change your breathing pattern and it says, "Well, I guess Martin wants me to pay attention." And there's all sorts of little hacks we can do around breath to refine attention, to refine focus.
51:13.3 Maybe not follow that habit, knowing that- Mm-hmm ... when I act to s- to that habit, I don't feel good an hour later. Things like that It, it's what creates the space between the, the, the stressor and the decision on the outwards. Yes. So, you know, you've got a... If, if you've got a... All of a sudden you have an urge to go and do something, and that urge is almost like an instinctual thing. If you take a few breaths in and out the nose or you do a physiological sigh, it creates a moment of space to go, "Hey, is this really serving me? Is this really serving my higher self of what I, of who I truly want to be?
51:52.8 Or is it just an instinctual thing that I just wanna go and pick at? And is it, is it a behavior that has been learnt through a process of coping mechanism rather than going, 'Hey, actually, no, I wanna be someone who's fit, healthy, high energy'? Or do I wanna be this individual?" And it, it's the breath that creates the space that allows you to make a decision and choice. Extremely powerful in rewiring the addictive brain. No matter what the craving is, it doesn't matter what it is, it's all just a lower frequency of energy. The breath understands it or it already wants to help us, and all it needs us to do is simply surrender for a few seconds to be in that space of vulnerability or
52:34.5 uncertainty without reacting to it. Mm. And the breath will help rewire that shift if that's something you're interested in. It's amazing. It is. And I think, um, touching back on what you were saying earlier about, uh, actually feeling the emotion. You know, emotions are just like, you know, it's energy in motion. Yes. It's like the wind. It, it passes by, it passes through. So rather than feeling something and then not wanting to feel that so then seeking pleasure, it's actually, okay, well, just spend a few moments with the breath and just feel that guilt, feel that shame, feel that worry or concern for maybe two or three minutes and it will pass by.
53:12.2 And once it passes by, you won't need to go and, uh, use the coping me- mechanism that you've been spending your, spent your whole life doing. So, you know, that's definitely something that you touched on earlier that you've just brought back to the surface now. You know, I, I have this saying that if you continue to push away pain in your life, you'll never fully understand pleasure. And- Yeah ... folks, you know, pain is simply an opportunity for pleasure. It's not personal. It's not against you. It's not for you. It's just energy, and it's something that's on your plate. And whatever it is, you can handle it.
53:52.4 There's something inside you that you can tap into that you can't see right now, that you can transcend that pain, and you don't have to turn it into pleasure. All you have to do is neutralize it viscerally so that the next time that pain comes up, there isn't a shortness of breath, there isn't a contraction in your gut, your adrenal glands don't fire off. Just get it to neu- neutral. And if you can get it to neutral, there's an inherent goodness in all humans that will organically and naturally turn it into pleasure and positivity. Yeah. There's been times where in my life I've, uh, you know, I've been suffering, and I've not wanted to, to feel that suffering at all, so I've just, you know, es- escaped it, uh, through,
54:35.8 through means of moving towards foods, pleasurable stuff. And but then you, you, you don't get to experience the, the niceties of those sort of things as well, because it becomes- Right ... such a routine and a habit. That like you were just saying, if you're not able to feel pain or allow yourself to feel pain, how are you able to feel things like bliss, joy, gratitude? You know, the three most powerful emotions that we have as a human to, to experience this amazing life, uh, you know, thing we call a consciousness life, is that if you can't feel suffering, guilt, shame, you can't feel bliss, pleasure, gratitude.
55:09.8 Right. And that's where I think it's, it, it's important to have those practices of letting go, feeling anything through the breath, through sitting with it. It's the breath that regulates and allows you to go, "Hold on a second, I actually can get through this." Because once you start to slow that breath down, you'll notice that actually you're changing the physiology, you're changing the feeling just through breathing. It, and it's why, it's, it's why it's so important in childbirth. It's, it's... you know, the amount of pain there is in childbirth, but the, it's always goes onto that focus of the breath. Focusing back to that breath because we can neutralize that pain, and therefore we can have something like the, the enjoyment and the gratitude to, to, to, you know, females
55:52.1 going through the, through childbirth. So well said. I've worked with, uh, pregnant women before, and I, I've given them breath protocols as the dilation takes place, and they said, "Ed, it, it, you know, it was hard, but it was amazing and efficient." One of the things about the breathwork- ... I'm sure you know, is it's so efficient. It a- it almost, we can't believe how efficient we become, you know, with our mind, you know, with our body. One of the things I wanted to talk about, uh, and get your take on is, is diabetes. Yeah. And diabetes is on the rise, uh, around the globe.
56:29.7 What are some of the strategies, uh, that you're using to help folks, Martin? Look, diabetes is... uh, you know, obviously you've got type 1 and type 2 diabetes, but we can, we can, again, we can utilize slow breathing to, to, to manage this, uh, or, or as an adjunct to, to diet and medication. So it really depends on the severity of an individual, uh, and the level of diabetes they've got. But the, the, the research suggests that slow breathing can... again, it just comes back down to this nervous system. If we're, if we're, if we're tapping into that parasympathetic nervous system, then we can, we can slow down the, uh, the release of glucose into, into the body.
