Jamie Clements Interview

Arthur: Jamie Cummins, welcome to Pitching Fashion. it's a privilege to have you here. The podcast is all around how to help people how to inspire people, you're a breathwork specialist. And I think part of your kind of philosophy is like how people get pigeonholed into what they do and and in, in many ways, that's, it's helpful but unhelpful.

But you founded the the breath workspace. You've helped people who work for Channel Four, meta Four Seasons, Heineken. You're the talk of the Town. You are the talk of the town. And also is breath work a wonderful kind of, way that you pitch.

What Breathwork does to people is that it can change how we think. Feel, operate on a physical level, mental, emotional, and spiritual level. So listeners, if you're boxed in and one of those triggers your interest, great. If all of them do all so great. Jamie, tell us what has breath breathwork given you?

Jamie: so many things. I suppose on a very [00:01:00] simple level. The beginning of my journey into breathwork was from a place of breathwork giving me back a level of agency in my life. I grew up and had a very kind of traditional upbringing and I went to a decent school, went to university, got myself a degree, was playing high level rugby for a period of time, and.

Throughout that period was struggling a lot, particularly with anxiety. And then in my early twenties with panic attacks and breath work was really the thing that unlocked a reintegration of agency into my life where I went from feeling. Really like a passenger to my anxiety and to my experience of life, to actually being back in the driving seat and going, oh, I, I have a level of autonomy here over how I respond to what I'm experiencing, to what I'm feeling.

And so that for me was the big first thing that dropped in with the breath was taking back that ownership of my life. And from there, what breathwork has given me has been this unfolding of. [00:02:00]Purpose of passion of a mission of meaning. It's given me ultimately a completely different path in life that feels completely.

Aligned and coherent with who I am as a person. It has been such a gift on a personal level. And it's allowed me, to build a life that, that is really meaningful to me where I get to, to be of service to others.

Arthur: And it came about rather unusually for you. You were tapped on the shoulder by what I'm imagining as a friendly giant, a fellow rugby player. You are into rugby yourself. And he was like, do you want to, do you wanna do this? I'm doing this breath worth thing.

Do you wanna join? And you thought that sounds a bit weird. But screw it. I'm gonna try, can you tell us a bit about that experience?

Jamie: For sure. Yeah. I was incredibly resistant as a lot of people I encountered through my work also tend to be and skeptical and a little cynical. I was getting myself into lots of different things, trying lots of different things to support my mental and emotional wellbeing particularly, and I was practicing [00:03:00] yoga.

I was starting to get curious about meditation, but I'd never really heard of breath work. And it was just this sense of as a lot of people, even to this day, come to me saying, Hey, I, I know how to breathe. I I don't really need to pay too much attention to this. What could it possibly have to offer me?

And after a little while I just, there was something there that made me. It was probably actually the credibility of the person that suggested it to me. If I'm completely honest, okay, if this guy is coming to me thinking that it might be of some use to me it wasn't some, guy in long flowy white robes with a wide brim hat trying to lure me into a breath work experience.

It was a guy that I'd known, a guy that I really respect and so on just gently nudged me in that direction. And so that. Was the first door that opened, which was probably coming up to 8, 8, 9 years ago now. And that first experience was really profound, really powerful. It wasn't so much a, an overnight cure all, and it would be a sexy marketing story if it was, but it was definitely a doorway [00:04:00] that opened for me into an understanding of the role that the breath can play in every aspect of how we think and feel and experience life.

Arthur: Fun enough. Meditation was recommended to me through people, and it was, as you say, it was like, because of the credibility, because of how I looked to the people who are recommending it. I reacted, it took me a while to end up doing it. Maybe it was the same for you with breath work and then.

The experience and the benefits of that were very weird in that it was very instant. . And it was a big, a bit of a big hitting moment. But, it doesn't solve everything. And and still, life's filled with lots of different things. But talk us through, so you infer that it wasn't a kind of big hitting.

When necessarily straight away, but you clearly had faith in that. What was that journey to getting value like and when did your conviction start to build?

