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Rewriting the Nervous System: Jamie Clements on What Breathwork Really Offers
332 Plays9 days ago
In this episode of The Choice to Grow, Scott sits down with breathwork practitioner and mental health advocate Jamie Clements. What begins as a conversation about the power of the breath unfolds into a deeper reflection on stillness, masculine identity, and what it takes to come back into the body. Jamie shares his own journey—from struggling with anxiety and dissociation to finding his voice through the breath—and the quiet revolution that happens when we stop running from our discomfort.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re “doing all the work” but still not feeling safe inside your own life, this episode is for you.
Jamie Clements - Consciousness Guide, Breathworker, Thought Leader
Jamie Clements is the founder of The Breath Space and host of the Human Nature Podcast, recognised as a leading voice in the wellbeing space and an expert breathwork facilitator. His work explores the intersection of breath, consciousness, and human potential, drawing from Zen philosophy, non-dual approaches, modern neuroscience, and psychology to guide people towards deeper awareness and transformation.
Jamie has worked with top entrepreneurs, politicians, athletes, and global brands, sharing the life-changing potential of breathwork and altered states of consciousness. His approach is rooted in both scientific research and ancient wisdom, offering a unique blend of practical tools and profound insight.
After experiencing first-hand the profound impact of breathwork, Jamie is deeply passionate about helping others unlock its power. He believes that the breath is the most universal and accessible tool for shifting the mind, regulating the nervous system, and cultivating a healthier, more connected way of living.
Scott Schwenk - Master Coach, Spiritual Teacher, Leadership Consultant
Scott Schwenk’s teachings, courses and private mentoring guide leaders, seekers and creatives to explore their deepest selves in service of thriving on all levels of being, both individually and relationally.
Host and creator of the podcast The Choice To Grow, Scott is known for his hugely popular courses and workshops with OneCommune.com, Younity.com, Wanderlust Festivals, and Unplug Meditation, Scott has been catalyzing the inner evolution of others for decades: helping them to grow, transform obstacles into opportunities, and find Love within.
Apprenticeships in leadership development, meditation and philosophy training, shadow work/shadow resolution and spiritual awakening are all part of Scott’s development into the thought-leader that he is today. He continues to refine his offerings studying and practicing with key innovators at the leading edges of human development.
Scott’s teachings support the entire person to not only progressively recognize, stabilize and embody our inextricable oneness with the source of creation (Waking Up), but also to resolve the wounds of the past (Cleaning Up), continually expand our capacities for wider and more inclusive perspectives on any moment (Growing Up) and creatively and joyfully participate and collaborate with all of life as a loving thriving human being (Showing Up).
You can receive a free guided meditation and explore Scott’s courses, workshops, retreats, training and master coaching at https://scottschwenk.com and can find him on Instagram @thescottschwenk.
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Transcript
Introduction and Breathing Exercise
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to The Choice to Grow. I'm Scott Schwenk. Through these dialogues, we'll explore fresh perspectives and discover practical tools for navigating a thriving life that adds value wherever we are.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'll introduce you to innovators and creators from across our world who embody what it means to cultivate growing as a way of life. Let's prepare together.
00:00:24
Speaker
Take a deep breath in.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hold breath briefly as you soften your shoulders and soften the soles of your feet and palms of your hands. Then exhale like you're releasing tension and setting down a heavy burden from every cell.
Jamie's Journey into Breathwork
00:00:43
Speaker
Now let's dive in.
00:00:48
Speaker
Welcome everybody. Welcome back to The Choice to Grow. I have a very special guest that I'm delighted to share with you. Jamie Clements is the founder of The Breath Space and host of the Human Nature Podcast. I love that name.
00:01:04
Speaker
Recognized as a leading voice in the well-being space and an expert breathwork facilitator. His work explores the intersection of breath, consciousness, and human potential, drawing from Zen philosophy, non-dual approaches, modern neuroscience and psychology to guide people towards deeper awareness and transformation.
00:01:23
Speaker
Jamie's worked with top entrepreneurs, politicians, athletes, and global brands, sharing the life-changing potential of breathwork and altered states of consciousness. His approach is rooted in both scientific research and ancient wisdom, offering a unique blend of practical tools and profound insight.
00:01:42
Speaker
After experiencing firsthand the profound impact of breathwork, Jamie is deeply passionate about helping others to unlock its power. He believes that the breath is the most universal and accessible tool for shifting the mind, regulating the nervous system, and cultivating a healthier, more connected way of living.
00:02:02
Speaker
I came across Jamie in the last few weeks on Instagram. I believe it was through ah colleague slash friend, Maud Hearst's account somehow.
00:02:13
Speaker
And I listened to a couple of Jamie's reels and I knew right away, just like I did, and i told you all with James Gill out of Australia, There's a sound in the voice. There's a something we can hear in somebody's voice with the right awareness and attunement that tells us if they're living what they're teaching.
00:02:33
Speaker
Are we perfect? No. Are we works in progress? i sure am. So without further ado, i want to invite you to make space, take a couple of fresh deep breaths for this conversation with Jamie.
00:02:46
Speaker
Jamie, I'm delighted to be here with you. Thank you for accepting the invitation. ah One of the things I'll say off the top is it's lovely to be able to meet with people who are doing similar things in a collaborative space. like
Collaboration in Wellness
00:03:04
Speaker
There's no concern that there's not enough people.
00:03:08
Speaker
There's plenty of people. There's plenty of people. And I really feel like the future is collaborative. Absolutely.
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah. And thank you so much, Scott, for for inviting me on. And yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. And always interesting. I was actually going to ask you, I'm glad I saved it, um where the invitation came from and and kind of how how you came across my work. And yeah, Maud is a wonderful human being and a wonderful ah teacher. And yeah, I've been fortunate to work alongside her a few times now. So yeah, that's so really lovely to hear.
00:03:44
Speaker
And I couldn't agree more. It's it's something that I have explored and and grappled with over the past six years of of my career in this space of this notion of, or this, yeah, this notion of, of competition.
Authenticity and Personal Growth
00:03:58
Speaker
And, um, I guess within that kind of undercurrents of scarcity where we go, oh I don't want to speak to that person because they do the same thing as me. And I don't want to speak to that person. I don't want to work with that person.
00:04:11
Speaker
ah yeah It's something that I feel fortunate in, you know, London where I am and in the UK within the space, the, the majority of people that I have come into contact share this energy of collaboration and this this genuine sense that there is not only enough to go around, but also that even if we were to be delivering the same kind of session that it would land and be received completely differently by virtue of us being unique and um distinct individuals. And I mentor a very small handful of of sort of new and emerging Breathwork facilitators and they go,
00:04:53
Speaker
I need to find my niche. And I go, firmly believe, and it's a bit of a cliche, but I think it's a cliche because it's accurate that you are the niche when it comes to this kind of purpose-led teaching and and educating and facilitations. People resonate with you because you're you.
00:05:11
Speaker
And that is a beautiful thing and a powerful thing. And it really allows us to collaborate in in a unique and special way with people that that resonate with us. i would I would wholeheartedly agree. mean, I've got goosebumps.
00:05:25
Speaker
you know It's an interesting thing. I've also trained healers over the years. I've gone and in and out of that space, more so in the front end of the, I think it was 22 or 23 years ago that I was reintroduced to breathwork by David Elliott.
00:05:39
Speaker
who I hope to have on the show later in the year, and mentored very, very closely with him, apprenticed to him, managed his book tour, the first book he dropped, and and really sat in all the seats, um selling his oils to work with people on the body during the breath, learning to facilitate his healer trainings, down to wordfor word for word.
00:06:01
Speaker
And we saw so many people come through the trainings. The way he's worked it, there's five levels of training.
00:06:11
Speaker
There's a word, a beautiful word in Sanskrit, adhikara, a-d-h-i-k-a-r-a. Often it's translated as authority, but it's it really is a combination of like the readiness, the right timing, and the preparation and the embodiment to either be able to teach something or study it.
00:06:34
Speaker
So it's on both sides. Like the student has adhikara, the teacher has adhikara. And there's folks that I come across from time to time, you being one of them, um who hit the ground running. You actually remind me of me.
00:06:48
Speaker
Start really young. um you know You said six years in the career, and i'm like, wow, that's interesting. you know I'm like somewhere over 30 years at this, 20 some odd full time.
