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Breathwork for Better Sleep with Tim Thomas
48 Plays10 months ago
Calm down. Take a breath. You've heard that, but—quite literally—how often do you do it? Tim Thomas has spent more than 10 years working with veterans on mental health, wellness, and recovery. Discover the breathwork program he uses to promote quality sleep, personal empowerment, and lasting connection. Plus, get a live demonstration!
Tim Thomas is a Special Forces veteran and the creator of the Breathwork in Bed program for quality sleep.
Connect with Tim at www.breathworkinbed.com.au for free resources and download the Breathwork in Bed app to start practicing breathwork today.
In this episode:
- Weaponizing sleep: Tim's experience in the Special Forces
- The unique challenges veterans face in mental health recovery
- Avoiding reliance on medication for better sleep
- Why even some professional athletes don't breathe correctly
- Alkalizing the body through proper breathing
- A live breathwork demonstration
- The power of authentic human connection
- Building micro habits with Breathwork in Bed
Connect with us at SuenoLabs.com. We're currently looking for contributors and podcast guests!
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Transcript
Introduction to Wellness and Breath Work
00:00:00
Speaker
Breathe in. Breathe out.
00:00:09
Speaker
When was the last time you really listened to yourself breathe? You really stopped to center yourself and pay attention to your body. Today's guest is a Special Forces veteran who spent more than 10 years in the veteran recovery space.
00:00:27
Speaker
focusing on wellness, mental health, and quality sleep through breath work. We'll talk about why, as strange as it sounds, so many people don't breathe correctly and the powerful results when you take the time to do so. Plus, if you stick around, we've got a live demonstration so you don't want to miss it.
Meet Tim Thomas and the Power of Breathwork
00:00:54
Speaker
Today, I talk with Tim Thomas, creator of the Breathwork in Bed program, about how breathing correctly leads to quality sleep.
00:01:08
Speaker
I'm Jimmy Leonard. This is Swenio Labs.
00:01:21
Speaker
Tim Thomas, welcome to Swenio Labs. How are you today? Jimmy, it is so great to be here. Great to, uh, to share information on this topic that you seem to specialize in and I love, uh, called sleep. Yeah. And we were just talking before the show, we're complete opposites right now. You've got nice, warm, sunny weather, and I'm here in the dark approaching winter, but this, uh, both sides of the day, we get to get into this here.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, technology is good. it's It's a great connector of people. Tim, I'd love to start with your background,
The Dangers of Sleep Deprivation
00:01:54
Speaker
if that's OK. So as I said, you're a veteran, you care about sleep. Tell me how those things have come together in your life. It wasn't something I expected.
00:02:05
Speaker
to be my life purpose. I'd never expected my life my life purpose to be helping people sleep better. I was all about performance. um you know I was a professional fighter. I joined the special forces, but what I discovered, ah Jimmy, was the importance of sleep because we can go without it for a period of time, but then slowly but surely everything starts crumbling and it's like our society thinks it's normal to sleep poorly. You almost wear it like a badge. you know I only had three hours sleep last night. What's your complaint? I just had an extra coffee. I noticed that you know if we are to be sovereign people, um we need to be able to control our sleep because if we're in a state of fatigue,
00:02:53
Speaker
We end up being very susceptible to suggestion. We get very off centered so one thing that we did in the special forces was weapon eyes sleep so we would target our enemy sleep because we knew that if we denied them sleep for just three simple days that would mess them up better than a boy.
Link Between Sleep and Life Quality
00:03:16
Speaker
If you don't go without sleep for three nights, then it's like yeah the difference between you as a normal person and you and a person that would probably be locked up in a padded room is about three nights sleep. um and and It's all very thin ice we live on. What I came to was And when i say veterans i really just need to say humans the only thing different about veterans is they tend to take things to an extreme level in in my sort of soldiers talk i say that black belt and effing themselves up. Okay which actually means.
00:03:49
Speaker
you you you become black belts in the healing art forms because if if when they're in that acute state, you have to have something that works. They've got no energy left for placebo effects. So working in that space for over a decade, I found certain things that really worked and I noticed that if we could improve someone's sleep,
00:04:11
Speaker
Everything improves on dyslexic so i see things in patterns so i just simply ask people think of everything you have in your life. All the the good things the responsibilities all the things you want to do all your loved ones and the quality of those things are relative to the quality of your sleep.