Jamie: I'd say the first thing that happened in that initial session was I felt a lot of sensations in my body. So I really felt [00:05:00] something, it wasn't like someone was trying to convince me of its efficacy. It was very a visceral felt sense experience where. I couldn't deny that there was something happening within me.

I was like, okay, that's, there's a legitimacy that felt sense gave me. And then from there it became a weekly practice where I would go to that same session, that same class. I really connected and resonated with the facilitator and the practitioner in that session as well. And it just became a bit of a following of the breadcrumbs.

Ultimately, I was like, okay, this, I felt something here that is giving me. Something that felt a little intangible, but really this sense of being back in my body and having a level of agency in my experience and that curiosity then opened up the deeper I went into it, the more I began to trust the practice, trust the practitioner, trust myself, I was able to drop in a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper, and my fascination with it really grew and I came to [00:06:00] understand.

My own body and my own nervous system in a new way, and really through that lens, I was able to understand my. Anxiety in a new way, my triggers in a new way, and create a level of space and separation between what was occurring around me and how I would then experience that. And so it was really in the room was impactful, but what was happening out of the room as well was incredibly impactful.

That kind of it. Deeper connection to my breath, day to day, moment to moment, noticing how my breath was changing throughout the day. How was I breathing when I felt anxious? How was I breathing when I felt calm? And then learning how to create those shifts and changes myself. The more that I understood about how we can work with the breath to create change within the system.

And so that was really the stepping stone and also really coming to appreciate and understand. Depth and breadth as well that the breath can take us to. And what I mean by that is that we have what I refer to as the micro level practices of how are we [00:07:00] working with the breath day to day, moment to moment.

How are we breathing right now? How is that affecting how we feel and think? But also then at the deeper end, these. Macro type experiences where we can use the breath to access these non-ordinary states of consciousness, these expanded states, these healing states, these emotional experiences that are akin to experiences that we can unlock with psychedelics.

And so it's this real broad spectrum of going. What is the simplest form of the breath and how can that support us? And that played such a vital role in my day-to-day experience. But then I was having these deeper experiences a couple of times a month that were unlocking something. Much greater, much, much broader in terms of an understanding of my emotions, my unconscious patterns and also a connection to spirituality that as a, young man in my early twenties I didn't really have any sense of up until the point that I came into this world and into this work.

Arthur: Jamie, clearly you benefit from it. In so many ways, but the way you [00:08:00] articulate it and the openness in which you do, so is very giving and telling of your strength and how much you care for other people and them receiving the same benefits. So thanks for that.

Now slightly challenging for you, but. If, someone walks into a room and says, okay, how could good breathing benefit me? Can we just draw, for these sort of a DHD minds like myself, can we uncover what it can do for people?

Jamie: I would always come back to, and this is very telling of how my brain works as well. I like frameworks and I like models, and I like visual interpretations of how these things can support us. So I think a lot about this spectrum of micro to macro, but then also within that three core distinct pillars of how we can work with the breath.

The first is around functional breathing. The second is nervous system regulation, and the third is conscious connected breathing. So we have functional breathing, which is. How do we breathe? [00:09:00] And it's an awareness of how do we breathe day to day, moment to moment. So this taking us away from never giving a second thought to how we breathe, to actually starting to gain a level of awareness of how we are breathing and what is that natural resting state of the breath we know now.

Through the research and through our anecdotal understanding that every breath that we take is sending signals back to the body through the nervous system to create shifts and changes. And we breathe the average adult between 20 and 30,000 times every single day. And so we have 20,000 plus signals through the breath coming back into our system.

The challenge with functional breathing that a lot of people face is we are breathing because of environmental factors, because of internal factors like stress and inflammation air pollution diet. We're breathing in a way that has become a hindrance to how we feel. So a lot of people are unconsciously.

Sat around all day, moving through their day, breathing very [00:10:00] short, very shallow into the upper chest, very quickly, often breathing through the mouth. And this is creating a bit of a vicious cycle because when we breathe in that way, we're creating stress in the system. When we're stressed in the system, we breathe in that way.

