#38 - Special Guest Guy Fincham

In this conversation, Guy shares his journey into breathwork and his research in the field. He discusses the difference between meditation and breathwork, highlighting the role of mindfulness and awareness in both practices. Guy explains the various traditions and disciplines within breathwork and emphasizes the universality of the breath. He also addresses the potential risks and benefits of different breathwork practices. The chapter concludes by discussing the physiological and psychological responses, including tearing and crying, that can occur during breathwork. This conversation explores the mechanisms and benefits of breathwork, particularly in releasing tension and promoting mental well-being. The hosts discuss personal experiences with the Swami technique and the importance of integrating breathwork into movement practices. They also address the industrialization of breathwork and the need for evidence-based research. The conversation concludes with tips for identifying legitimate breathwork practitioners and a humorous concept called 'ninja f***ing.'

Takeaways

Breathwork involves regulating and controlling the breath, while meditation focuses on awareness of the present moment.
There are various traditions and disciplines within breathwork, but no one can own the breath as it is a universal and innate function.
Proper training and guidance are essential in breathwork to ensure safety and avoid potential risks.
Breathwork can have both physiological and psychological effects, including tearing and crying, which may be a release of energy or tension.

Guy Fincham X (twitter) - https://x.com/breath_Guy?s=20

Links to publication 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-27247-y
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-49279-8
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763423004220


Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background
01:30 Journey into Breathwork
05:09 Intense Meditation Retreat
06:27 Transition to Breathwork
09:08 Breath Body Mind Method
10:07 Founding the Breathwork Lab
11:18 Definition of Meditation and Breathwork
12:31 Different Breathwork Traditions
15:24 Authenticity of Breathwork Practices
19:27 Physiological Effects of Breathwork
24:29 Kapalabhati and Coherent Breathing
28:37 Crying and Tearing in Breathwork
33:24 Exploring the Mechanisms of Breathwork
36:30 Personal Experiences with Swami
37:28 The Power of Breathwork in Releasing Tension
38:24 The Connection Between Breathwork and Intensive Exercise
43:03 The Industrialization of Breathwork
48:40 Breathwork as a Tool for Mental Wellbeing
53:28 Navigating the Breathwork Journey
56:16 The Importance of Evidence-Based Breathwork
58:57 Identifying Legitimate Breathwork Practitioners
01:03:48 The Concept of 'Ninja F***ing'

Transcript

Richard Aceves (00:01.141)
Welcome back. We are here with a very special guest, Mr. Guy. I'm gonna say Mr. Guy and Mr. Ed. I dig it. How are we doing, guys?

Dr Ed (00:09.13)
I'm going to go first as it's doctorate as I always remind. And this isn't medical advice and all of that stuff. Yeah, I, most people that listen to this know that I'm in a scientific Institute, um, doing a PhD studying lactate amongst other things and just like being amongst people that are studying.

Richard Aceves (00:10.709)
Yes, it's doctorate. Please, please be doctorate. I worked hard for those letters.

Dr Ed (00:33.47)
interesting and related stuff to what we are interested in and fortunately I managed to convince my friend Guy who has kind of come into the lab that I work in and is trying to pioneer a breast work research institute lab here, much to the difficulty of trying to fight the system where there's not necessarily any easy sources of funding for something that doesn't necessarily involve.

Richard Aceves (00:51.653)
That's awesome.

Dr Ed (01:03.33)
outcome of creating a drug or pharmaceutical intervention. But I just thought it'd be great to discuss with Roy his own PhD, his journey towards becoming interested in breathwork, or breathwork he's doing at the moment, the studies he's published, the future of breathwork, what he sees that as, where it's going, and his experience of the Swami that I introduced him to. So I will...

Richard Aceves (01:26.373)
Beautiful.

Dr Ed (01:30.654)
stop talking and let him say... Yeah well I'm not a medical doctor so I can say what I want. Yeah my journey into breathwork goes back to probably around 2016, 2015, 2016. I was doing my exchange year in California.