00:04:30
Speaker
Okay, conversely, you know, if you are having really poor sleep, that would impact, you know, the ah your security of your work. Your loved ones would still love you, but their life would be harder if you're not sleeping. And it's just this massive thing that no one's talking about because it's.
00:04:45
Speaker
It's not saying and it's somewhat on spectacular the world we live in is very visual so um if you go off the idea that sleep is the soil from which everything grows. If your trunk isn't in the right shape because that same though you know there's a bunch of stuff that people can sell you to to fix your trunk if you don't have the fruit in your life.
00:05:07
Speaker
that you wanna have there's a bunch of stuff that you can buy to help fix that but someone who really understands you know how to grow something goes into the soil when you can improve the soil that's when you cannot not.
00:05:23
Speaker
grow and and what makes me excited, Jimmy, isn't the fact that of people getting better sleep. What happens is all those seeds of uniqueness, seeds of greatness that are inside a person start flourishing once the soil improves. Okay. So I believe everyone has these unique, great things inside of them, but they're just laying dormant and they won't grow while we're in fatigue.
00:05:49
Speaker
So yes, you know it's important to have sleep discipline, but the exciting thing, the awesome thing, the thing that gets me out of bed that makes me very passionate about what I do is seeing what happens as a result
Symptoms and Consequences of Poor Sleep
00:06:00
Speaker
afterwards. So Tim, I think you touched on something really important there and that's we normalize sleep deprivation. So I want to go back to that for a second ah because some of what you're saying about how it impacts our relationships and it impacts the way we perform. it I'm wondering how Someone can recognize that if it has been their normal for years. So just to to colorize that, if my relationships are worse because I'm not sleeping, how do I know? Good question. When you're in a state of fatigue, everything seems annoying.
00:06:34
Speaker
And you get very reactive. Okay. So, but, but but let me just caveat that it will sit in your blind spot. You won't see it yourself. You just think it's normal because your body will function with our bodies are so incredibly resilient. And there's so many things on offer right now that if you're sleep deprived, they'll sell you a short term energy fix. Okay. Whether it's coffee, energy drinks, sugar, food. So I would say.
00:07:03
Speaker
If you cannot not eat certain things when you're not hungry because your body, because there's a, there's a hormone called grullin G H yeah grullin. Uh, and that gets massively increased when you're not sleeping properly. So if you're eating, when you're not supposed to, when you can't help but eat sugar, when you're finding yourself wondering why Everyone else is an a-hole because you're in this state of fatigue yourself and you're you're looking for energy and you can't generate it. so I would say if you're not getting, say, at least a solid six to eight hours, you're probably not getting enough.
00:07:45
Speaker
and most people can get by you know on six hours, but ah they did this interesting study with two groups of um university students. They gave one eight hours of sleep and the other six. It was the short-term memory Recollection that was really impact the people that got more sleep couldn't retain more so what i encourage people is if you feel something that's obvious i just know oh my gosh i need to sleep right.
Breath Work as a Sleep Solution
00:08:15
Speaker
um And sleep is a great indicator of daytime imbalances you know you can tell yourself in the daytime all this is fine i'm doing this rah rah rah but at nighttime that's when the imbalances show up.
00:08:26
Speaker
Okay so so i use my sleep as a bit of a internal compass as to if i'm doing what i'm supposed to be doing in this world. And if if my sleep is disturbed obviously there's something that i'm not aligned with something i potentially shouldn't be doing ah something that i haven't made my peace with so.
00:08:46
Speaker
As much as poor sleep has a massive impact, it it's there to show you where you may need to look and get healing, get closure, because sometimes the things that stop you sleeping are beyond body.
00:09:01
Speaker
you know So when I had PTSD, I was listening to some of your podcasts, I could have taken a stack of magnesium that wouldn't help me sleep because the problem wasn't in the body. What happens in our busy Western world is we can be so busy doing stuff, so connected to an external focus. Oh, I have to make this goal or I have to do this.
00:09:23
Speaker
that we lose connection to ourselves, we lose connection to our bodies. you know Our bodies just become this thing that carry our eyeballs around and our intention to do a certain thing. And when we go to sleep, that disconnection shows up very powerfully. You may have difficulty getting to sleep. You may find yourself getting to sleep and then waking up and not getting back to sleep. And unfortunately, I was one of those people that that just thought that was normal. And I always wondered why um people annoyed me, you know driving in traffic. Why is that person doing that? Why is that person doing that? yeah All these things, I just ah completely normalized. So what I encourage people to do is
00:10:02
Speaker
just, just for one month commit to being sovereign with your sleep. Here's the thing. Two years ago, Jimmy, I, um, I do a lot of sort of public speaking and I did this workshop on this army base. And I got this email from a very high ranking officer saying, you know, Tim and and and this one was all about sleep, right? but They said, Tim, all my sergeants and corporals were saying that was the first good night sleep they had in five years.