And so it creates this. Infinite loop of stress and shallow breathing and dysfunctional breathing, that unless we have an understanding of it and an awareness of it, we can't do anything about. And so that first pillar is about noticing how are you breathing moment to moment and what does a healthier pattern, a more supportive pattern actually look like?

Which is all about breathing deeply, breathing slowly, breathing through the nose, and just in a way that is naturally supportive of. Wellbeing. So that's really the core foundation of all things breath, is actually looking at how do you breathe day to day and how can we breathe in a way that is supportive of wellbeing and human flourishing.

The nervous system regulation piece is about. These simple but very effective practices and tools that we have to [00:11:00] create a change in our state. So to take us from feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, into feeling more calm, more balanced, more regulated. So tools like box breathing, extended exhale, breathing, five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes of these practices can make a significant difference to the state of.

Of the nervous system, whether we want to move into a desired state. So feeling more energized, feeling more relaxed, getting better sleep, or whether we want to move ourselves out of an undesired state. So we want to feel less anxious, less stress, less over, less overwhelmed.

So really using the breath as a remote control to create change. Internally within the nervous system. And then the third and final pillar is conscious connected breathing. And this is where we find these deeper experiences of therapeutic breath work, where we're able to open up these expanded states of consciousness for healing, for connection to ourselves and really dive deeper into the deeper layers of the psyche and the self.

So those three core [00:12:00] pillars are really where. I always invite people to begin. It's going, how are you breathing day to day? What are some simple techniques that you can use to support yourself in the moment? And then how might you start to explore these deeper experiences as well to really get to know yourself at a deeper level.

Arthur: And what's really impressive is just going on a website and just seeing. How clear the programs are structured. But also, how you structure the program and split them out into those three pillars and how people can learn really easily.

it must be quite moving, hearing about how. Some of these things, techniques change people. Can you think of some moments and stories in particular that have hit you?

Jamie: Yeah, ab absolutely. I think I've become a great appreciator of the smallest moments in my own life, but also in my work and seeing, whether it's reviews online or speaking to people directly. There have been a number of moments of, particularly. The ones that stand [00:13:00] out for me are often parents who have had, a really positive experience themselves.

They've then looked into how they can support their children, and they're having these beautiful moments with their children, where they're talking to them about their anxiety and their sleep and their stress. And I think that, for me, is so rewarding to see that trickle down kind of ripple effect of how we can be supporting, children coming up into as they grow up.

There are also a couple of really standout moments for me of people who have experienced my retreats and come into these longer processes where we're really, digging into the depths of the emotional body and past experiences and traumatic experiences as well. And yeah, one from my first retreat, which is about five years ago now, where there's a guy who came on that retreat who I'm still in touch with who.

Really had no prior experience of breath work and was. I remember his intake form. He shared that he was really just looking for some tools and tips to help with stress day to day and came away from it having had this really [00:14:00] powerful, quite transformational experience of meeting some of these younger parts of himself, but also working with some really heavy emotion that he'd been carrying.

And over the course of the next six months, really. Turned his life around. He was quite overweight at the time and lost a huge amount of weight after the experience. Really got himself in great physical shape but really as a downstream effect of getting himself into a much healthier mental and emotional state.

And yeah, having seen him over the last five years go from strength to strength, it's yeah, always so rewarding to see these, these experiences, whether it's a retreat, whether it's a workshop, whether it's, whatever form it takes really acting as a launchpad for people into a different way of looking after themselves.

And that's what I always hope is that the work goes beyond the session itself and that we're able to support people and actually shifting how they live their life longer term rather than it being more of a flash in the pan type moment.

Arthur: And you've got some retreats coming up at Winterborne. Are they sold out already or.[00:15:00]

Jamie: We're in the planning phase at the moment. So I've got one retreat coming up actually in a couple of weeks at the beginning of April down in Cornwall. But then I'll be, yeah, hoping to be at WINTERBORNE in June and September. So there's yeah, some exciting things in the works. And yeah I love the retreat process because just getting that opportunity to.

Spend a, an extended period of time with people and actually get to see the human being underneath and support them in whatever it is that they need support with is always a really special and rewarding experience.