57:08.8 And if we can do that, then we can manage our insulin sensitivity better. Or, or we can manage our glucose better so we can get greater insulin sensitivities, so that the body can actually utilize the fuel better when we're slow breathing. So, for example, if I've got someone who is, uh, is, is not... is, is managing their diabetes regularly through, through diet, I might then have them, if they are going to consume carbohydrates, following that, then I might get them to be spending 10, 15 minutes of some slow breathing to ensure that their body's digesting it, that there's the sugars and the carbohydrates in their body that they're getting utilized better and, and better managed as we
57:46.1 go into this parasympathetic nervous state. Um, so that's, that's, that's probably one of the tools that I would particularly use with people who are, who are diabetic, on top of things like exercise and ensuring that they've got a, uh, you know, a, a healthy diet as well. So with, with some- That, that's been... yeah ... you know, with, with- Very, very good ... with, with diabetes, you know, it's, it's... but it's really focusing on just making sure that you have a continuous practice and utilizing it at the right time. Whether that's before bed, where, you know, people with diabetes can have an increased, uh, risk of things like, uh, obstructive sleep apnea, which is a sleep breathing disorder.
58:23.7 Mm-hmm. And if they have apneas in bed where their oxygen levels are falling because their airways are collapsing or they're not breathing properly, that can increase the, the release of sugars at nighttime. So it might be putting the breath practice in first thing in the morning if they check their blood sugars and they're high. And just by doing that post, post, post, uh, eating and in the morning, or checking at times where their blood sugars are, are, are raising, then having that practice and that pattern, the body can c- almost get into that synchronicity of, okay, this is what, this is how I can manage my sugar levels better.
58:59.2 And that will then tap in throughout the day to try and keep a more stable sugar throughout the day as well. Masterful work. That's just a wonderful prescription to empower people to get beyond the struggles of diabetes- Mm ... outside of a pharmaceutical intervention, which is something that we see so many folks in the Type 1, uh, struggle with, uh, especially their energy levels, uh, as, as they age. It's so debilitating. Well, I've just, I've just had a friend been, uh, diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Um, and he, he actually had a heart attack. He's only... he's 27. And, and he, he had a heart attack.
59:48.3 And he had... he, he, again, he goes to the gym, he works out a lot. He, um, but he was overloading himself. He was, he works FIFO, which basically is the miners that are over here in Western Australia. There's gold mines that they go and work up into, up in the, uh, up, up in the north of Australia. And it is, it's a pretty kind of... it's 12-hour gruesome days, and then he's trying to train on top of that. But then he also likes to have a beer with his mates because it's the culture up there. And after doing that for seven years, his, his body just tapped out.
60:16.8 And then all of a sudden he, they goes, "Oh, by the way, did you know that you're a type 1 diabetic?" It's like, well, no wonder your, your heart's, you know, can't control, control it. He, his, uh, his blood sugars at the time were like 20, 20 millimoles, which is like four times the, the, the amount it should be for, for a resting state. Uh, and but he did need the insulin. But as soon as he went on that insulin... Well, they took him off insulin, they took, they took... and then just made him not eat any carbohydrates at all, and he lost like 10 kilos.
60:45.2 Hmm. Then they put the insulin back in. He gained that 10 kilos back in again. But now I'm... we've been working with him to say, "Hey, look, you need to put some breath practice around post-eating, post-exercise, and when you wake up in the morning to ensure that your, your body is able to get into a state where you're reducing that stress. Because if you're under stress all the time, with the job you've got-" Hmm ... the way you like your, to run your body, and if you, you know, if you're not gonna change your lifestyle, then you need to be able to put stuff in there to actually counteract this so that you can- Hmm ...
61:12.1 better balance your life. Wow. What a fast hour. You know, for someone- Yes ... like me who's been in the game a long time, I'm really happy to have a young lion like yourself out there who is so talented at, at such a young age. You've already helped thousands of people. There's a huge horizon out there for you in your life, and I'm so excited for you and, and everything that's gonna happen to you on your journey as you help others through yourself. Thank you, Ed. That's, that's really, uh, really kind of you, those kind words. Now, coming like this... someone like yourself who, who...
61:52.8 now you've got a lot more experience than I have with this sort of stuff, and you've been doing it for years, and you've been a... You know, it looks like you're, you're a great mentor. And I think as, uh, we... as soon as I started following your work on social media, on your Instagram, like, it was, it was a, apparent to me that you're, you're a, you're a giver and you're a people person. So that's, uh... it's beautiful words to hear that. Well, it takes one to know one. Folks, if you, if you, if you wanna work with Martin, go to his website, www.performancethroughhealth.com. Go to that site, make a consultation appointment with Martin, and you know things are gonna get better pretty darn quick.
62:29.4 He's a master on several items, on many items that we're struggling with individually and collectively in humanity today. So do yourself a favor, connect with this young lion, get healthy, put that smile back on your face, open that big heart of yours, and live the rest of your life with that smile I know that you can get. Martin, thank you so much for... Hey, when you go over to Bali, say hi to Edward Dangerfield. I will do. No, we'll definitely, we will definitely connect. And, uh- Ah ... Ed, Ed, and both W- Ed and Wendy, appreciate you, um, inviting me on to, to come have a chat.
63:05.0 It's been, it's been great. Ah, you're a gentleman, Martin. Thank you very much. I wish you nothing but the best. Go be great.