00:07:01
Speaker
Every year I've said to some of my closest mentors, wow, I feel like I'm just now fit to start walking the path. you know So it's an interesting thing that we can we can have these capacities that we just that are innate somehow, like a calling, right?
00:07:16
Speaker
And I'm curious to find out more about your growing up and your childhood and your awareness of any of this around you. um And then there's people who they want to do something, we want to facilitate, or they're called to it somehow, but they need to get cooked a little longer.
00:07:34
Speaker
What do you observe around people who say they want to train and do this? What what kind of things you seeing around this? ah Yeah, the the training landscape has evolved and emerged and and grown in the last,
00:07:51
Speaker
five plus years in in particular, um especially in the last couple
Breathwork Impact and Ethics
00:07:56
Speaker
of years. And I think for better and for worse, and i was having this conversation with a mentor of mine and we're saying, well, as anything grows, I think it's a part of the natural life cycle, right? As something becomes more popular as a modality or a tool or whatever it might be.
00:08:13
Speaker
you get growth at both ends of the the bell curve. You get a lot of really, really good stuff that expands. You also get a lot of shadowy, shady stuff that expands and you also get a load in the middle.
00:08:26
Speaker
And I think that's natural and inevitable and and sort of innately human with the growth of of anything. I think it presents challenges when we get into the depths of this particular kind of work where we're exploring you know the deeper layers of the psyche, the self and working with trauma.
00:08:45
Speaker
It becomes problematic um and there's the the increase for risk rises or the yeah the potential, the scope for risk rises because we the more we understand about this work, the more we understand its power.
00:09:02
Speaker
And yeah to to quote Spider-Man, with with great power comes great responsibility. and And I think that's something that I see in in Breath in particular is, and we were discussing this just before we came on air, which is how do we reconcile the simplicity and accessibility of breath, which is actually at the root of its power, and the profound impact that the breath can have.
00:09:34
Speaker
yeah the The number of times you and I will have both heard, um and I actually heard it from a group of teenagers that I was doing a workshop with last night, It's just breathing. sure and Why do i need to be taught how to breathe? What could breathing possibly do for me?
00:09:47
Speaker
You know, everything that we've heard for many, many years and continue to hear. And then also reading research papers, sitting in ceremony, having personal experiences where we are like expanded and exposed to these deeply mystical, spiritual, powerful transformational experiences.
00:10:07
Speaker
How does that add up? and And I think that for me is at the root of some of the challenges in the industry right now around training and ethics, which is I could tell the listeners right now how to explain in 30 seconds how to do conscious connected breathing.
00:10:25
Speaker
You can explain the technique in 30 seconds if you're being a efficient. and um That doesn't mean you're equipped so to facilitate. And I think that's where the lines are blurring because we're going, oh, this is so wonderfully simple. How wonderful.
00:10:40
Speaker
Now you can learn it in a weekend. And I think you're right. You you get this such this really broad range of individuals who are drawn to this work. and And I stand by the belief that 99% of those people are drawn to this work with the best of intentions.
00:10:57
Speaker
And there are just people, it meets them at different points. You know, i work with many existing therapists of all different kinds of modalities who are drawn to this work and they go, oh, what kind of training should I do?
00:11:13
Speaker
And then you might get someone who actually more like me, I suppose, came from a background of I was in the corporate world, I was in the tech world and I wasn't really in the world of of therapeutics. I wasn't really in the world of holistic health and wellness and found myself pulled and drawn to this work in in such a deep way.
00:11:34
Speaker
And as you rightly said, I think there are some people that can hit the ground running. There seems to be something really deep within them that is a natural fit. And other people where it's not quite such a natural fit, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't get there. I think it's, there are there are layers to it. There are ah layers to to what draws us to the work, but also what allows us to facilitate in a way that has that has impact and that has substance as well.
00:12:05
Speaker
Impact and substance, yeah. And even that, you know, the subtleties of that Well, I'm actually going to invite you listeners in in a different way, a little deeper. So maybe you don't facilitate transformational work with people or you're not facilitating ah therapeutic work.
00:12:22
Speaker
Yet there are things that you do in life that you care about that matter to you. And we what we're looking at really is in part, we could frame this as the path of mastery. which from my chair is always evolving, really looking to see where I can grow without ever setting up camp and claiming some completion, which I think is a setup for for pain and difficulty. So where are you listeners? Where are you?
00:12:50
Speaker
actually called to and following through on that, where are you called to discover refining some aspect of your character, your walkthrough life, your craft, and map that onto what we're talking about.
00:13:04
Speaker
Because that's really the meta subject here is the choice to grow, like the name of the podcast.
00:13:13
Speaker
You know, there's this notion of of somebody who has walked the path in previous lifetimes very strongly, not
Jamie's Personal Challenges and Growth
00:13:24
Speaker
completed it. This is from the more the Eastern cosmology.
00:13:27
Speaker
and The Sanskrit is a yogi brashta, somebody who's not completed their path, gotten far along and is born into circumstances that are conducive to picking it back up again.
00:13:39
Speaker
And, you know, typically it's often been described to my ear as like born to a wealthier pious family is the way that the kind of texts write it. My experience actually is that may or may not be the case wealth or or or spiritually inclined family, more so the case people, and I count myself in one of them, who are cracked open by difficult life experiences at an early age.
00:14:04
Speaker
What's your experience of that in your own life? Yeah, absolutely. and it's interesting that you raised that previous point as well, because what instantly popped into my mind when we were discussing this was this you know notion of old souls. I've always been described as an old soul. And I think um perhaps you know when we find our current form of purpose, that seems to be you know, it can have purpose as ah an old soul and perhaps it drops in quite quickly and quite deeply.
00:14:32
Speaker
Or you could have find ah a level of purpose as a ah newer soul and you find yourself, I suppose, having to explore and figure out figure things out and learn some things rather than it dropping in quite so naturally.
00:14:45
Speaker
In terms of my personal experience with and being cracked open, that was certainly my route and my path into into where I find myself now. So had a relatively I'd like to call it an uneventful upbringing um from sort of 0 to 15. I was ah always described as a highly sensitive, um shy child.
00:15:12
Speaker
i was I was quite reserved. I was quite introverted. And some of those aspects still stay with me to to this day. Absolutely. i'm I was very academic, very kind of intellectual growing up.
00:15:26
Speaker
um quite high achieving and worked very hard. And at the age of 15, actually one thing that I'd add just to to kind of my late or early teen life was I had this fascination with human nature, which ironic given the name of the podcast I now have, but I had this fascination with with human nature, psychology, why I thought the way I thought, why I felt the way I felt, and and why other people also did.
00:15:58
Speaker
And at the age of 15, my parents got divorced and separated, and that really... hit me incredibly hard. um I remember very clearly the the day that they they shared that that decision with us. And the from from the place of understanding that I now sit in, I went into total shutdown. i went into total freeze.
00:16:23
Speaker
I wasn't particularly upset. I wasn't particularly angry. i wasn't There was nothing outward. It was... numb and was almost like ah like a flashbang had gone off and my ears were ringing and I couldn't really tell what was going on outside of myself.
00:16:38
Speaker
And I think that assisted as to an extent, my default state for the best part of eight or nine years. Wow. Came in and out of those places. But I think that was often where I returned to. There was a real heightened sensitivity to stress and strain that manifested in that sort of dissociative shutdown.
00:17:01
Speaker
And the manifestation of that that I think then led to what played out in my sort of mid to late twenty s was becoming deeply, deeply disconnected from myself or my my soul, as I would now say, and my essence.
00:17:22
Speaker
And through that process, this I suppose one of the core symptoms of that for me was this this deep desire to fit in and be accepted.
00:17:34
Speaker
And I became this incredibly malleable, adaptable. you know I was a master of adaptation unconsciously. i could I could fit in wherever I needed to.
00:17:46
Speaker
That took me further and further away from myself and also then started manifesting in experiences of anxiety, experiences of panic attacks, experiences of of what I would later come to call depression.
00:17:59
Speaker
um But ultimately for me, just absolute removal from myself, disconnection from myself. And and those were the symptoms of that. And that led me into jobs that I never should have ended up in. It led me into you know places and spaces that that I didn't was able to function in you know my life from 15 to 23, 24 was by all external measures, relatively successful, relatively high achieving.
00:18:30
Speaker
um But where I was heading, I was way off course. um And that's those symptoms. I always view them as they were trying to push me back on on track.