Arthur: And just diving into that third type of breathing focus for you. So you call it transformational breath work,

Jamie: it comes under many different names, but yeah, that's a, that's probably the easiest one.

Arthur: Yeah. Can you give an idea about that? Because, we've got here that you can alter your state of consciousness process trauma and explore emotional healing. would love to hear a bit more about that and maybe some idea on what the process looks like.

Jamie: Absolutely. Yeah I really view it as a bit of an unsung [00:16:00] therapeutic modality. I think the more we're starting to see research come into this space, my hope and my intention and part of my mission is really to raise the profile of this particular modality of breath work as a healing tool, because it really.

It's changed a lot in the last 10 years, particularly the last five years in terms of the places and spaces that it's reaching, but it still lives in the fringes of more spiritual traditions and yeah, I suppose complimentary therapies. And I really feel that it has a, an important role to play in mainstream therapeutic practices.

So these transformational experiences with breath work are underpinned by something called conscious connected breathing. So it's a very particular pattern of breathing. Where we're increasing the volume and rate of breathing. So we're actually, some people would call it high ventilation breath work or controlled hyperventilation.

So you're actually intentionally hyperventilating, not in a very panicky way, but actually just bigger, fuller breaths for a continuous period of time. [00:17:00] What happens when we do that? Essentially, one of, one of my workshops around this particular form of breath work will have between 20 and 40 people.

Comfortable space, making sure everyone feels safe, relaxed, secure in the space. It's done laying down and you typically breathe in this particular way for between 30 and 60 minutes. So you're breathing in this particular way. And as you start to breathe in this way, you're changing your blood biochemistry.

You're changing. Blood flow to certain regions of the brain, and essentially what is at the core of this experience is that we are turning down the dial on. The egoic mind, the default mode network, this sort of seat of rumination within our brains. And we are also increasing activity in the unconscious and the subconscious in areas of the brain associated with things like emotional processing.

And so what can occur here is that we are really, as one of my mentors, put it, creating a trance-like [00:18:00] hypnotic state where unconscious material can surface to be. Processed. So we're really allowing turning up the dial on some of the stuff that day-to-day lives in the background and in a safe space that is well facilitated.

It gives people the opportunity to reframe. And recalibrate their relationship with challenging material from within the psyche. And so if you've had challenging experiences in your past, if you've met, really pushed down, or not expressed or explored something that has happened in your life, this is giving it somewhere to be explored and to recalibrate that experience.

Arthur: That's really fascinating. With meditation, for example I do transcendental meditation and on the surface it looks like a commitment. You meditate twice a day of 20 minutes , but, it's quite strange in that you feel more connected to lots of unusual things around you and like a far greater sense of awareness. Which it sounds like breathwork really can give [00:19:00] you. Have there been some things that have not freaked you out per se, but have really demonstrated. Your change of awareness.

Maybe it's with yourself. You've talked in the past about how you used to suffer occasionally a panic attack and you've not had one since, since this breath work.

Jamie: Yeah, it's really fascinating. I think, I try and always look back at how would a 21-year-old version of myself. Look at me today. And I'd probably at 21 think that me today was a borderline loon. And I can sit here feeling more at ease and more at peace in myself than you know I ever have done before in my life.

And I, I do put a lot of that down to the role that breathwork has played and. Not just directly, but also indirectly in what it has opened up in my life elsewhere. The conversations I have, the awareness that I have, the other practices that have entered my life. I guess in terms of.

Significant shifts and things that have shown up through conscious connected breathing [00:20:00]transformational practices within the world of breath. There's one, one particular experience where I had this overwhelming feeling of joy and bliss and this EU really euphoric state and. At the point in my life at which that experience arrived, I had been struggling with low mood and depression for quite a while.

And it was like a light bulb switching back on. It was really this sense of, oh, this emotion is possible. It welcomed back was the feeling that I had was it just came back in abundance. And it wasn't that it stayed, I wasn't blissful and joyful for the entire, the rest of my days, but it was that very visceral.