Richard Aceves (01:38.909)
I love it. Yes. Ha ha ha.

Dr Ed (01:58.53)
university and I was introduced to meditation and I read this book read this book by the Dalai Lama and became very fascinated by the by the practice of meditation and Buddhism in general and after I graduated I moved to China I was studying and learning Mandarin there and my health wasn't at its best I was quite tired a lot of the time

Richard Aceves (02:01.625)
Okay.

Richard Aceves (02:26.373)
Okay.

Dr Ed (02:27.158)
I wasn't, yeah, I was, I was, I, uh, my undergraduate was in international business and, and Mandarin. So I was pursuing a path not related to it. Yeah. I was, yeah, worked in the startup, did all that kind of stuff in California. That whole thing. Yeah. Tried all that stuff out and, uh, yeah, moved to China. Um, I found myself, uh,

Richard Aceves (02:35.67)
Towards the financial sector. Yeah

Richard Aceves (02:42.518)
Okay, awesome.

Dr Ed (02:52.062)
I don't know, I don't have to say it. It's not motivated by what I was doing. It was all extrinsic. It wasn't really for anything intrinsic and rewarding for me. And at that point I just decided, oh I'm interested in meditation. I like these contemplative practices. Why don't I just research them?

Richard Aceves (03:02.551)
Okay.

Dr Ed (03:14.478)
because I found out that there were institutes in Oxford, at Sussex, researching meditation and mindfulness and also John Cabot's in the US. I thought I want to be like them, that they seem like good role models and people to be like. And if I work in that sort of environment, the people around there will also be a warm environment to work in and people will be mindful and it would just be a good atmosphere to be in.

Richard Aceves (03:41.217)
Yeah. Awesome.

Dr Ed (03:44.03)
Yeah, so I decided to quit learning Chinese, I stopped the grant and the funding that I got and the scholarship and decided to apply for a master's conversion in psychology in Scotland at St Andrews. And before I went, I just I went to India and Sri Lanka, I trained in a couple of different meditation practices, one retreat was in Tibetan Buddhism.

and that was a treat up in the Himalayas, the foothills and then went down to Sri Lanka, went to an ashram, yoga ashram and learned, actually was first exposed to breath work there doing these practices and also when I was in India I remember telling people that yeah I had a tendency to breathe through my mouth and they kind of looked at me in disgust like why would you do that this is so long ago so

Richard Aceves (04:13.966)
Beautiful.

Dr Ed (04:39.95)
I'd already been exposed to breathwork, but I kind of just ignored it. I was like, why would you want, why do you want to focus on controlling your breathing when you can just observe it as in meditation and this, that's the way to, to achieve enlightenment is to, you know, live in the moment by focusing on your breathing and all that sort of stuff. So I, um, did another intense meditation retreat in Sri Lanka in the, in the, uh, in the jungle and it was in a, something called the paschina. It was extremely intense, very, um, very.

quite hard hardcore, it's like 16, 18 hours of meditation a day. Yeah, you get up at 4am every day and it's intense, it's intense.

Richard Aceves (05:20.429)
Now, is this intensity for a short amount of time? I mean, obviously you went there for like a workshop, so you stayed there for, but are these monks doing this on the daily basis, just meditating 18 hours a day?

Dr Ed (05:31.099)
Yep. Yeah. So next to me on my left were probably 15 Buddhist monks doing this doing this meditation retreat with us because that was one of their instructions was to do this because yeah I mean some of them will meditate more they're supposed to be meditating all the time right even when they're walking and etc so in terms of formal meditation sitting down

hours a day. Yeah, it was a lot of work. You have these three hour periods, one hour periods, three of them throughout the day called hours of determination and you're supposed to just sit there completely still and whenever the pain comes up like it will if you're sitting completely still you just have to pay attention to it and you know examine its qualities of pain like what is pain and just

Richard Aceves (06:02.644)
That's a lot of sitting.