00:18:40
Speaker
um But I had my fingers in my ears and I wasn't I wasn't too good at listening. And so, yeah, that that for me was definitely the, I suppose, long period of um if that process, but it became, I suppose, the noise became increasingly loud. The alarm became increasingly loud as I got into my early 20s, which led to one particular year that that really was the the cracking open that led to to everything that came since.
00:19:10
Speaker
And was there an event in that year or ah series of events? I'd say a series of events. i um ended up being let go from from a job. I had a relationship that was challenging and quite unhealthy that came to an end.
Community and Connection in Breathwork
00:19:26
Speaker
um And I also lost a friend from school to suicide. ah wow Wow. It was one hell of a year. um And it took all of that to really bust me wide open and um confront myself, just actually look at what was going on in front of me.
00:19:47
Speaker
and seeing it, particularly with with my friend who who passed, um i would never have said that I was suicidal, but I certainly experienced suicidal ideation. i have considered in my past what it would be like to not be here just because the pain is so intense. um Never serious considerations, but just kind of, oh my God, this is all getting a little much. um Can we pull the ripcord?
00:20:15
Speaker
ah Which I view as as a sort of form of ah yeah You don't want to die, but you want this version of you to die. That's right. It's an ego death. that if Something does need to die.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah. and i think But it's not the body. Exactly. And I wonder, and I don't want to kind of sidetrack the conversation entirely, but it's a conversation I was having quite recently around the mail you know young male suicide epidemic that we're facing and and how many of these young men that we're unfortunately losing to suicide are experiencing this form of needing a part of them to die, but confusing that with literal death. you know It's more of a metaphorical death that they're seeking, but we they're they don't know that. And if so, of course, when you're in that depth of pain, I think it seems like a feasible option when the pain is that intense.
00:21:13
Speaker
When what I see the you know the function of when it was going well, the churches, the mosques, the temples, historically, is that people's community was focused around that. Even if they weren't a deep practitioner, that's where their celebrations happened, that's where funerals happened, that's where you got help if you needed food, and you know that's where you got your counseling, there was like a hub and your whole world was connected to it.
00:21:43
Speaker
I feel like that's a big piece of what we've been all searching for is this feeling of really being held in a coherent community where we don't have to be 100% on all the time.
00:21:57
Speaker
We can be held. we can We can lean back from time to time and then strengthen and support others. When it comes to breath work, I feel like that's one of the things that is so appealing to people is the community aspect. you know When I started teaching, it was all in person.
00:22:15
Speaker
wasn't until quarantine that it became entirely online for me, with the exception of here and there. But that community function, you know oh, I'm not crazy. There's other people who want to grow like I want to grow, who've been through what I've been through and come through certain really important spaces.
00:22:33
Speaker
In my experience with the breath, and really this comes back to my very first session with David Elliott privately on the table, I remember really not knowing what to expect. I remember my business coach at the time sent me to him rather forcefully saying, it's time for you, you need to take the next step and you gotta go see this guy, I don't tell people about him.
00:22:56
Speaker
He told me very little about what was gonna happen And that's probably good, because he could tell right away was in my intellect.
00:23:07
Speaker
Once the breath started ripping through me And it really was like ripping through me. ah Whole body was vibrating. My hands turned into laster lobster claws. My arms pulled in.
00:23:19
Speaker
i thought my wrists, literally, I'm not kidding, were going to snap off the way the the tightening was happening. And at the time I was doing body work as my main way of making a living. i was like, oh my goodness, how am I going to work?
00:23:32
Speaker
And then i checked in. I was like, man, though, but this energy feels so good. I'll figure something else out.
00:23:39
Speaker
And it was a lot of those moments in that session and other of the many deep sessions of hitting some point where it was intense and then being faced with surrender or suffer more.
00:23:53
Speaker
Surrender or suffer more. That's part of it. The other part of it is the current, the energy current that was undeniable
00:24:03
Speaker
was the most real thing I had encountered in my whole life, that energy current. And I could tell it didn't belong to David. It didn't belong to any one person. And I feel like that's what we've been looking for in our churches or our organized spiritual places is to have an experience, a direct firsthand experience. There's something more than just this body, just this life, and just concrete objects, and I want to know what it is. That's part one.
00:24:29
Speaker
And then part two is the ability to integrate that, be supported to make skillful meaning of it, so that I don't just become um kind of like like a drug addict, just trying to get high off of the breath and not really transforming the
Science, Spirituality, and Consciousness
00:24:46
Speaker
inner obstacle. So I said a bunch of words there. I'm curious where that leaves you.
00:24:49
Speaker
have it lit me up is is where it's it's left me. um ah Yeah, my my brain is is firing. or Something's firing. um This is where for me, my fascination and and study of non-dual philosophy has really started to marry up really closely. and And the puzzle pieces for me seem to be clicking into place around where breath And why breath for me um is such a fascinating modality. So i think the same of places of worship, I think the same of of community, I think the same of of breath, I think the same of of music, of dance.
00:25:30
Speaker
We will all have, for whatever reason, subtle differences in our relationship to these things. For some people, it's mantra. For some people, it's self-inquiry. For some people, it's breathwork. Whatever the modality, I think we are all...
00:25:47
Speaker
expressing through our interest and our practice of these things, our soul's deep desire to reconnect to the oneness, to to the collective consciousness. And for me, the process of ah breathwork in in this conversation and and my practice is we know we can we can use the you know the scientific lingo and talk about you know, default mode network getting quieter and and brain, you know, brain networks lighting up in different ways, brain wave, vagus vegas now have all of these things. But essentially,
00:26:20
Speaker
That to me, from what I understand, and i like to sit in both the science and then the spirituality, is that in exactly the same way with something like psychedelics and the depths of the neuroscience that we understand there is that what we are describing, where we say egoic mind, quieter, subconscious, personal, unconscious, louder is we are getting out of our own way and unveiling that deeper part of ourselves with a capital S that wants that connection to something more real and larger than ourselves that is the oneness and and kind of collective consciousness.
00:26:58
Speaker
And so that's something I speak to a lot in my work is
00:27:06
Speaker
peeling back the layers of the mind to connect to the soul and how will we do that. And also to your point, and something I'm really glad you raised is this concept of of meaning and and meaning structures and this falling away of traditional religion for some good reasons but we haven't really replaced those things and with that kind of gap we see people feeling either stuck in their heads and very much in their intellect or lost and so these collective experiences for me you know i
00:27:47
Speaker
I'm trying to build a business that facilitates me holding these spaces as often as I am able and have the capacity to. And I always witness in myself because of what I feel and experience in holding those spaces, but in everybody else, this sense of of shared humanity and that that connection that when we go into these spaces, even if we don't speak to one another, there's something that happens in the same way as a lot of people experience in church.
00:28:18
Speaker
And so I think that is absolutely what what I see happening. And also within that conversation as well around um elders and and differences in in age and life stage. My last retreat, we had such a broad range of of ages from sort of late 20s through to late 60s.
00:28:43
Speaker
And to witness that was really special because we get this Again, we're filling this gap that has been left as we have really stepped away from yeah rites of passage and and proper connection to to family and community and um and elders. So I think all of these, perhaps some people would label kind of new age spirituality and new age spiritual practices, but you know just these practices, ancient practices that are coming back around.
00:29:14
Speaker
are filling the gaps of what has been left behind once modern society has stripped a lot of substance away from us. Yeah, the thing that I keep coming back to as I'm listening to us over the whole conversation is the difference between the idea of something and the direct experience of something. know like In Eastern spirituality, there's an understanding of emptiness, not deficiency, like loss, but real like the emptiness of meaning, that things just are as they are, we don't have to label them with words.
00:29:51
Speaker
My labels may not be accurate and then pretzel my experience into my label and alienate me from the experience. But what is the real thing? you know To really encounter the emptiness of self
00:30:08
Speaker
is extraordinary if it's the right moment.
00:30:13
Speaker
Terrifying when it's not. all based on how we're making meaning.
Facilitator Responsibilities and Ethics
00:30:19
Speaker
And this is the thing that that i I'm seeing as an opportunity around the world with people who are choosing to facilitate strong inner work, whether it's through plant medicines, animal medicines, breath, or some other modality, it's not enough to be able to bring somebody into profound, strong experience.
00:30:40
Speaker
to help people actually make meaning of it in a skillful way that they can apply to their lives and integrate is key. I've had so many people come to me for private mentoring, private sessions, who didn't get zipped up properly after plant medicine and were experiencing night terrors, panic attacks, sleeplessness, and anxiety.