Experiential reminder that emotion and that joy was possible in my life. And so to have something, to, to aim at a North star in terms of wow, that feeling is real. And I felt it, that was really profound and I'm always blown away. By the potential that these deeper experiences, breath work [00:21:00] can open up for people.

I've had very experienced people in the realms of healing and personal processing come into my spaces who have sat with, every plant medicine under the sun. They've had, multiple years of experience in lots of different spaces and lots of different modalities, and they're able to.

Tap into states through breath work that transcend some of those experiences. I've had people who've said that, they've had the single most powerful. Experience of their life through breath work. They've not taken a substance, they've not had to travel to see a shaman in Central America, in the Amazon.

They've just been in a space in London where they feel comfortable enough to go deep with their breath and really met a whole new part of themselves. So there's a lot of scope and a lot of potential I feel for breath work in this form to play a really pivotal role in the future of mental health treatment.

And I think we're only just starting to scratch the surface from that perspective.

Arthur: Jamie, look at you pushing the boundaries of, human knowledge and performance and, thank you for that. So beautifully [00:22:00] put so you were recently, I know you've been doing some work with Johnny Wilkinson, the rugby player. , Tell us about performance and breath work.

Jamie: Yeah it's been a fascinating part of the journey to be honest. And I played a lot of rugby, growing up. And Johnny he was the guy he was, an idol of mine for a very long time. And yeah, to have come into contact with him and forged a friendship with him has been,

really beautiful experience and he's got an incredible mind. And there's a lot of resonance as to how we view the world, how we both , view, life and performance. And I actually take a lot of inspiration from him in terms of how he speaks to performance from where he sits now.

And I see it in a lot of the. Yeah, whether it's musicians, whether it's actors, whether it's CEOs, whether it's sports people that, it's a particular kind of personality and way of operating that takes you to the levels that, that some of these people are operating at. What I always find fascinating is the role that I see my work playing in those spaces isn't actually to.

Show them anything new or te teach them [00:23:00] anything new, but it's often to help them and support , when I first became a musician, or first started playing rugby, it was my life. It brought me so much joy. And then it becomes a career, and then it becomes a profession. And then it can start if you're not careful to lose that magic and. There's something that the breath can do and really deep self work can do, which is clear away a lot of the noise of the mind and really come back to the heart and soul of why they started.

And so that for me has been a really consistent theme across a lot of these high performers is how do we help someone and support someone in coming back to the love of the thing, the love of the game, the love of their passion and make it enjoyable again. And so that really, yeah without going into specificities of people and stories.

That tends to be the narrative is the role that the breath can play in bringing us back to the simplicity of your heart or your soul's passion [00:24:00] and purpose and the meaning of it all. And finding that kind of enjoyment in the simplicity of it as well. So yeah, that tends to be the approach and the path with that level of people.

Arthur: Really interesting in bringing people back to their inner child. So you've talked in the past and a bit with Johnny about the dichotomy between, listening to the world, and then also, pushing hard to create certain outcomes and the dichotomy between the two. There was a phrase that was used.

Do you, can you remember what that phrase was?

Jamie: I do remember that part of the conversation, this kind of balance between discipline and surrender. I think those two are always a really interesting one because I think it's the nature of my understanding of reality is that there is this constant toing and froing and slight tightrope walk between.

Discipline and surrender between the mind and the soul, between, the finite and the sense of the infinite. And those two coexist in every aspect of reality. And often [00:25:00] our struggles come when we are over identified with one side or the other. If it's all about discipline and structure, then everything feels rigid, everything feels tight, everything feels forced.

If we're over identified with surrender, then life is fluid in. The shadow sense where there's just no structure, there's no discipline, and it's just messy. And so it's about pulling those levers and noticing in your life where you need to dial up one side or the other. If I'm in a very creative mode, I want to embrace that, I want to lean into that.

But if I don't give that any structure and any kind of time bounding or yeah, there's no wrapper around it, then it can just be very open-ended and it can be, it can bubble over. And so it's really trying to balance those two, knowing, I think I spoke to Johnny about this as well, viewing discipline and habits and that structure as the bowling alley bumpers along the edge of the.