Dr Ed (06:27.758)
trying to stay and still as possible and not moving at all. And as the retreat goes on, you can actually get to a point where you don't move at all for the whole hour, just saying. Yeah. So yeah, that was an experience. And I went back home and I went to the UK and I moved up to Scotland, St. Andrews, to study psychology. And at the end of the first semester, I became really sick.

I was under a lot of stress. I think I had some kind of generalized anxiety disorder. And these are the reasons why I wanted to really pursue meditation and mindfulness because I thought that would be the answer. So living in the future, live in the present. Don't worry, no worries of the past, just be here and now and that's the key. And that's ultimately what guided me there. But yeah, as I was saying, I was very stressed and something happened to me and I developed chronic fatigue syndrome.

Richard Aceves (07:11.385)
Mm-hmm.

Richard Aceves (07:27.382)
Okay.

Dr Ed (07:28.222)
and that forced me to take a two year leave of absence from my one year masters. And during this time, Covid happened, and before Covid happened, I found out about the Wim Hof method, the intense breathing and ice bath. For the first time, doing that breathing kind of gave me a sense of control over my symptoms. It kind of stopped me having these relapses of chronic fatigue at the start.

Richard Aceves (07:54.395)
Okay.

Dr Ed (07:55.522)
I read the famous paper that came out in 2014 in the Proceeding of National Academies of Sciences which studied the Wim Hof method and showed all these all these benefits in terms of inflammation and cortisol.

So yeah, going from this is a long story, but I'll try and keep it short. Yeah. So I started off with the Wim Hofmeier for doing that intensely for half a year, like an hour a day, two sessions of 30 minutes. And it was helping me. No, no, but then I kind of became fascinated with different practices. And I reached out to some psychiatrists in New York, Richard Brown and Patricia

Richard Aceves (08:14.006)
This is perfect dude, I like it. We need context.

Dr Ed (08:39.122)
and they own this foundation called the Breath Body Mind Foundation. And they said to me, you know, the Wim Hof method probably isn't what you need for your system, which is already heavily dysregulated. If you want to heal long term, you probably want to have to do these more gentle practices. And I trained with them during the pandemic in this method of a breath body mind. So it's using, it's a trauma informed practices.

taken from all over the world, but kind of repackaged into a secular format, more accessible for people. It includes tap tapping, shaking, breath work, different types, alternate nostril breathing, the core one is coherent breathing, and then there's also meditation in there as well, but the core practice is mostly formed around this practice of coherent breathing, which is breathing at a rate of around five to six breaths per minute.

Richard Aceves (09:38.954)
Okay.

Dr Ed (09:39.51)
used in heart rate variability biofeedback and Ed will be able to talk about what coherent breathing is and what exactly what exactly means after I've done this introduction. So I train with them, I worked with Richard to overcome my chronic fatigue syndrome, I trained with them as a breath teacher, so teach small and large groups and this is all happening during the pandemic.

Richard Aceves (09:50.433)
Yeah, beautiful.

Richard Aceves (10:05.986)
Okay.

Dr Ed (10:07.346)
I decided this is what I want to commit my life to. So I reached out to people at Sussex mindfulness center here and said I want to research breath work. I'm going to change direction completely. Originally it was going to be in meditation and mindfulness. Then I said I want to just do this. So I managed to get some funding from this institution in Tokyo. It's called the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund. They funded me for three years to do a PhD here.

as a breathwork researcher. And yeah, this is my purpose in life is just to research anything and everything breathwork related. Anything that involves an element of breath control, I'm very interested in it. That's why I'm very interested in what you guys are doing with combining movement and muscle tension with the breath. I think it has enormous potential as a non-pharmacological alternative to inducing altered states of consciousness. It's faster-paced.

Richard Aceves (10:36.994)
Awesome.

Richard Aceves (10:57.515)
Yeah.

Dr Ed (11:05.302)
breathwork practices. So yeah, and I've just recently founded the Brighton and Sussex Breathwork Lab, so that's going to be dedicated to breathwork research and practice.