00:31:02
Speaker
They had a big experience in the ceremony, very powerful.
00:31:09
Speaker
but their structures of consciousness. And then whatever held bound energies like tension or trauma, we wanna call it, could not yet make meaning in any court sort of a useful way. It was like ah it was like the fuses were shorting out.
00:31:28
Speaker
So this importance of of facilitators doing enough of their own inner work in those areas to compassionately be aware of, you know, just because I can bring a stronger experience to this group or individual, should I?
00:31:44
Speaker
Is now the right time for that? Thoughts? Yeah, I was having a conversation with a brilliant facilitator out in Indonesia a few weeks ago, and we had this this very conversation about breathwork and um the reassuring, I think, shift away from high intensity forms of breath where it's as fast as you can go as hard as you can go for as long as you can go and that's reliably how we know we'll get the most explosive outward response physically you know whether it's tetany of you know catharsis whatever if you want that
00:32:29
Speaker
go hell for leather but we're seeing this move which i think is fantastic towards understanding that we can can and perhaps should be moving towards a gentle approach to this work both in how we apply it and prescribe it in the first place as to when is the right time are very much for me. It's ah a nervous system informed approach. We're going, where where is this person at? It's a trauma informed approach, a nervous system informed approach to actually go, is this the right thing?
00:33:01
Speaker
You know, we don't tell everybody to go and sit with ayahuasca. We don't tell everybody to go and sit with this, you know, whatever the medicine And we don't tell everybody to go and sit in a therapy chair.
00:33:14
Speaker
And so it's actually about, again, as something grows and as we understand more about it, it doesn't become a catch-all just because it's good for a lot of people.
00:33:25
Speaker
And it doesn't take away that responsibility for a level of vetting. I think breathwork is... is beautiful and unique in the power that it is largely safe for a large proportion of people but that doesn't make mean we can skip to all the time for all the people and so both gentle in how we prescribe it but also gentle in how when we do prescribe it how we approach it And people will often ask me, you know, I did this session and it was just it was and we were going faster and harder and we actually went for longer. and i went, OK.
00:34:01
Speaker
And how did that go for you? And they well, like I felt this amazing like this huge energy surge and I cried a lot. But what did you take away from it? What did you integrate from it? And and I think very often when we're You know, I've worked with synthetic DMT before.
00:34:16
Speaker
You blast off for 10 minutes and you try and grab some things while you come back down. You know, it can still be a really beautiful, profound experience, but the level of insight can be a little bit limited.
00:34:27
Speaker
And the same with breath, we can blast people off and they might come back going, wow, but they're not coming back with much that they can piece back together. And I think also with the more intense approaches, the the we run more of a risk of re-traumatization. There's not a huge capacity for titration, for pendulation, you know, these ultimately kind of mouthfuls of charge. Sorry, just pause for a moment for the listeners who don't know these two terms, titration and pendulation, because they're really important.
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I caught myself there and in jargon mode. um So titration is really, if I remember titrating liquids in science lessons back at school. and It's really this this slow, gentle, um measured approach to exposure in the case of breath work to strong emotion or um deeper experience. So it's sort of Gently, gently does it gradual kind of exposure.
00:35:26
Speaker
ah Pendulation from the pendulum is we will go in to something and we will come back out of something. And again, they're very closely linked and titration and pendulation. But I think they're beautiful models to work from because we can support someone in.
00:35:43
Speaker
exploring something that either consciously or unconsciously has been deemed unsafe by by their psyche and help them reintegrate and recalibrate and recontextualize their relationship to it through either a titrated gradual approach or a pendulated um sort of swinging approach where we go in and come back out again. So I think it's a really um yeah know I'm hearing these terms and and these conversations happening a whole lot more in the breath world, ah which for me is is really reassuring and and gives me a level of hope in amongst my regular cynicism.
00:36:20
Speaker
When I sat up from that first session with David Elliott that was literally life-changing, I knew I had to do that work. I knew it was the next thing to bring in.
00:36:32
Speaker
And he said two things to me. that has stuck to this day. He said, one, I'm looking for leaders, not followers, which is really important because he also said later to me one time, he said, whoever ah person's first breathwork experience is, they're gonna imprint on that person and project specialness.
00:36:51
Speaker
So to be aware of that and to handle that with care, because some people have misused that knowingly, some people have misused that unknowingly to get intimacy that seemed to be missing from their life by getting approval or attachment from clients and students.
00:37:06
Speaker
The other thing he said to me is the breath is not the work. And he didn't say anything more after that. And it really, really has been one of the most important realizations for me that I really got clear on just concretely reading about pranayama, which is where these varying ways of breathing come from. There's over 500 different ways to organize the breath that each have their own way of shaping and directing energy. And that we're really doing is shaping and directing energy, working with energy.
00:37:34
Speaker
So to simply huff and puff harder and harder, and I did plenty of that, isn't to go farther. the softer approach, the breath that i learned from David that I was leading for so many years was an open mouth breath, two breaths in, one breath out, all through the mouth.
00:37:51
Speaker
And in the last few years, when when I was pulling it back, pulling it back, my public teaching of it, even after my ecstatic breathwork course was making the rounds through commune and unity,
00:38:04
Speaker
I got quiet because I didn't feel like I was doing a service anymore by continuing to offer it the way people were taking it. people were i could tell people were just getting high.
00:38:15
Speaker
a lot of people, some people were really having genuine transformations, but many people were just doing it as a way to feel something more or feel less of something. And I knew something had to shift. And so I did a lot of self-study and really deep practice with somebody for years, one or two times a week, where the breath was simply just breathe into the area in your body, feel fully what's there until it liberates and keeps staying and relaxing everything around that area and and into the whole body.
Balancing Breathwork Practices
00:38:47
Speaker
The first few years of working with her over the 10 plus we've been together, sometimes I'd want to slap her. I'd get so annoyed because I'd bring ah an issue that was going on in my life and be like, this, this, this, this. this Oh, well, where is that in your body? Take a deep breath.
00:39:02
Speaker
Take a deep breath. Let's just give me the answer. yeah Give me the answer here. But what I've come to notice is simply having somebody do breathing through the nose that's directed with focus and care in a safe holding environment has been more liberating than these seemingly explosive mouth techniques of breath that get all the tingles going.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. and And there's a couple of couple of things that that come to mind for me there. The first being
00:39:36
Speaker
We're a society of more yeah across the board. We are eating more, we are drinking more, we're consuming more, we are yeah know everything's convenient.
00:39:48
Speaker
And with that in mind, we do chase the seemingly obvious or quick or um sexy or popular route.
00:40:02
Speaker
I my first experience of any kind of breathing practice was an open mouth, you know, high ventilation breathwork practice. And I was like, holy shit, that felt great.
00:40:15
Speaker
and And, you know, it led me on a path that I'm very, very grateful that it did. However, I don't recommend to the majority of people I work with that they start there because either it becomes an escape, either it becomes a high Either it becomes you know a quest to fix or a quest for a quick fix.
00:40:36
Speaker
And that's not sustainable. that' That doesn't have legs. That doesn't have longevity. And so taking a more titrated, more yeah gradual approach to breath as well is, I think, really powerful.
00:40:50
Speaker
I wonder, it's something I've been contemplating a lot this week, actually, and I'd love to get your thoughts. I feel... that we can sit here as as two people who've been in this in this world for a reasonable number of time a reasonable amount of time and
00:41:11
Speaker
promote and encourage the the less is more approach, you know the simple, the nourishing, the gentle. And I don't know how much people at the beginning of their journey might listen. I hope they will.
00:41:25
Speaker
But i the question that I have is that I get this sense that Chasing more.
00:41:32
Speaker
Chasing more feels like an inevitable lifecycle stage on the way to appreciating that less is more. We've seen it historically with money and traditional forms of success. You get very, very rich people going, I'm still miserable.
00:41:48
Speaker
And then you get people who chase you know every wellness hack and every breathwork experience. And then all of a sudden they they sit and they go, i realized it was just actually about being aware of my breath, slowing my breath down, breathing more gently.
00:42:04
Speaker
And I know I've been through that process myself and I can sit here and now go, yeah it's it's so simple, but it's almost that we have to go through process journey of seeking to then come home um to ourselves once more. what What are your thoughts and what comes up for you and my first thought is that's an archetype, that we have to go through our seeking to come back home to ourselves. you know It's a story that's been told in so many different ways throughout time.