Bowling lane of life. It's not the cleanest analogy, but , it makes sense in [00:26:00] my head where we're putting these training wheels on to support us to then flow freely. So it's having the structure in place that allows us to, to flourish rather than, getting rid of all structure or only being in the micro detail of the habits and the structure and really trying to grind through everything.

So it's just always about course correction and understanding where we are on that pendulum and that spectrum, and seeing what feels good for us to have more of.

Arthur: Jamie. You, you've got the privileged position of being really exposed to people. A mean a lot of people, but b, in the nature and how you meet them and how open they are and I imagine the more open they are to a degree, the more they can get out, the use of your time, et cetera.

How do the best performers, those that have got a healthy narrative with themselves that aren't crushed by their drive. Have you noticed some self narrative that they give themselves

Jamie: yeah, I, again, it starts to creep into cliche but I think [00:27:00] there's good reason for that because, the sort of models have stood the test of time, and the one thing I see very often is this sense of having a direction and a vision and a North star, like somewhere that they want to head towards, but the enjoyment and the love.

Primarily being of the process itself. So it's this whole idea of enjoying the journey, enjoy the process, trust the process, they love the thing itself, and they know if they continue to do that day to day, they will get to the place that they're hoping to get to. Or it might change form and it, they might get to somewhere that exceeds that.

But by really loving. The process itself, they do tend to go far beyond the people that have really fixated on that goal and grinding themselves into the ground. So I think that's often a big one is that that understanding that we have to enjoy the here and now, and if we can, then that will take us a long [00:28:00] way.

Arthur: Yeah, so insightful that you touched on the importance of enjoying the process and I think it's underestimated sometimes on how hard people have had to work and that they've only, in some instances, only been able to put those hours in because the process is pleasurable to them, to a degree.

And you don't see that, from the outside necessarily. But let's jump in. Back into word of breathing. So I'm a listener and I'm thinking, okay, Jamie Guy sounds like he knows his staff. How can people know, and work out if that day-to-day breathing isn't optimal?

And can you give us some top tips on A, noting that b. How we can be breathing generally better day to day.

Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. So what I would say to people is, we don't want ever to create another kind of fixation or obsession. So holding all of this stuff quite gently and loosely, but starting to bring a level of awareness to moments throughout the day where you can check in with your breathing.

The way this always [00:29:00] started for me was throughout the day. Noticing the points where I don't feel great, whether I'm feeling a bit flustered, a bit overwhelmed, a bit sluggish. That's my opportunity to stop, to pause and to notice I'm breathing. Am I breathing through my nose or my mouth?

Am I breathing into my chest or my belly? Am I, able to sit comfortably and be still and just notice my breathing and we start to. Ultimately speak the language of our breathing. Go. Okay. I know when I'm answering emails, I sometimes hold my breath. That's something that shows up really commonly.

Or when I am, going into a big meeting, I find myself breathing really fast and really shallow and I almost can't contain it. It's starting to piece together this picture and puzzle of your unique individual breath and how you breathe day to day. And so that's really layer number one is the awareness.

It's like, how are we breathing? The important thing really to understand then from how we can start to, to change that at some of the fundamentals of functional breathing. Healthy, [00:30:00] optimal breath at rest day to day. Moment to moment would be through the nose. It would be slow, it would be gentle, and it would be expansive and deep.

So using the diaphragm into the lower belly, the side ribs, and getting this nice, deep, expansive breath. And so the way we start to work towards that is in those moments throughout the day, this can be, micro moments of a minute, two minutes, five minutes. I always say to people, look at where the natural breaks are in your day.

So when I come off of this call with you, or before my next client, or before a meeting that I have later in the day, in that moment, two things. Awareness of the breath and then working actively with the breath. And so I go, how am I breathing right now? Can I tune into my breath and can I take 2, 3, 5, slow?

Deep breaths in and out of the nose. So just starting to break up the day those natural pauses, and start to rewire and reframe your [00:31:00] natural breathing pattern. And the final piece of the puzzle, which I think is an important one to mention, is, working with the breath directly is incredibly effective, but also our breathing pattern is shaped and defined by the state of our nervous system.