Richard Aceves (11:18.413)
Okay, nice. I love it, man. So when, take me to the, where do you see the difference or what are the slight differences, right? So we hear the word meditation, I think, quite often. And now I think that there's a very big trend with, you know, being a breathwork practitioner, being a breath specialist, or, you know, they have all the sort of all these kind of

breathing connect or meditation workshops. What for you, what is the definition of meditation considering the amount of time that you've spent, you know, working on it actively? And what is your definition of being, of actually doing breath work, right? So we all breathe automatically. Obviously there's dysregulation. As you said, you show up for this retreat and people are looking at you and discuss that you're

mouth breathing. Right. So what are what where do you see the merging of both practices and where is the separation or what's the line that kind of divides meditation versus breath?

Dr Ed (12:31.018)
Great question. I would say that if you're doing breath work, the first step of breath work is mindfulness and meditation because you have to be aware of your breath in the first instant to be able to control it.

So for me, breath work is literally working with the breath. So it's controlling it, regulating it. Pranayama, the classical limb of yoga, prana is vital energy or life force, synonymous with breath. And then ayama is regulation of or control of. So to me, it's yes, the control of the breath. Whereas if I was going to simplify meditation to its core, it...

it's awareness of the present moment. It's simply awareness of the present moment. The breath is used as the focal point of that but as meditation practitioners become more and more adept they broaden it out so you have full open awareness of everything. But if I'm going to simplify it as much as possible, which is really hard to do in these sorts of practices, there's so much context.

Richard Aceves (13:41.95)
Yeah.

Dr Ed (13:43.122)
so much context around them that it's impossible to say this is this and this is that. But breath work to me is just simply anything that involves a regulation of the breath. But mindfulness and meditation provides that first step to doing that.

Richard Aceves (13:48.147)
Right.

Richard Aceves (14:00.321)
towards. Right. Okay. Beautiful. That's a great simplification actually.

Dr Ed (14:06.43)
I guess it's the breath as the tool to allow anybody to go at meditation because it's the one thing that everybody mostly can tell if they're breathing in or they're breathing out, as opposed to being able to tell if their heart's beating at a certain rate or any of the other intraceptive skills we may have.

Richard Aceves (14:26.949)
that we've brought in. And now, as we talk about methodologies towards breathwork, right? How many different disciplines are there in breathwork? I mean, essentially, I say this because there's the difference, I always say there's a difference between regurgitation of information versus the knowledge and wisdom, right? So we think, okay, so we can breathe in through the nose, we can breathe out through the mouth.

But essentially we're inhaling and exhaling. So something so, I don't want to say simple, but something so simple can have such a profound effect physiologically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, all of the above. And so how can something so simple have so many different disciplines? And how many disciplines have you seen? And how many do you think are just more kind of...

How many of these people are you seeing that are coming on because you're starting to see breath work grow? It's like the industrialization of yoga, the industrialization of breath work. How much of it is kind of BS, skammish versus the real power behind the knowledge and wisdom of proper breath practitioners?

Dr Ed (15:45.23)
It's a really hard question to answer.

Richard Aceves (15:49.462)
I can't prepare bro

Dr Ed (15:53.255)
I would say that this is what I love about the breath is that no one can own it. So we could make a breathwork practice up right now. We could just do some inhalations for a certain amount of time, different ratios and just call it Ed, Richard and Guy's breathwork practice and then trademark it. So to me people can try as much as they want to trademark.

Richard Aceves (15:58.391)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Ed (16:20.766)
at Breathwork practice, but...

It's the breath. Everyone has it. Everyone own it. You own your own breath. You can't. It's impossible. So ubiquitous. You can't. Everyone breathes. You can't say this is the best way to do it and this is the right way to do it. I understand that a lot of thing, a lot of traditions or cultures will want to place a trademark on these, on these practices because they want to protect the teachings.

Richard Aceves (16:27.715)
Right.

Richard Aceves (16:52.822)
Right.