00:42:34
Speaker
um Joseph Campbell did a lot of work around organizing all those different storytellings under the arc he calls the hero's journey. And there are other actual arcs.
00:42:46
Speaker
um Sophie
00:42:50
Speaker
Strand wrote a book a couple of years ago called the Flowering Wand that shows a different archetype. But the point is, it's a familiar archetype. you know or um Some of you have read Paulo Coelho's book The Alchemist. That's that story.
00:43:04
Speaker
you know Or Acres of Diamonds. It's another similar similar older one where somebody leaves their home to go searching their their destiny, their treasure, to come back home after this long journey to find it was right where they were all along.
Ongoing Personal Development
00:43:19
Speaker
They were sitting on acres of diamonds. And isn't that the truth of it when we start to have the direct experience that, oh, all these techniques like breathing, body scanning, relaxing, contemplation, self-inquiry, they don't in and of themselves wake us up and free us of our contracted sense of self entirely.
00:43:45
Speaker
they give us tools to to foreground more awareness, concentrated awareness, which allows a wider perspective that's real, not just intellectual.
00:43:58
Speaker
And in that wider perspective, I can choose. And I may have to, depending on how deep the roots of a particular pattern, life pattern or habit that was destructive go, I may have to have that seeing happen many times.
00:44:16
Speaker
I'm imagining I've got things in my life, I'm imagining you've got things in your life that you bump into we bump into this trait or this feeling that can come up again and again. Maybe it's less and less and less over the years, but it does come up and it can come up.
00:44:31
Speaker
An example would be, um imagining you're familiar with attachment patterns. yeah right so I historically grew up with the insecure attachment pattern.
00:44:43
Speaker
And so that means my character was designed to, one, the closer I got to somebody, unconsciously expect abandonment or rejection and be bracing for it.
00:44:53
Speaker
Number two, never getting enough approval to let me know that this is valid, this is not going to go away. And then be attracted to people who had avoided the opposite.
00:45:07
Speaker
Perfect storm. That's an example of something that it's not gone in me. it's very much shifted into radically more secure attachment.
00:45:19
Speaker
And, you know, I recently met somebody I liked a lot a month or two ago, and went out on a date, had an extraordinary experience was, you know, was reflected back like, I hope to see him many more times.
00:45:34
Speaker
And any texting between now and then has been met on my side with two to three days or a week of not hearing anything back. When that first happened, i really liked i really liked this guy a lot. you know He was handsome, interesting, successful, great energy.
00:45:53
Speaker
and i felt it like i felt it for a few days i felt this kind of oof this ton of tension in my chest and in my belly that would not heavy but was there and go oh oh that's it again this is another opportunity like i've given away i've outsourced my value to a degree to what this person does or does not do and if i go further with that i go well what what is that what's there's There's eight billion people on the planet.
00:46:27
Speaker
Oh, it was the illusion of scarcity that there's not other people out there and or I'm not going to get them or I'm not worthy or any of the things. So I'm just kind of teasing this out because I feel like people who've had big transformations in life, some of us have gotten to a place where we might bump into a skeleton in the closet or a difficult experience and then make ourselves so wrong.
00:46:54
Speaker
Wait, aren't I supposed to know better? i'm the I'm the leader or I'm the CEO or I'm the facilitator. So thoughts there? Absolutely. And hard relate on on the insecure attachment journey. So, um yeah, I've also done that dance a number of times, both in terms of the relational dynamic, but also the self pedestal and the shame that can that can show up with that where I go,
00:47:19
Speaker
Aren't I supposed to be calm all the time? Aren't I supposed to be... i don't get angry. I don't you know lose my cool. And these small moments of being ultimately completely human that we start to shame ourselves for. And and I think it's... I've been reading... um a book I was originally initially reading a book from Bill Plotkin.
00:47:43
Speaker
um And then that led me to a brilliant book from the 90s called Care for the Soul by Thomas Moore. Brilliant. And there was a quote from him that I'm not going to get bang on, but it was essentially to this effect of um modern psychotherapy seems to create this tantalizing final form that we should be striving for.
00:48:10
Speaker
And we shame ourselves for anything that doesn't match up to that. You know, we're desperately trying to get that complete final form and and push away and resent and and demonize ourselves for anything human that might ah rub up against that.
00:48:29
Speaker
And he gave an example, actually relevant example to what we're discussing here of a woman who um was blighted by codependency and relationships and she desperately wanted to let go of this dependency and b and she was striving for independence thinking that that was the goal and it's you know it's the pendulum swing you end up the other way inclined you end up the hyper independent avoidant type and actually there are lots of wonderful beautiful things within dependency as an example it's like
00:49:01
Speaker
in a relationship, you want to have to rely on somebody, you want to care about somebody, you want to be thought of by somebody. There are aspects, you know light and dark of that kind of um feeling.
00:49:13
Speaker
And it's only when we think that all of that is bad that we start to strive and head ourselves down to the other end of the pendulum, where we then realize we're just in a different version of a very, very familiar pattern. And so um i think that's what I It's been a real personal journey for me within within my work and my life more broadly of not hiding behind some kind of persona or um putting myself for others or simply for myself on any kind of pedestal to try and maintain this illusion of like, got it all figured out um
00:49:54
Speaker
My ego has absolutely tried to take me there at times to go, yeah, yeah you are that person. Don't worry about it. And then where I am now in the last couple of years, which has just been really deeply connecting to my wholeness and my humanness. And and that's why I always love referencing you know holotropic as ah as a term and something that's so relevant in the breathwork world because it comes from the Greek for moving towards wholeness. And I think it's a beautiful expression of the process of breathwork, but also the process of if healing at large and and life at large.
00:50:29
Speaker
So beautiful. either I hope that you listeners are are hearing some more space to be as you are.
00:50:41
Speaker
And be inspired to keep growing. But like, we've all got flaws. We've all got challenges. The yeah the episode, the recent episode I referred to of the show with um James Gill Fish as he goes by.
00:50:57
Speaker
Yeah, Australian character. Do you know about fish? I do. i've I've followed fish for a long time. I've not okay had the pleasure of meeting him, but um I'm a huge, huge fan of his. Well, he just dropped a new book. It's only in Australia at the moment, but it's a hot moment if you want to get him on your podcast. He's a lovely, lovely dialogue partner.
00:51:15
Speaker
He teaches repair for the listener. He teaches repair when there's been a rupture in a relationship. There's going to be a rupture. Somebody's going to be hungry one day or angry or sad or you know just checked out for some reason or another and say something that's off.
00:51:30
Speaker
Like we're going to make mistakes. It reminds me of being in acting conservatory where one of our great teachers, professor said, the test of a good actor isn't just simply memorizing lines, delivering them and hitting marks.
00:51:44
Speaker
It's when you make a mistake in the play, can you work with it in such a way that it carries everybody on the same journey and nobody in the audience knows there which was was a mistake?
00:51:58
Speaker
Didn't work out so well when I had that happen and I forgot to bring a letter on stage in a Shakespeare play. Shakespeare is highly specific. That letter forwarded the story and had to figure that out.
00:52:10
Speaker
Inverse, in biopic pentameter no less. that That didn't really happen quite that way. Audience didn't know, but the whole cast wanted to smack me around.
Facilitator's Role and Ego
00:52:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's I mean, you know, or all the world's a stage comes to mind because it's, you know, the transferable yeah understanding of that to say there will be moments where you fuck up and you forget to bring the letter on stage and people are going be mad and actually you made a mistake. But even in those moments,
00:52:48
Speaker
that's very human. and and and And maybe the rupture will be complicated and so maybe you'll get fired or maybe there'll be so you know there will be consequences to actions when you make mistakes. It's fact of life. But do you have the capacity even through those times and in those moments to come back to self-compassion, to come back to, I did i did fuck up. I hold my hands up to that. I take accountability radically for that.
00:53:20
Speaker
And I'm sorry. and still, not even but, and still, I'm okay. Like I love I've got me. And I think that's something- And can be aware of, can I still maintain my awareness of the others who are involved? So easy for any of us out of a lot of previous experience that when we realize we've messed up,
00:53:42
Speaker
to go into the tension pattern to kind of the head dips, the breath shortens, and like the tail goes between its legs like a dog that's been chastised for messing up. And then in that moment, I'm actually doing more of the thing without realizing it. I'm actually still taking from the environment So can I feel what's here for me? Like, oh, i I've got remorse and that can be purified and let me feel that.