So while we can support it through the breath, there are also. A lot of other ways we can start to support the nervous system through the pace at which we live our lives, spending time in nature environment design. So how are you actually living your life? Because I think a lot of people go, oh, there's a problem with my breathing and the fastest way to resolve that is gonna be through my breathing.

And there is a case for that. But I would also say. It's so multifactor and multifaceted that we also have to look at the environment and the circumstances of how we're living. If we stay in a very high pace, high stress environment, you're gonna be up against it to create meaningful change in your state as well.

Arthur: I'm not gonna read out benefits. Perhaps you've got a comment on these, but physical benefits, so can lower blood pressure, heart rate, improve lung capacity, oxygen [00:32:00] efficiency reducing corsol levels, which is the stress hormone. But sleep quality, increase energy, alertness strengthens the immune system, helps with chronic pain management, my God reducing anxiety.

Breaking cycles of overthinking and rumination processes, stored trauma and emotional blockages releasing suppressed emotions, improving focus and mental clarity. That's a number of things to think about. Do you have any comments on those?

Jamie: Yeah. I would say if we really took that list one by one and broke it all down individually, if we wanted to get as close to a broad brush stroke as possible, in my opinion, I would say many of those would be downstream symptoms of. Nervous system dysregulation. Nervous system dysregulation, chronic stress, chronic inflammation, which can then present as anxiety, poor sleep, increased blood pressure, rumination, suppressed [00:33:00] emotion, all ev almost everything that you listed there.

And that's why, the breath is such an accessible and powerful tool because we're able to work directly with the state of the nervous system. We're able to work directly with emotions that are being held in the body and within the nervous system, and that becomes an incredibly powerful tonic when worked with effectively because often, the mainstream medical system.

Is very much about treating symptoms. We go, okay, the issue is insomnia. Here's a sleeping pill. The issue is chronic stress. Here's another, it's an anti-anxiety medication when actually if you look bigger picture, if you look at lifestyle, if you look at, the way of the world as well, we are a chronically.

Activated, chronically stressed, hypervigilant society on mass right now. And stress and anxiety rates are on the up, day to day for many people. And so these tools are a direct counterbalance and a direct response to the state of our collective nervous system, as well as on the [00:34:00] level of the individual.

And so that's where a lot of these benefits arise from, is. Learning how to work with your system to reduce your internal noise and your external noise, and through doing so, inflammation reduction, stress reduction, sleep improvement, all of those benefits start to come through when we start to slow things down and work with our nervous system effectively.

Arthur: it is almost an overwhelming list of benefits, but also it's a non-exhaustive, rather like meditation. There are so many nuanced things that you get that are products of x and y.

And I like the way how you frame, breath work in, that it's, it's so connected to your environment and lifestyle. So it's not one being all be all and end all magic source, as it were necessarily

now. I want to give people an idea on how they can breathe. Breathe not good, but breathe great. Be, taking your principles into just smashing life. Can you take us down that road?

Jamie: Yeah, for sure. I think [00:35:00] there's a framework that I like to follow. I'll preface this by saying one of the things I love about this work as well, and this kind of alludes to a point you were just making, is that it can meet us where we're at. And so it works slightly differently for every individual.

It can really support you with whatever you're facing. But if I were to sort of prescribe. A framework for people to follow that I believe would benefit a large majority of people in a pretty significant way. It would be this. So what I would want to support somebody in doing is building a daily structure and scaffolding that supports a healthy balance nervous system, particularly around what we're just saying there around stress and inflammation.

So what I would look at there would be, book ending the day with two distinct practices. So I would have a sort of more balancing morning practice, first thing in the morning and a kind of deep relaxation practice just before bed. I would then have a mid-morning reset [00:36:00] practice, mid-afternoon reset practice.

So those four, four. Practices there. And then I would also come back to those micro moments in those natural pauses in the day. So end of a meeting, end of a call, wherever you find that natural pause. Taking two to five minutes to reset. So you've got these four, 10 to 15 minute practices.