00:10:30
Speaker
And he thought it was amazing, but I actually thought it was terrible because they hadn't slept in five years. How much pain and suffering has been going on for that long? How much of an impact is that to them and everyone they love? But then he asked me something that has sort of changed. I stepped back from public life when he asked me this. He says, Tim, do you have any resources these guys can use when you're not there?
00:10:52
Speaker
And I'm like, good point. Because I'm all that breath work as an option to connect body and mind. But when I stuck my hand up and said, I can't sleep doctor, I lost six years of my life to pharmaceuticals. No one told me that breath work was something ah that I could use to reconnect my body and mind to alkalize mineral pathways, alkalize my body, anti-inflammation. I had a lot of chronic injuries. you know So I managed to find a way to connect to breath and and i and you know My goal now is to give people regular access to that. So, you know, you might see behind me, you know, the breathwork in bed. That's my my brand. There's a simple app you can do. it It just asks you when you want to sleep, when you want to wake up, and then you get those breathwork notifications when you need it.
00:11:39
Speaker
It's one thing to talk about this because when I was sleep deprived and with PTSD, there's all these people saying, oh, here's this, here's that, here's all this information. But I'm like, well, what can I take home and and put in my coffee? What can I take home and use right now? And I didn't want to be in public life and not say, look, because firstly, I'm not the powerful one here. The breath work is in this scenario, right?
00:12:01
Speaker
ah But if I can create a pathway for you to access your breath regularly twice a day, then that's gonna be your gateway into the wonderful world of you know alkali sleep.
00:12:11
Speaker
I think that you're right about the just going straight to pharmaceuticals and medication. And in some ways that makes sense, because as you mentioned, so many of us medicate to stay awake, whether that's an energy drink or extra caffeine. And so we're, we're norms to that. So now if I want to change my behavior, the question becomes, well, what else can I take?
Breath Work for Sovereignty and Self-Worth
00:12:32
Speaker
Oh, you're absolutely right, Jimmy. So you mentioned you did a lot of speaking at at army bases. And I'm curious what What was maybe some unique things that you saw, particularly with the armed services that brought about this kind of culture where someone could say, I haven't slept in five years, or or why is this maybe ah but more challenging in that population?
00:12:53
Speaker
Well, it it actually speaks to um what we were talking about before. um you know Veterans are humans too, and and they can be just as focused on the target of something outside of themselves. okay now so So whether it's a deadline at work or you know something you've got to do you know within the defense force,
00:13:12
Speaker
you perceive that as a real threat and your cortisol goes up and your body is quite willing to sacrifice itself for you to achieve that goal. Because of that disconnect we have with our own bodies, we don't even know how we're breathing. And so your body is depreciating and you don't even know it because you're so connected to that threat. It's a perceived threat. So whether whether you're a veteran or or someone who's got a deadline to meet or someone you've got to do or so ah any kind of perceived threat,
00:13:42
Speaker
That's when the disconnect starts happening. In the in the case of the veterans, you know you get a medal if you can be tougher than tough. okay You get a medal if you can ignore your own fatigue for so long and power on. and There is a time and a place for that. We are built for it, but if you if your only option is to toughen up and get harder, then what ends up happening is people break. and that's That's what happened to me post-service.
00:14:11
Speaker
And so when i'm when I'm working, whether it's in the in you ah you know in a workspace or ah you know in an army base, i have to I get them to understand that your performance is like a pyramid. so The top of the pyramid, you're hitting your targets, you're making bank, you're you're doing everything you want to do, performance. right But at the bottom of the pyramid is your rest, recovery, and healing art forms. so The wider the bottom of the pyramid, the higher your top.
00:14:42
Speaker
So most people just look at what is seen, you know, I'm making bank. I'm doing hitting these targets. I'm doing all this. Or or if you're going to look at it from a, from a fitness perspective, I only look at what they're doing in the gym. You know, they're only looking what they're doing in the workforce. They're not looking at what they're doing away from the gym. So when I describe it to people, I say, listen, you know, even if you're doing this for, for, for money alone,
00:15:09
Speaker
Look at it from the perspective of you are going to make more money doing it for 15 years and pacing yourself, then for two years, then you're falling over. So most of the time, this wellness conversation doesn't get listened to until it actually impacts on performance.