Dr Ed (16:53.162)
They don't want them to just be used, just disseminated to everyone. They want them to have proper training of the practice of the teachers and practitioners. So I, so I get that. I get why they would do that. Going back to like the original question, it's cool. It's, it's so hard to say how many traditions there are and which ones, you know, have the most pure.

necessarily because within it's like religion there's so many different ones and within that specific religion there are branches off that as well.

Richard Aceves (17:25.824)
Right.

Different sex, yeah.

Dr Ed (17:31.298)
For me, the most famous well-known body of practices is from Pranayama. So from yoga, from Hinduism.

And then there's also Tibetan Buddhism and they use Tummo meditation. And if you track the Wim Hof method, you know, it has, um, it combines practices and pranayama along with, um, Buddhism, Tummo meditation.

Richard Aceves (17:56.938)
Okay.

Dr Ed (17:58.958)
There's also Sufism, and they have their own breathwork practices, but they're all pretty, they all share similarities with one another. There's something called Kapalabhati from Pranayama or Bistrika. There's similar, these are very fast paced breathing through the nostril and pumping into the diaphragm. And you can find these in other traditions and other religions, you can find it in Sufism for example, but it will have a different name.

Richard Aceves (18:21.017)
Mm-hmm.

Richard Aceves (18:29.412)
Okay.

Dr Ed (18:31.038)
Again, the Wim Hof method is just the name of a practice which has been done for millennia. It's just now there's a name given to it, right? Is it worth talking about how you get to get your input on it? Because it sounds like the psychiatrist that you went to, again similarly...

Richard Aceves (18:42.873)
There's a box of it, right? It's packaged pretty and easy.

Dr Ed (18:58.786)
they didn't put all of the eggs in the Wim Hof basket, so to speak, and there's potential risks to using that for some people. What's your perception of why those risks are there and how you see those risks as somebody that's working in breast cancer? Another great question. I'm happy to give my input as well. You go first. Well, I mean, I think there's... So we've...

talked about they send lab meetings and things and this is why I brought up what I've learned from Rich is the fact that... so breath is the tool for meditation but the tool for breathing is muscles. So without proper connection to muscles then you can breathe incorrectly, potentially or you could breathe correctly or you could just breathe in a better way.

or you can breathe in a safer way or with more confidence and then you can perform certain tasks. And I think that...

Dr Ed (20:06.406)
when somebody has very little control over their body and you integrate something that's fairly intense, like the Wim Hof but without proper connectedness, if that can be used as a term, then you might not be ready for what you bring up or you might just overwhelm the system and it kind of overclocks itself like to use a computer as a metaphor.

And the concept I had is like, from my experiences working with Richard and doing the motions in our muscles, is that if somebody has tension in their left calf or their left bicep or another part of their body, that can impact their breathing at the whole body level, which can impact the mobility of the diaphragm and everything that comes along with it.

Richard Aceves (20:52.611)
Right.

Dr Ed (20:57.258)
So from my perspective, that's why if you're not ready going, it's like saying to somebody, Oh, you've got a weak back. Well, go and do a 200 kilo back squat or a 200 kilo deadlift and it'll get stronger. There might be steps that you need to take before. And it sounds like you found a step like that when you were sick. Yeah. Which most definitely wasn't straight in at the end. Yeah. So if I had to do it all again with my chronic fatigue recovery,

I wouldn't start with the win-off method at all. But that was my way to get into... You had to learn the hard way almost to... For sure. It helped in the short term acutely, but long term it wouldn't heal me from what I'm experiencing. I needed to do these much more gentle practices and I'm really glad you brought up the psychiatrist I worked with again. Because originally they were trained in and...

Richard Aceves (21:32.651)
Yeah.

Dr Ed (21:52.366)
and taught a practice called Sudarshan Kriya Yoga. And they were distributing this with Sri Ravi Shankar, who's the founder of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga. And it involves fast-paced breathing, as well as other practices. And some people are at risk of, you know, resurfacing triadic memories or...

having kind of psychotic breaks if they do too intensive breathwork without being aware of what they're doing. So these Richard and Patricia, they wanted to repackage these practices without using the fast paced stuff just to make it very accessible for people in the West.

screen out, basically it automatically kind of screens out those people with any contraindications, any psychiatric contraindications. And for me, I practiced probably breath body mind and coherent breathing for about a six month period. Every day I was doing you know 40 to 60 minutes a day of slow gentle breath work practice whilst I was quite sick.