Mid-morning, mid afternoon, beginning of the day, end of day. And then those micro practices dotted throughout. So that for me would be, when I work with somebody one-to-one, if they're hitting that most days, what we see can create pretty significant change inside a couple of weeks. And the longer you build that, it just compounds over time.

What I would then put in alongside that would be probably monthly. A deeper dive with some kind of transformational breath work, because that's almost like you are slightly heavier, hitting deeper dive, very intentional exploration of self where we're working with [00:37:00] the deeper aspects of your psyche and your body.

And so you've got these two aspects of the day-to-day micro piece, which is laying the foundations and the stability and the safety for you to be able to meet life as it is and hold it. And then taking those deeper aspects to really go digging to resolve some of that underlying stuff so that it all pieces together and it all starts to work in quite a cohesive way.

So that would be. My blueprint for anybody going if I was gonna start somewhere and I really wanted to dive into this, where would I go? That would be my recommendation and my prescription. For as broad a brush stroke as I could take,

Arthur: Your course 21 Days of Breath Work. Tell us a bit about that,

Jamie: yeah, so it's really designed to take people on this 21 day, but three stage process that goes across the three pillars that we've discussed. So it starts around functional breathing, so looking at your natural breathing pattern, some of the foundations of breathing. Then it goes into.

Nervous system [00:38:00] regulation. How can we create calm, but also how can we create energy through working with the breath? And then it closes the final three days with conscious connected breathing and transformational breath work. So it's really taking people on this flow and this journey from the fundamental basics that we, we ultimately have to begin with all the way through to some of those deeper explorations and deeper dives through the breath.

Arthur: Can we do a minute on the whole taping mouth sleeping thing. What percentage of people have a deviated septum?

And how important or powerful would it be for them to get that, sorted?

Jamie: Yeah. So the mouth taping thing is interesting. I'll just, I'll touch on the deviated septin piece first. I don't know the exact stats. To be completely transparent, I know it affects a decent number of people and it's one of the few things that. Creates real challenge around healthy breathing.

Particularly while we're asleep, we wanna be breathing through the nose, day to day as well. And if we do have a, some kind of physical [00:39:00] mechanical blockage to that, the deviated septum, just making it challenging to breathe freely through the nose, that can be a challenge for people.

And the correction of that is typically surgical. And it's not a, it's not an enjoyable. Experience or process. It's something I've been through myself, but I'd say the benefit longer term for me was certainly worth it. And then the mouth taping piece is I suppose an extension of that once we are able to breathe freely through the nose or at least have the capacity to do mouth taping at night during sleep if you are generally fit. And no pre-existing medical conditions, not currently pregnant. Then. It can be of great benefit because while we're asleep, obviously we have no control over how we're breathing consciously. And if you are prone to nighttime mouth breathing, this can have a pretty significant impact on cognitive function, on sleep quality, on hydration and many other aspects of health and wellbeing.

And so the tape just invites the breath to come [00:40:00] back through the nose at night, which. Again, for a lot of people that I've worked with in my own life as well, but also in my practice can be really supportive of the overall picture of nervous system health and respiratory health.

Because if we're, awake 16 hours a day, breathing well and keeping on top of how we breathe. And then we go to bed at night and breathe through our mouths for eight hours. Then we're undoing a lot of the really positive work that we're doing in the day. And so it can be a really helpful and supportive thing just to move us towards healthier overall functional breathing across waking, but also across, across sleep as well.

Arthur: Jamie. Wow. You've given us such a holistic insight into, practical ways we can improve breathing, but also how it benefits us. We're gonna move now to the quick vow questions.

People come out of your course and they're gonna tell you what the course has given them in four words and how it's made them feel. What words would you want them to use?

Jamie: peaceful, connected.

Loving and [00:41:00] whole,

Arthur: Favorite book or artist that isn't obvious?

Jamie: The book that comes to mind is you are the happiness you seek by rut. S spra,

Arthur: Words you would tell your younger self.

Jamie: It's not that serious. Don't forget to laugh.

Arthur: I love that, Jamie, it's been such a pleasure thank you.

Jamie: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Arthur.