00:15:24
Speaker
And so when i'm when I'm working with corporates, I'll show them how to how to sit still, which is really hard for some people because they think if they're sitting still, they're doing nothing. sure you know And a lot of people have their sense of value attached to what they do. So if they're not doing anything, if I'm doing nothing, that means I'm nothing.
00:15:44
Speaker
In Afghanistan, we used to attack our enemy's center of gravity. okay ah The center of gravity, if you can if you can attack it and off-center it, then they they basically stop thinking. when i get back to and and in In Afghanistan, if we attack their sleep, then that would off-center them. They would think ah they'd forget about what they're doing and be worried about what we're doing. right ah but on Back in the in the Western world, I observed our center of gravity as humans is our sense of self-worth.
00:16:13
Speaker
Okay. And if someone can attack our sense of self-worth, then we get off-centered and, oh, yeah, is it important to wear shoes like that? Then, oh my gosh, if I don't wear shoes like that, my sense of value and my perceived sense of value is now, you know, so, oh, just look, I can't afford it, but I will buy them. You know what I mean? Once you understand that our center of gravity, us as humans, our sovereign nature is always being attacked, you start to understand why there's so much Firstly, poor sleep. And secondly, dependence on pills and things outside of you because you don't have any value underneath your own skin. You've got to buy that value. The great thing about breath and what I like about it is that makes you a sovereign person. That brings you back to who you are. That makes you see the power that you've actually got inside of you. And it makes you feel bloody amazing. People wonder why I do two hours of breath work a day because it feels bloody amazing. Whether you're in a defense force setting, that's probably
00:17:11
Speaker
more more culturalized, you know harden up, get the job done, ignore yourself. But the same thing does apply in in the Western world where if we feel that our sense of self-worth is what we do or what we have, we we're off-centered and we're led around anywhere we like.
00:17:31
Speaker
you know i you know and and it works a charm. Like if I said to you, you know Jimmy, it's not your fault, but you've got really ugly elbows. you didn't You didn't know that. You had really ugly elbows. You probably didn't know that everyone was laughing at you because you're ugly elbows. um But you know what? If you just give me $5, I'll give you this cream. It'll fix up your elbows and you won't have to worry about it. It's not your fault. just yeah I can fix it with money.
00:17:55
Speaker
and And I know that's ridiculous, right? There might be some people at home checking their elbows, but but that's that's how this works. It gives you something to fear and then gives you a solution. So your lack of sovereignty shows up in your subconscious as I've experienced it. And I noticed that if I could simply improved because there was there's millions of dollars being poured into veteran recovery programs in Australia. My theory and it stands is that if that person is is in a state of fatigue, those millions of dollars, that's just water off a duck's back.
00:18:31
Speaker
Okay. So the first thing you got to do is get them out of that state of fatigue. and And like I said, if you simply just, if they have everything they need inside of them, it's just like nature. If you improve the soil, it cannot not grow. We're built for it. It happens naturally. so once you actually But that is unseen, right? it's it's you know It's not like you can make it so obvious on the spreadsheet. Simply improving, getting people out of fatigue, and then Once that happened, I mean, there was something else that happened as well. I'll mention that in a second, but just just on that, once people get out of fatigue and they start getting their own sense of self-worth and they start growing their sense of self-worth, that's when you start getting out of the ah ah out of the idea that my power is attached to something outside of my own skin.
00:19:24
Speaker
and and when But it's very hard to to get to that place of power and peace if you're always looking for that external sense, which is highlighted you know everywhere we look. And we've been told this since we you know could could could listen and talk, that we need certain things, we have to have certain things, we have to have ah that we have to control the thoughts of others so they can think about us a certain way, because somehow our survival depends on it.
00:19:51
Speaker
And I imagine that there is some reality to that a little bit, especially growing up. You know you think about like you know playground dynamics and and school bullies and all the peer pressure, but the the effect of that you know carried into ah adulthood for sure, if you never learn another way, I absolutely see that happening. Put it this way.
00:20:13
Speaker
Jimmy, if you knew I had your back 100 freaking percent and I know, and I knew you had my back a hundred percent, like everything else is a very small detail. You know, like us mammals are built for connection and, and, and we want it, we want it. And when we have it, we thrive.