And I would go to workshops and I would hear people's experiences of when they're doing slow-paced breathing, their eyes are watering and they're relaxed. And I was thinking, why aren't I getting these sort of signs? Why aren't I experiencing these physiological effects? You know, I kind of wanted to, didn't want just the psychological calming effect. I wanted to see...

Richard Aceves (23:23.234)
Right.

Dr Ed (23:35.718)
it physiologically impacted me as well, but I wasn't. So I was discussing this with Richard, Richard Brown, and he said I think you're ready for some faster-paced breath work because you clearly don't have the contra indications for it, you're not at risk of, you'd have a panic disorder, an intense anxiety disorder, you're...

you can definitely practice this method. So I did something called Kapalabhati, which is school shining breath, and they use Kapalabhati in Sadashin Kriya Yoga. They just don't give it that name. Again, this is where it all gets quite muddled. Yeah, so it's a simple like pumping of the navel, the abdomen, and it's a forceful exhale and a passive inhale.

Richard Aceves (24:17.818)
And what does that breath work look like as a, you know.

Richard Aceves (24:24.142)
Okay.

Dr Ed (24:29.49)
and you can vary the rhythm. So I would do a few minutes at a pretty slow pace, which would look something like this.

Richard Aceves (24:30.012)
Mmm.

Dr Ed (24:43.542)
and then I'd ramp it up.

Richard Aceves (24:45.75)
Okay.

Dr Ed (24:50.774)
And then I would drop down into coherent breathing and I would do that for about three breaths per minute. So coherent breathing, the rate of coherent breathing, it should decrease as the taller you get, the rate will, the resonant rate or the coherent rate will reduce. Did you talk a little bit about the resonant rate and the coherent rate just to educate? Well, I mean, I'm sure you know it better than I do, but it's...

Richard Aceves (24:57.1)
And

Dr Ed (25:14.858)
It's realizing that our physiology is different in terms of the anatomy and the measurements and that the length of your lungs and the length of the trachea and the time it takes for breaths to go in and out all have these cycles and they create these cycles and when you, I think we've discussed it on a podcast episode before, when you kind of match these cycles of things like

respiratory rate to a certain heart rate to various other physiological processes that are happening at the same time which are probably brain waves as well then the body gets into a coherent state and almost starts speaking to itself much more clearly which is

Richard Aceves (25:44.524)
Mm-hmm.

Richard Aceves (25:56.557)
Okay.

Dr Ed (25:57.106)
I guess probably the definition of meditation as well, which is sure being in the present moment. And it can be a byproduct of meditation. So they have looked in monks, I think it was in Japan, they were doing meditation and they would naturally respire at this rate of between three and six breaths per minute. So I was I was I would do this cycle. So I do

Richard Aceves (26:02.315)
Right.

Richard Aceves (26:15.095)
Okay.

Dr Ed (26:26.038)
maybe 100 breaths per minute to 200 breaths per minute, drop it down to three breaths per minute. And something happened where...

some energy was released or some tension or some stress whatever you want to call it something happened something moved, a kind of energy moved.

Richard Aceves (26:40.853)
Yeah. Okay.

Dr Ed (26:47.186)
And from then on, ever since I do now do coherent breathing, my eyes water. I will, I will yawn and I, my eyes will water and I, and it's all because of, just because of that one little session where I did some fast paced breathing. So now my core routine every day is probably about six minutes of this Kapala Bharti and dropping down into coherent breathing and then follow it up with 15 minutes of just coherent breathing, breathing it.

Richard Aceves (26:53.675)
Okay.