00:54:06
Speaker
But let me not lose sight of the people, the environment, the animals that are around so that I can still actually collaborate and be skillful.
00:54:18
Speaker
exactly that Exactly that. I think it's one of the hardest things to do, right, is in those moments where those old wounds, those old patterns are getting prodded. Those complexes are getting brought to the surface. And that's, you know, to come back to your point earlier and and what David Elliott said around, you the breath is not the work.
00:54:37
Speaker
That's the work. It's in the moment where it's out of your control, where you have done something that you didn't mean to, that wasn't intentional, that's upset somebody, that's upset yourself, whatever it might be.
00:54:49
Speaker
are you responding differently? Can you hold yourself differently? Can you acknowledge and respect and and respond from a place of accountability and understanding the impact that you may have had whilst also being able to hold yourself through that? And I think those are the moments that excite me in my life where I'm like, hey, I wouldn't have reacted or responded like that six months ago, a year ago, three years ago. And that is the the good stuff. That's the gold for me of of going, I've actually you know integrated something beyond simply intellectualizing it.
00:55:25
Speaker
There is a term in Sanskrit, ugra, and it refers to, um well, in in certain forms of Tantra, you do practices with a deity.
00:55:37
Speaker
a field of consciousness that can be depicted in ah in ah and human-like form, maybe multiple arms carrying different things, or in a geometric form. Like if you're on the video, there's a big geometric form behind my head that holds a lot of energy.
00:55:53
Speaker
And there are deities or fields of consciousness that are considered peaceful. Shanti and then ones that are considered ugra and that's often flatly and very limitingly translated as wrathful But what this word means according to my teacher it implies an upsurge of energy ugra means an upsurge like I'm thinking like a geyser of water or a or a very you know powerful fountain of water there's an upsurge and
00:56:25
Speaker
And what I've noticed in psychoactive practices, particularly like the breath, is that they can unlock these very profound energy currents that are part of the creative power of life, that are the creative power of life, through our nervous system and the field around the body.
00:56:40
Speaker
And it's after the formal experience in the studio or on the Zoom call where the upsurge is continuing to move and what it's moving is it's revealing anything that's got holding or tension around it.
00:57:00
Speaker
So I feel like one of our opportunities, our sacred responsibilities as facilitators is to help people be able to sit in discomfort, not to fetishize being uncomfortable, but to sit in discomfort in a new way.
00:57:19
Speaker
Like I'm holding this area in my chest like I would hold a baby or an or an animal or my favorite tree and I'm gonna stay.
00:57:31
Speaker
And maybe my breath gets deep and strong in certain moments, but maybe it's actually soft in other moments, but what's organizing it is my my can committed attention to be with this thing however long it needs me to be with it in this way.
00:57:52
Speaker
Absolutely. it reminds me of a ah quote from one of my favorite teachers, Rupert Spira, who said, All suffering comes from resisting what is or seeking what isn't.
00:58:06
Speaker
And that for me you know then feeds into what we're talking about here with with sitting and with discomfort. When we think about practices like somatic experiencing and these modalities of of being in the body, actually, we've realized that if we can stay with the discomfort wherever it might be presenting,
00:58:29
Speaker
it dissipates. Whereas when we try and run from it or distract from it or push it down, it amplifies, which feels paradoxical and feels like a ah strange concept.
00:58:42
Speaker
But again, through the direct experience of it, we realize actually when we can stay with it, it begins to dissipate. And it you know the the the shadow of the monster that we saw yeah actually is a ah strange goat that's actually just got the light hitting it the wrong way and it wasn't so scary after all. And so I think it's that kind of... I've never used the goat before as a metaphor for this, but I think um that is... And I see that in in my spaces when we when we work with with the breath at a deeper level.
00:59:15
Speaker
we spend the first good portion of the first period with this concept of resourcing and going, okay, things might get rocky. Things might get interesting as we go through this. And that's what we're choosing to be here for.
00:59:29
Speaker
But here's where you can go and what you can do when it does and to stay in that, to actually be with that in a way that is then something that can be integrated, something that can be yeah, bro brought back and and we can take the charge out of it and and really bring it back in a way that is meaningful to to us.
00:59:50
Speaker
One of my favorite simple things that I teach at the beginning of the sessions and encourage people whenever they need it is to make small micro movements, pressing anything that's touching a surface into that surface and to feel, literally feel that sensation.
01:00:03
Speaker
Like, you know, if my feet are on the floor, which they are right now, making these small movements, just pressing my feet into the floor, my seat cushion or my butt into the seat. There's something about the simplicity of that that then they can do in the car, they can do it on the bus, they can do it walking. Like, I feel like, I'm curious what you're noticing about this. I feel like there's been more trauma presenting in the last five years than exponentially more than ever before.
Trauma Awareness and Societal Impact
01:00:32
Speaker
ah Yeah, I would absolutely agree. And I think um
01:00:38
Speaker
there have been a few a few different reasons in my mind for that. I feel the, ah one and kind of let's call it the broader mental health conversation has done a lot of work on that front to normalize the conversations around trauma, um to encourage the exploration of it.
01:00:59
Speaker
And yeah, really just to shine a light on the fact that we've all got our stuff and it's okay to talk about it. And it's also possible to work with it and work through it rather than probably what my parents' generation and their parents' generation did, which was sort stiff upper lip Britishness. We go, well, that happened.
01:01:19
Speaker
ah So I think that's being less in that space of simply just, you acceptance is a powerful thing, of course, but knowing that if we are being negatively impacted by something that's happened in our lives, there there are ways to to work with that and work through that.
01:01:36
Speaker
And so... I think that the conversation and the destigmatized destigmatizing um of the conversation is is really probably the leader in in as why we've we've seen that. I also think yeah the COVID period, 2020, sent lot of people into um sent a lot of people into a spiral around their mortality because it was, you know, a face probably for the first time that I can ever remember with this notion of there are a lot of people dying and it's mysterious and we don't know what to do and you might die. So be careful and stay inside.
01:02:14
Speaker
We're confronted with death, you know, in ah in a huge way that makes us think about, okay, what does it mean to live? And so I think that's a ah big factor also.
01:02:24
Speaker
um And heard, you familiar with the comedian Pete Holmes? Not yet. he's He's wonderful. Really kind of deep think of hilarious as well. He's based based in the US. And I heard Pete talking about this ah on a podcast one time where he was saying, because of the nature of how convenient our world has become, yeah we are able to do things so quickly and we have so much more access to things at such a rapid pace, we have infinitely more what he called like navel-gazing time, like introspection time.
01:03:03
Speaker
yeah He said, kind of jokingly, he was like, my parents didn't have time to, you know on a Thursday afternoon, take a bunch of mushrooms and meet God. they were They were busy yeah carrying stuff back from the shop or working on the farm or whatever it might be. There was a lot less free time because of the the convenience of things. And I think that's also a factor. We have access to to time, to resources and to spaciousness to to really dive into all of these conversations, which is doing a lot of good.
01:03:35
Speaker
um Yeah, it's ah it's a a good thing, I think, in in large part in my book, for sure. You mentioned, i almost thought you were going to go into, there's a question I ask every guest.
01:03:47
Speaker
And when you started talking about death and the and the inevitability of it for ah human body or for anything in form will at some point disintegrate. So this question i ask every guest starts with ah with a quote from Suzuki Roshi, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who opened the Zen Center of San Francisco in the 1960s.
01:04:09
Speaker
And he would say often, death is certain, the time is not. What is the most important thing?
01:04:20
Speaker
So I ask you, Jamie, knowing that death is certain and the time is not, sitting here today, what is the most important thing for you?
01:04:38
Speaker
The one word answer that's just glaringly loud in my mind is is love in all its forms. yeah My mind, when I contemplate that question, instantly goes to family, to friends, to um strange strangers as well. you know just Just being in that space of,
01:04:58
Speaker
yeah Seeing everyone as we see ourselves and extending that yeah unconditional love as best we can. That is what is important as the the singular answer for me.
01:05:14
Speaker
The more intellectually led answer, and if I were to lean into that a little more, My intention is to live an interesting and fulfilling life. And my mission is to have meaningful impact.
01:05:30
Speaker
And I think those two for me, ah that's that's what's important. um I want to have impact. so I want to be able to support people um whilst also on a personal level, living an interesting and and fulfilling life.