00:20:30
Speaker
Because we've got such a desire for connection it's like there's been this attachment to if you want connection you've gotta have the right shoes you've gotta. You know have the right thing in the playground you know we're all looking at sort of to have that sense of connection you know that sort of tribe.
00:20:48
Speaker
um But it's been diluted and sort of monetized. There was two things I did that helped me achieve. I had a lifetime goal of saving 40 veteran lives from suicide. And i I didn't care if I died after saving 40 lives. I thought that'd be awesome. I'm going to work the rest of my life to do this, right? But that was achieved within 12 months, Jimmy.
00:21:09
Speaker
And I did that, one I mentioned about getting them out of fatigue, but the the thing that happened first was that I understood that um it didn't matter
Breaking Isolation in Mental Health Recovery
00:21:18
Speaker
if it was... And this is this is humans, not just veterans. Veterans is just probably a little more acute in some ways. I observed that pain, it doesn't matter if it's physical or emotional, it'd get to a certain duration or intensity where it transformed without the person who's experiencing it even knowing it. It would transform into loneliness.
00:21:37
Speaker
Okay, and loneliness is not something that our social mammals deal with really well. Just like we spoke about, if you've got my back and I've got yours, everything else is a small detail. You know, we trust each other. The opposite, and and there's nothing we can't handle, you know, bring it, bring it on, right? But then the opposite of that.
00:21:55
Speaker
I'm all alone. I don't know who's got my back. Everything's a threat because everything is a threat. Even the small things become hard. You know you can talk about mental health, but the first thing that needs to happen is breaking their isolation. and and I noticed that once the isolation was broken, and the funny thing is, this this is what would happen. When I'd have these conversations with these hardcore guys, they would... and I'm just sharing my story. and and I was basically, us blokes especially, we're we're waiting for someone else to articulate the unspoken words in our heart.
00:22:24
Speaker
Okay. And when we can hear another bloke who has worked, walked that path, articulate the words, we can't all of a sudden the isolation gets broken and you you start hearing the jaw actually cracks open like this. and And they start saying things like, I thought I was the only one from that point, breaking the isolation is the first step. And this is, but there is a bit of a problem here. I got to speak to a lot of veterans, but also mental health groups create these antisocial social groups. Okay, they're all in the same boat. They're not alone, but they're not moving forward.
00:23:00
Speaker
You know, so these veterans, there's such a power in having the isolation broken. They can only hang out with each other, right? So they can only be themselves, you know, one hour a week, someone who's depressed. Oh, you're depressed too. Oh, great. We're, we're alone together. And they never get out of that. I mean, the show yeah so, so, so you gotta be very careful breaking the isolation because that then can create these antisocial social groups, which doesn't help you grow. So then getting them out of fatigue.
00:23:28
Speaker
And then I noticed that's when the dust came off their internal compass and they they knew where to go next, just quite automatically. So I was kind of known for the guy that with 20 cents and a toothpick could do more than what millions of dollars ah could in the in the veteran space. so
00:23:53
Speaker
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Live Breathwork Demonstration
00:24:11
Speaker
So let's talk about the breath work then a little bit. So if if somebody hears you mention this and they're thinking, okay, I, I breathe, what what are we talking about here? When you say you do breath work for two hours a day, is this different than what I'm doing right now? so So breath work isn't hard, but we've been breathing a certain way our whole lives and we've been programmed to breathe that way. So to break that mold, it's, um, it takes a little bit of coaching and training.
00:24:40
Speaker
um It'd be a bit like if if um you thought a push-up was just just gently pushing your hands on the ground and you thought that was a push-up, right? So so to to do a full range movement will blow your mind. It's quite an interruption to the system when people actually take a full breath. Now, I'm happy right now, Jimmy, to do a live session just to just to show you how to take a full breath of air and if you're listening and you're in a ah yeah you You want to you want to give that one a try just because because I like giving lived experiences so people can actually yeah Okay, so so anyone at home listening um provided you're in a safe place um You know seated lying down um Listening all we're gonna do is just breathe in and then breathe in again and again and again Notice that little bit of extra space
00:25:29
Speaker
And ah is this a ah really deep inhale that I'm doing here? Well, to to start with, just breathe in normally, hold it there and then breathe in again and again and again. like Okay. And you'll feel that sort of upper part of your chest opening.