Dr Ed (27:15.254)
you know, three breaths per minute, three and a half breaths per minute. Sometimes just introducing something else into there. So I might do a bit of the swami in there as well. Um, I don't, as in, I, I guess you probably don't want to restrict your, your respiratory rate to a certain rhythm in the swami. Cause the whole point is to explore yourself. But for me, I was just tensing them different muscle groups and just trying different things out and also visualizing moving the breath.

So you visualize moving the breath in certain channels and specific circuits around your body. And the more you practice it, the more advanced you become, the more you can do that. And you can breathe into certain areas and you can reverse the directions of visualization a bit like with the swami where you have different levels to it. So, yeah, I'm just, yeah, that's my core practice at the moment in terms of breathwork, but it's the one that's the one that's most beneficial for me.

Richard Aceves (27:53.508)
Right.

Richard Aceves (27:59.819)
Yeah, exactly.

Richard Aceves (28:07.993)
I like it. Now, the tearing of the eyes, right? Crying. For me, it's always interesting because people either really want to shy away from it or they are seeking the tearing or the crying as a way for them to showcase that they've done the exercise. So in your research or what you found out, the...

Dr Ed (28:19.202)
people.

Richard Aceves (28:37.281)
What do you see? Why is there a response of crying or tearing up with the breath?

Dr Ed (28:45.85)
Why? Why is it happening?

Richard Aceves (28:47.029)
Yeah.

Dr Ed (28:50.946)
Can you say why?

Richard Aceves (28:54.985)
So I always say it's a bottom-up expression. I think it's a, there's a point of empathy, right? And I wanted you to answer because then I wanted to see if there was some validation of my craziness. But for me, it's, you know, if we look at the body creating an observation and creating a prediction based on that observation and exceeding the experience of the prediction.

is it's essentially a win, right? So you're creating a better experience as you were expecting. Therefore you were able to bring the body into the sympathetic side of the body, right? To an action, active side. It felt better than the body thought it would and therefore it goes towards the flow, the parasympathetic again. And now you've raised your vagal tone, but there is a small shift, I think, as much physiologically as there is psychologically.

And I always say it's an empathetic expression. So you let the tears, the tears coming out as, I always say it's energy leaving the body that's been maybe stuck there for a while. And you were finally able to kind of unlock these certain levels. Ha ha ha.

Dr Ed (30:06.174)
I like that, I like that more. It's kind of in the opposite direction with say with stress and you have a reaction like in terms of a rash or hives, that would be a negative expression of it right, of a negative feeling. Yeah, but you're saying with ears it's more, it's a positive release in terms because the body's in a better space than if it was stressed.

Richard Aceves (30:16.438)
Right.

Richard Aceves (30:20.958)
Exactly. Yes.

Richard Aceves (30:31.633)
Yeah, I think it takes you again, part of meditation and the breathwork, right? It brings you to that present moment, which I think people have a much harder time being in the present moment that we really actually understand. And so I think that bringing yourself either A, to the present moment, allows you to be active, which partly, I think, also helps change the brain networks and

puts you more towards the task positive, right? The more executive network, then staying more either on the salience or going towards the default mode of, I'm just gonna breathe. And, you know, at least from what I've seen with the contractions of the muscles, which again, if you're breathing at that excessive rate and you're not used to having physical stress, that could actually be quite a bit of physical stress on the body, right? Based on who you're working with. So there's a switch there that allows you to...

now create a new experience with a new prediction because you are now a little bit stronger, you're more adapted to stress because now you know how you can use the proper breathing to either up-regulate or down-regulate yourself.

Dr Ed (31:41.914)
I really like that and I always hesitate to answer physiological questions because I'm a psychologist and not a medical doctor like Ed. So I've kind of passed on the baton, my eyes are watering when I do coherent breathing. And also I yawn as soon as I place attention on my breath, I can elicit a yawning kind of... Yeah, just by...

Richard Aceves (31:49.701)
Ah, see... ..

Richard Aceves (32:00.81)
Okay.

Don't yawn because now we're all gonna yawn. Ha ha

Dr Ed (32:07.926)
Just by having an awareness of the breath now, because I've been practicing so much, I just have this automatic need to yawn as soon as I stop placing attention on the breath. But yeah, I'm not a yogi.