01:05:50
Speaker
When you know you've made the impact, when you know that that's just already ongoing
01:05:56
Speaker
and seems real for you that the circumstances of life are meaningful, then what? What do you notice when that's already so?
01:06:08
Speaker
That it's time for me to recalibrate my relationship with ah the part of me that's still will never be satisfied.
Ambition and Service Orientation
01:06:22
Speaker
there's There's a part of me I know that drives me to do a lot of good, but also drives me and in other ways that is still wanting to the Yeah, that still believes that the sky is the limit, both in terms of what the impact could be, but also where I could find myself. And so I've i've really, i was writing about that this week in terms of my relationship with ambition, because I think that's probably at the core of what I'm talking about. And I do, have I genuinely have probably in the last six months felt such a significant shift in how I relate to ambition.
01:06:58
Speaker
I went through a phase last year of is what felt like losing my ambition. I was healing. I was going through some some personal work and I felt like I lost touch with my ambition.
01:07:11
Speaker
And I started to think, hey, this is this is good, right? Because ambition is often driven by lack. And maybe I've just healed my relationship with those parts of me that feel like they have something to prove.
01:07:24
Speaker
and that are feeling that scarcity and and desperately just wanting to be seen as good enough. i was like, maybe ambition just disappears. Maybe that's that's the way things go. And now I sit here going, I think that's part of the journey with ambition. But what I feel now is um less that I have something to prove and more that I have something to say and that I have something to contribute. And it's driven by
01:07:51
Speaker
love and service at its core rather than lack and hustle and you know that burning desire to prove something. And from this place that I find myself in now where it does feel very rooted and um rooted in in that love and in that service,
01:08:13
Speaker
having had a level of impact and and living life in in what feels like a very meaningful way,
01:08:21
Speaker
i
01:08:25
Speaker
to an extent, let the current carry me because I'm okay with the course that I'm on. i go, cool, more of the same, please. Whilst also understanding that you have to keep an eye on the direction to make sure that you're not going to accidentally crash into something. i kind of This du dual kind of relationship between surrender and just letting go, but also being an active participant in that flow. Well, let's practicalize it. Both of us make our livelihood.
01:09:01
Speaker
I'm assuming you, the majority or maybe all of it for you comes from your work. ah Mine is that way. It's an interesting intersection, you know, like in the forest Yogini tradition,
01:09:14
Speaker
or even the householder teachers, especially the females, they might have had one or two students in an entire lifetime that they passed their awakened awareness and knowledge onto.
01:09:25
Speaker
And their own families may have known nothing about that they were a teacher. They just carried on the responsibilities because they weren't monetizing their work. They required an exchange, whether that was a big accomplishment on the, you know, or a big sort of labor on the part of the student, or a giving of one's wealth in some way, but they required that, but they weren't necessarily doing it for their own survival and so you know we've got this intersection as you said of surrender and participation and i see that every day when i get up to check certain things check my you know work emails check the analytics on the podcast check how things are performing on instagram how are the ads going and things like this and it's a constant teacher for me of am i doing this thing am i making this course or making this offer because it's it's clear to offer it
01:10:21
Speaker
or I'm trying to push the river and get something from an undiagnosed place of lack.
01:10:29
Speaker
And to manage that as people who are in the wellness space, you know monetizing that for our livelihood. i think it's such an important and valuable place for contemplation and self inquiry.
01:10:43
Speaker
Absolutely. And, the our capacity for self-deception is boundless. Bonkers. We are masters of it. And so that's something I always keep with me is is at the moment, I feel really very closely tuned into my gut, my intuition. i feel I know, yeah know, I really know like where this is coming from and where ah certain things are coming from, was also approaching all of it with a level of self skepticism to go, ah you you sure?
01:11:19
Speaker
Like where could this thing be coming from that place of scarcity and lack? Where could it be coming from ego? Where could it be coming from needing to prove something? And I think also to bring it back to our conversation about being human and and being whole,
01:11:37
Speaker
knowing that there are probably certain aspects of my work that are maybe, maybe they come 80%, if we're going to put some numbers on it, maybe they come 80% from pure abundance and 20%, there's a little bit of ego going, Hey, look at me. Like, look how impressive I am. Look how, you know, all of these things, you know, the mind ah by virtue of being finite and, and egoic in part,
01:12:03
Speaker
has that built into it, that sort of self-interest that's there. key it's It helps us survive. And I think I always get into interesting conversations about language when we start talking about killing the ego.
01:12:17
Speaker
It's like, oh yeah it's not it's not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere. Also, who's going to feed you when you don't have an ego that knows where to put the fork when it's time to eat? Exactly. i'm I'm sure we could all float around in white robes and love each other and sing Kumbaya. There's the cliches as old as time, but that doesn't fly when you have to survive. you know yeah that You've still got to chop wood, carry water. Or when you've got kids in the house, for example.
01:12:47
Speaker
Exactly. you know people who had all this space to study and self study and growth and that and then meet somebody and it's the right person and and then children come into the mix particularly when it's young children what I observe and friends and clients like you literally are just surviving yeah and finding out what we've learned that we can do on the fly Yeah.
01:13:14
Speaker
And that comes back to your point right back at the beginning about the road to mastery. Right. It's like, how is it embedded into your makeup at this point? Have you done the reps? Have you you know put in the work? Do you have the the foundations to support yourself through that survival?
01:13:33
Speaker
and Or does everything fall apart because the foundations are flimsy and only only we can know that and only we can know, you know, what are we doing when nobody's watching?
Support, Mentorship, and Ecosystems
01:13:44
Speaker
What are the habits that we fall to and the systems that we fall to and the routines that we fall to when there's no one to impress, when there's no video evidence, when it's not on an Instagram story? Are you still on your mat, on your cushion? Are you still communicating?
01:14:00
Speaker
yeah Is there integrity? Is there coherence? Is there you know all of these things? And I feel like that's, for me, I've,
01:14:10
Speaker
I don't know in 20 some odd years if I've had a period where I didn't have somebody I was working with directly as a mentor, a reflector, a teacher, ah therapeutic experience where they were developed and aware enough they could tell, even if they didn't call it out right in the moment, when I was deluding myself.
01:14:28
Speaker
And in the space of that relational dynamic, I could see more. and I'm not calling myself special for this. I've just, it's how my mom brought me up and one day I finally integrated it, which is to tell the truth no matter how bad it likes makes me look in the interest of growing, in the interest of serving the environments that I participate in and have that that container, that relationship, not just with teachers and and coaches and mentors, but also with peers.
01:15:00
Speaker
I feel like that's one of the biggest gifts that somebody who wants to work in this space can have is to have peers who are doing really well at growing and at embodying that growth. Not just have big numbers, but like really embodying the growth.
01:15:16
Speaker
how to, you know, to to really look and see, how does this how does your mentor and navigate stressful moments? The loss of a loved one, the change of money situation, a diagnosis, like how how does it go when there's pain or difficulty?
01:15:32
Speaker
Those are the people who can navigate. Those are the ones I want to be around. Those are the ones I want on the island collaborating together. Yeah, absolutely. And I i think for me, It again comes back to that. this A lot of what we talked about, I feel, is this push-pull between finite, infinite ego and and sort of soul or self because there's the temptation or what seems like the right answer in those moments where you're like, no, I am i you know i need to facilitate, I need to teach, and so I've got to put on a brave face.
01:16:03
Speaker
And sure, there's a time and a place for emotional discipline and pulling your socks up and and getting on with things. That's actually part of the growth. but not if you're also not opening that box afterwards and, and you know, feeling and and going there and allowing yourself to be seen in in vulnerability.
01:16:21
Speaker
I think that for me is is that kind of difficult place to be where you do sometimes just have to get on with things. But it's a very fine line there between doing that and then pushing stuff down and and not addressing it.
01:16:37
Speaker
So yeah. Well, there's the power of being raw and real. And then there's a place where it can it can diverge into getting the audience or students to be worried about oneself.
01:16:51
Speaker
And maybe that's some of the actors preparation I got. Maybe it's the time in the ashram and being you know put up to speak a lot and and learning to feel the feelings publicly, not push them, not suppress them, but also to communicate, you don't need to take care of me.
01:17:12
Speaker
I'm available to be supported, but I'm not asking you to worry about me or care about me. And just to to really make it more available, especially, i think, among um men, that raw and real is where the power is.