00:25:45
Speaker
Sure, like we're inflating a balloon almost. yeah how feels In, in, in, right? Now what we're going to do is we'll call that your your normal inhale is your primary and that little bit extra, we'll call your secondary.
00:26:00
Speaker
Okay. So breathing in on your primary, when it comes to your secondary, Jimmy, I want you to drive your fingers into your thumbs. So you're making a pinching feeling on your feet, like really hard. So breathing in on your primary, when it comes to your secondary, hit your turbo boost and breathe in even more. So give that a try. Breathe in, okay pinch your fingers and breathe in again. Did you notice that give you a little bit extra?
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, it did seem there's a little turbo boost there. I like how you said that. Great. Okay. So we're going to juice that up even more. So think of your two pinching fingers and your chin. There's a triangle there, right? And we're going to breathe in on the primary.
00:26:42
Speaker
And then when it comes to the secondary, I want you to pinch your fingers and raise your chin and make that triangle big. Okay. So breathe in, then in again and hit your turbo boost and raise your chin. Ready? So yeah I'm kind of throwing my arms out to the side. Like I got one of those exercise bands and I'm doing a stretchy kind of emotion you're doing. so So breathe in on your primary when it comes to your secondary.
00:27:11
Speaker
Raise your chin. Raise your chin. Look to the ceiling, buddy. Look to the ceiling. All right. We're here. OK. Let it go.
00:27:24
Speaker
If you can't see, Jimmy's got a smile on his face right now. All right. So let's try and let's try and smooth this out. So normally I'll take an hour to show people this, but you're doing really well. Okay. Um, chair so what we're going to do is because you're so used to sort of looking forward, I need you to really raise that chin. And as you raise your chin, it's almost like you're trying to show someone your heart by lifting your sternum. You got that?
00:27:51
Speaker
Okay, so I'll give you a little demonstration. and And I'm just looking straight up at the ceiling here. Straight up and sink and raising your chin as high as you can go. So I'll give you a little demonstration.
00:28:02
Speaker
And hold it, allow that to fill up as much as you can. Give that a try. And Tim, do I want to keep my back straight here? Do I want to lean back? as Lean back, lean back. So if you look at my side profile, I'm going It's like I'm trying to my sternum that's normally facing down. I almost try and try and lift that up. Okay. Like I'm trying to reveal my heart. okay Open up my my my heart and show somebody. All right. So we'll start with the primary here. Yep. Hit your turbo. Look at the ceiling. Hold in and in and just hold that and just wriggle it around for a second. Wriggle it around. Move your shoulders. Wriggle your shoulders. Can you wriggle your shoulders? That's it. Open up that space.
00:28:47
Speaker
And then just let it out with a.
00:28:54
Speaker
All right. So, so what's happening here when we're taking these extra breaths, we're opening the
Breath Work's Profound Impacts
00:29:00
Speaker
body. What's going on but with the body as we do this proper breath.
00:29:05
Speaker
gives you proper alignment. okay So think of your electrical system like a bunch of hoses. okay And you know when there's water going through a hose, if you pinch it, but if you pinch it there's less water going through it. right So that's how our nerves work. So when you've got a pink nerve, you've you've blocked the hose and there's less energy going through. So if you're hunched over, if you're stooped over, you're essentially not letting your energetic system ah flow as properly as it should.
00:29:33
Speaker
OK, so people that are, you know, the fact that I'm sitting down, I'm sitting on my glutes, OK, that's stopping energy flowing as it normally should ah when we lean over the bench where we're over. So what proper breathing does, it doesn't just oxygenate the system and give you more energy. It aligns your system. OK, so one thing I get people to do is whenever they want to refresh,
00:30:01
Speaker
um and Again, this this is a a very rapid sort of fire and you're doing really well, my friend. A very rapid fire is breathing in, you're getting that alignment um and you're oxygenating, but that's actually only half the breath. but we're goingnna What we're going to do now, okay and and what I call this breath here, this is your breath of possibility. If something feels impossible, you do that and really suck it like suck it like it's yeah like you're trying to you know your last breath on Earth.
00:30:30
Speaker
And that makes the impossible possible. Okay. Breath of possibility. And when I, and when I'm doing this, I encourage people to, and again, this is a lot of information here. Pinch your fingers, raise your chin, but also roll your eyeballs in the back of your head. Get your fingers ready, get your chin ready and as, and really snort in rapidly and roll your eyeballs into the back of your head. All right. Let's give it a try here. All the way out, out, out, out, out, out. And then.
00:31:00
Speaker
In, in, in, in, in. Hold it and wriggle it around, wriggle it around, open up that space, open up that possibility, and then let it out with a, ah, when you're ready, when you're ready, ah.
00:31:15
Speaker
It's like a ah good bodily stretch too. That's what I'm feeling. Yeah. Especially I've been sitting for a while here. yeah i get it right and yeah now and and And so that is the first half of the breathing. So breath of possibility is up here and then your breath of peace is down low. Okay. So down low. And so I'm so always surprised when I'm working with professional athletes, how many people don't know how to breathe correctly?
00:31:43
Speaker
You know, that that even though they're athletes, they don't know how to breathe correctly. And so breath of possibility up here, breath of peace is down low. So what we want to do is once we breathe in, in, in, and we hold it, we let it fill up. We then see how, um look at my structures here, my head's back. I collapsed my head down. I collapsed my my shoulders down and I push it into my belly. So I'm holding my breath and I push it from my chest into my belly.
00:32:11
Speaker
And then I squeeze it and then I let it out with a super, super slow. And, and that, that, and that you, you know, if, if we do it correctly, um, we'll give you a view as a, and all my, well, I won't give it away, but let's just, let's just see if we can, um, give give it a try ourselves right now, Jimmy. So ill I'll coach you through it. So get, get ready to do your, your breath of possibility and, and, and bring that, bring that power into your upper lungs.
00:32:41
Speaker
And then the the roll forward is almost like we're taking the end of a tube of toothpaste and we're just. Yep. Yes. Into the tube of toothpaste and you're pushing it like a balloon down to where your belly button is. Very good. Good analogy. All right. We're ready to give this a try here. Breathe in in.
00:33:00
Speaker
Okay. Hold it. Allow it to gently move from your upper chest down. Roll your head gently forward. Roll your head gently forward like you're rolling out toothpaste. All the way down. Put your hands on your belly. Feel it in your belly. Feel it in your belly. And then let out a... When you're ready. As long as you can.
00:33:26
Speaker
I think I ah went off-screen a little bit there down to the floor. Okay, I got it. yeah So, so okay what was that one proper breath like for you, ah Jimmy? How do you feel now?
00:33:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so I think ah relaxing is is kind of the word that came to mind, but almost I think it's almost an expected word to come to mind. And when I think about it a little bit more, maybe a more fitting word is full, but not full in like the I have so much to do today kind of full. It's it's a different kind of all like I've I'm filled with something there isn't normally space for you know that i think that's and that's kind of the point i love that there's giving voice to the unspoken right now cuz essentially. We want to set feel a sense of connection and this is why people like to live busy lives cuz i think that. Business will give me a sense of connection that there that that the unspoken parts of them are yearning.
00:34:20
Speaker
okay and this And this is what I show people within a few short breaths, you can give yourself the very thing that you've been looking for. you know All the things that we've been struggling and striving for, ah <unk> it's in moments like this where you actually get to experience that. And that was just one breath. Imagine doing that for an hour. like okay um You get to feel the fullness of that totality of connection.
00:34:45
Speaker
Because let me just share something here Jimmy and and I mean I really need listeners to get this because if you can get this then you are going to have that that. abundance, that connection, that sense of unspoken connection that we're all kind of looking for. We're all trying to, you know, and no matter how much you haven't from the wrong place, it's never going to be enough. Your breath is the, is the right place to start looking at. And, um, you don't hear about this sort of stuff because no one's making money. Uh, it comes down to conversations like this, and this is why, um, uh,
00:35:21
Speaker
it's It's a passion of mine because it's it's quite a simple thing to tap into. And I just, I wished someone told me about this sort of stuff before I lost, you know, six years of my life to pills. Now, the more you let that out.
00:35:35
Speaker
the more you're going to have that sense of, as you say, a wholeness and connection. I encourage people at home to do the same thing, because each time you do this, you go deeper. Because right now, you're just skimming a rock on on the top of a very deep lake, um you know, to drop down into it. and And like I said, this is an experience. This is beyond words. And the reason why breathwork is so powerful is think of us as living organisms, okay? Evolving living organisms. Before we were thinking,
00:36:05
Speaker
we were breathing. Before we were sentient and putting you know paintings on rock walls, we were breathing. Before we were speaking, we were breathing. So this deep ancient wiring outranks our thoughts and it outranks our words.