01:17:30
Speaker
Not just spraying the walls with emotion. i mean, that's just that's just an outburst. But really being raw and real, like, hey, this is where my growing edge is. This is where I'm working some stuff out.
01:17:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think a journey for me with this has been
01:17:51
Speaker
because of almost that legacy part of me wanting to fit in, wanting to be accepted. There has been in my past a level of
01:18:06
Speaker
a lack of willing to to be raw and real because i'd i'd rather be yeah I'd rather be seen a certain way. I'd rather keep a ah level of the mask on, even if it's quite a a nice mask, even if it's a pretty accepted mask and an intentional mask.
01:18:23
Speaker
But actually, the the journey beyond that is is going... Some people might not like the raw and real. And and that's that's okay. And not only is that okay, but that's kind of good because it's a vetting, you know it's a filtering process.
01:18:42
Speaker
It leads you closer to the people who really want to be there, people who really feel seen and understood in what they you know what you provide to them as a mirror to an extent.
01:18:54
Speaker
when When I look at it in nature, in the biosphere, how... intricately organized and interconnected everything is the lions don't do the task of the sheep and the baobab trees produce something entirely different than an oak tree so there's all this uniqueness but it's entirely collaborative to a much bigger picture like those trees those oak trees need to be where they are doing what they're doing
01:19:28
Speaker
And that may have something to do with how the water flows in the stream and this and that. and And then the mountain's doing what it's doing. And the same thing I'd say, like people who come and go from my life, if I'm not personalizing it and making it all about me as though I'm the center of the universe and just go, wait a minute, if I'm just an element of nature and I back up and look at the bigger picture of nature, how is this actually really perfect and ah and on time?
Life's Process and Compassion
01:20:00
Speaker
this person who's not a fit or this person who is a fit as opposed to trying to, you know, I used to want to make everybody like me. That was about me, not for them. Yeah. And when it gets to flip and go, you know what, how can I be more great with everybody without trying to make everybody my friend, just be great with people, whether I prefer them or don't prefer them.
01:20:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that yeah sense of
01:20:32
Speaker
acceptance again and and to something you mentioned earlier, how we navigate the challenging times and how that changes as we as we grow. I went through a really challenging period of about three or four months to kick off 2025 at the beginning of this year.
01:20:50
Speaker
um And i was I was really genuinely struggling with with quite a few different things. and the world the walls seemed to be sort of closing in and I was going,
01:21:02
Speaker
oh, when's this going to end? when am When am I going to see the light at the end of this tunnel? But even on the days where I felt like my entire world was crumbling, there was this little voice just going, you have been through this before.
01:21:18
Speaker
And not only that, you know that every single time you've been through a pretty nasty patch, it's given birth to something incredible out the other side so even if it doesn't feel like it's there right now i trust that it's coming and without kind of negating the negative or bypassing the negative just that deep knowing that even when it seems that things aren't working out they are working out you know whether it's a small bad moment or whether it's a bigger bad period
01:21:50
Speaker
Everything is cyclical and everything has its has its timing. um And when we can trust in that, that's where things seem to unfold and flow back in a way that is more kind of coherent and in our favor.
01:22:02
Speaker
How could I use this to grow? That's the question I like to walk around with. If it's going to be here and I can't transform it or change it, all right, how can I use this to grow?
01:22:13
Speaker
And for the benefit of more than just myself, that for me has been a real key. I know that when I'm suffering, I'm usually caught in a self-focus only. And can I take a bigger vision that includes me? And it would go like, oh, wait a minute.
01:22:29
Speaker
How many other people on the planet probably experiencing some degree of pain like this? Can I actually open to compassion for all of us? Then my vision shifts and it doesn't feel so stuck and there's resource.
Conclusion and Key Teachings
01:22:43
Speaker
I'd like to ask you a somewhat final question for this conversation. I hope we get to have many more down the road. Let's say you're any of your assets, your website, and anything you've written, all these things, they're gone. It's the end of your life.
01:23:00
Speaker
And you can leave people with maybe one or two key things. that you say you feel make a difference? You could call them teachings, you could call them pointing out instructions, whatever you might call them, what might those be?
01:23:19
Speaker
so i think there are two sort of teachings, I suppose, that stand out. One that is a quote of mine that that I love to share. And then another is probably my favorite quote of all time.
01:23:35
Speaker
And the first, which is is my one, which is, um, Rest will always feel like a risk to a nervous system that is used to chaos and a mind that believes its value is defined by what it achieves. Say that one more time. Sure. so this is really I want triple click into this.
01:23:54
Speaker
Rest will always feel like a risk to a nervous system that is used to chaos and a mind that believes its value is defined by what it achieves. So I suppose the the sort of two poles of that for me are...
01:24:09
Speaker
um the familiarity of chaos when we're in that place of of stress and and intensity where rest starts to feel unfamiliar and foreign and and scary.
01:24:21
Speaker
And then the the other side, which is, I think, an important partner to that, which is the the parts of ourselves that are Still trying to prove something and still trying to prove our our value by doing. And if we have those two in tandem, then rest becomes this very tricky and quantity to find and this very tricky task to find.
01:24:42
Speaker
And the second is wisdom tells me I'm nothing and love tells me I'm everything. And between those two, my life flows. Sargadatta Maharaj. Indeed. And that quote for me was one of those aha moments of direct experience of the polarity and duality of of wholeness and actually going, you know, to to your point again that you made earlier about sort of for myself having been in this space for six years and and you for for many, many more, I can simultaneously sit here and feel like I'm the new kid on the block and like I've only been around a hot minute and also sit here and feel like I am incredibly experienced in the space and like I've been here a really long time and these sort of
01:25:36
Speaker
two seemingly contradictory truths that to me are both true. It's about relativity. It's about where you where you find yourself in in the conversation and and who you're with, but also knowing that you're exactly where you are and that doesn't change.
01:25:54
Speaker
And it's just, again, perspective and and relativity. So that for me applies there, but also just way beyond that. And for me, it's just always about moving as as much as I can from that place of of intellect and mindfulness to sort of heartfulness and and that place of of love that just allows us to come back to that deep inner knowing that that everything's okay. And so often when I find myself up against these contradicting or or apparently contradicting truths, I come back to to that quote. um
01:26:31
Speaker
I have a sort of semi-visual representation of it tattooed on me, on um my arms. So it's ah it's a permanent reminder. um And so yeah, I think those are the two that that immediately jumped out for me as far as things that I i would like to to leave people with.
01:26:48
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for making time for this dialogue. I love dialogues like this. and don't know if I've said it yet in the show, but I pull from a definition of dialogue meaning to discover together.
01:27:05
Speaker
as opposed to like straight up inter interviews, a dialogue, let's discover together. We'll share some things we already know, have read or heard, but like, is there some discoveries we can collectively have?
01:27:17
Speaker
And that includes you as the listener. So with all of my love and with great respect, thank you for being here, Jamie. Thank you so much for having me. I yeah really, really appreciate it. It's been a wonderful experience.
01:27:29
Speaker
How can we find you if we want to know more about your work, your offerings, your in-person possibilities? Yeah, so everything that i offer lives um under The Breath Space, which is my website, thebreathspace.co.uk.
01:27:45
Speaker
Social media as well, Instagram, at jamieclements underscore, And yeah, those are probably, I'd say, to keep it simple, where where it's best for for people to find me.
01:27:57
Speaker
In-person offerings, mostly in in London, in the UK and um Europe and increasingly internationally. But yeah, my my base is here for now. And and there's plenty of plenty of people here to work with and and plenty plenty of work to be done.
01:28:13
Speaker
um So yeah, I would love to connect with people who are who are based here, but also I i am looking at um some opportunities in the in the US and and North America more broadly as well. Fantastic. Well, we hope you pass through l LA so we can meet up for for a meal or something like this.
01:28:30
Speaker
So we're going to take about 10 seconds in silence, everybody. So if you're in a position where you can just close your eyes, you're welcome to do that. If you're not, just relaxably being here with some slow, long exhales.
01:28:48
Speaker
And we'll end in this silence together.
01:29:02
Speaker
Loving the episode? Click to follow, like, and share it as widely as possible. Want to go deeper with the choice to grow? Explore the show notes. You'll find links there for going deeper with our guests, as well as how to work with me in the work of waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up.
01:29:22
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Can't wait to join you in the next episode.