00:36:21
Speaker
I can't explain to somebody with words what I experience when I'm doing my hour of breathwork. Those guys you know who got their first good night's sleep in five years couldn't explain um what happened when I did a workshop with them because it was beyond words.
00:36:39
Speaker
Is this what the app helps people do? The app is there to give people easy access to those micro habits that all the, you know, highly successful people have, you know, um, highly successful people guard their sleep because I know how important it is. So the app just asks you two questions. When you want to sleep, when you want to wake up, and then you get this notification to breathe a certain way, that breath to go to sleep.
00:37:05
Speaker
And even if you get to sleep easily, think of your body and the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. Your body does a really deep clean before going to sleep, so it makes a lot of sense to give it an oxygen boost before it does its deep clean. ah Myself, especially with chronic injuries, they've been an absolute blessing because if I don't alkalize my body with breath going to sleep, I'll wake up in pain.
00:37:32
Speaker
And then and then getting out of bed in the morning there's you know your alarm will go off as in your own alarm that you set for yourself. ah But then you'll see the notification there you tap that press play and the breathing to get out of bed. Is very different to the breathing you had going to sleep so that that heavy lead feeling that you feel in the morning sometimes when you're getting you're trying to get out of bed breath transforms that in the gold.
00:37:58
Speaker
And if you can win the first 10 minutes of your day by activating your body, your breath, and your mind, um it's it's free, powerful, non-addictive, and um it it gives you a position to negotiate with the day from a position of strength. I always sort of tell people, there's two completely different types of people in the world, and essentially, Jimmy, they're both you.
00:38:22
Speaker
There's the you that wakes up, you know, and invest in themselves. Okay. Energy's like money, how you invest, it's how you get it back. And and whenever you invest in yourself, you always get a massive return. Your bot your body is like, oh, you love me here. I'll let me love you back. Okay. And then, and and that person goes into the day from a position of strength, abundant, peace, power. And usually when you negotiate with somebody, the stronger person wins.
00:38:49
Speaker
But then there's the you, there's the me that wakes up and doesn't invest in themselves. Still needs energy, so on a good day, that might mean an extra coffee, an extra beer. you know On a bad day, that I could be a complete a-hole because I need energy and i can't like I haven't been able to generate it myself, so I have to take from others.
00:39:10
Speaker
And it's that sort of conversation. You start realizing why there's so many negative eye holes in the world because they they simply don't, they need energy. They don't know how to generate it. And there's plenty of people doing it. So it's normalized. The app is there to to give people easy access to very powerful habits.
00:39:27
Speaker
Well, Tim, just as we're coming up on time here, how, how can somebody learn a little bit more about you, the work that you're doing, maybe even find the app that we're talking about? Sure. I look, um, you just, you just go into any, if you gotta, we got approved by Apple last week. So if you just three words, breath work in bed, think breakfast in bed, breath work in bed. Um, that'll come up. Um, and breath work is all one word, right? Correct. we In bed.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and, and, you know, I've spent over a year, a lot of time, effort and money building this race car. Now it's on the track. I just asked the listeners where we're still finding little things in it. So I asked the listeners to be persistent with it. You might have to shut it down and start it up again. Cause we're still getting through that initial sort of phase. I want to give you value and I want it to work the way and it will, but there might be a few little things that I just, we might need to be a little patient with. You'll still get the power.
00:40:20
Speaker
But um i'm quite a perfectionist so i wasn't gonna sort of tell people about it but i just ask if you if you're going into it be a little bit more persistent because we've just put this race car on the track if you know what i mean. Tim Thomas this is been absolutely fascinating thank you so much for your story your demonstration and just all the work that you're doing to help people really connect and rest and sleep better in a healthy positive way.
00:40:49
Speaker
My absolute pleasure, Jimmy. Um, I think we're all connected and, um, when other people win, we win. Um, and, uh, it's an, it's an absolute honor to to be on here, bringing these gifts and, and, uh, I really want to, like I said, I'm so excited that it's not just the sleep that people get. It's all those seeds of uniqueness and greatness. They're going to start growing once the soil from which everything grows, which is our sleep starts improving. So I wish all the listeners well, and, uh, thank you so much for listening today.
00:41:23
Speaker
Swen Your Labs is a show about sleep, memory, and dreams. For more content, visit our blog at swenyourlabs.com and connect with us to learn more about how you can share your story related to brain health and the daily habits that help us to rest and live better.
00:41:41
Speaker
Thanks for joining. We'll be back soon.