Richard Aceves (32:22.625)
I find this interesting though, you didn't want to response to a physiological question because you're a psychologist. But doesn't that necessarily see you shouldn't have started yawning bro. That's like the worst thing you could ever do. So I find it interesting because we cannot I mean, when you look at it from the outside, right, because I'm just I mean, I'm just me. I don't know. But when you look at it from the outside.

I find it fascinating that you segment or fragment the way that you study things because we are having physiological responses with breath work as well as psychological responses, right? Okay.

Dr Ed (33:00.878)
I'm definitely not segmenting, definitely not separating. I think the mind-body connection is key, it's just I don't actually know the answers to why my physiological response of that. Of course it's all about the psychophysiology, you can never separate mind from body or body from mind, I think it's impossible.

Richard Aceves (33:11.33)
Ah, okay.

Okay.

Richard Aceves (33:24.579)
Right.

Dr Ed (33:27.902)
at least from the breathwork and from this idea of expressing energy or traumas or whatever they are in the body, the mechanistic side of things is something that the conventional system hasn't gotten near yet. Most of the time they'll discuss the phenomenology of it in the psychedelic studies that come, but they haven't really... I don't know who's in the mechanism of like... are these memories stuck in...

in the nerve roots and then when you activate the brainstem in a certain way you activate the cranial nerves which then leads to the crying response or yawning or the... I don't know if the science is there to answer the question well enough. I suppose that's why having these labs and taking it forward will hopefully begin to answer or it won't because we'll have neural link in our heads.

Richard Aceves (34:11.918)
Okay.

Richard Aceves (34:22.466)
and then it won't even matter.

Dr Ed (34:25.963)
Also, like, who cares as long as it works, right? Who cares how it works? I'm more important of are people feeling better or not? That's kind of what I care about. That's all I really care about. I take a very much holistic approach to it, but yeah, I don't think I'll be dedicating my life to looking at...

Richard Aceves (34:29.161)
Yeah, truth.

Dr Ed (34:46.194)
always looking at the specific mechanisms of action. I'm kind of more broad of focus. I just want to see, do people feel better? Can we share this with as many people as possible? What's the best way to do that? And yeah, obviously, of course, I'm very interested in the mechanisms and the mechanisms of action. And I hope that when I move over to the medical school full-time here, that I can work with more people in imaging some of our colleagues and maybe even Ed. You know, have a...

Richard Aceves (34:54.746)
Beautiful.

Dr Ed (35:14.446)
I definitely have a better picture of the mechanisms because it seems that people now really kind of crave this sort of neuroscientific perspective, they don't just want to see anecdotal or subjective self-reports, they want to see the hard mechanism and that kind of thing. Exactly, yeah.

Richard Aceves (35:27.542)
Right.

Richard Aceves (35:34.262)
It's impressive. Yeah.

Richard Aceves (35:44.261)
pseudo science. Yeah.

Dr Ed (35:46.767)
Sometimes that woo in that context is what around the practice is actually what gives it its power. So yeah, it's a bit of a shit show to put it into words.

Richard Aceves (35:54.177)
Right, that's the vitality of it.

Richard Aceves (36:00.605)
Yeah, I always find it fascinating when people get so caught up on the mechanism, when there's a clear positive response of, but they're feeling better. They're like, but where's the paper or what's the actual mechanism that's happening? I'm like, it's working. And we've proven over and over again that it works, but they get caught up on this one little thing. They're trying to find that flaw, shall we say.

Dr Ed (36:30.29)
on that segue, can we ask the Swami? So we did about half an hour? Half an hour, yeah, in my office. Loved it. Absolutely amazing. It felt as if, you know, I'd done a really nice good two hour run and I had

Richard Aceves (36:36.729)
Swami. What do you think of Swami?

Richard Aceves (36:43.309)
Beautiful. And how was it? Yeah.

Dr Ed (36:57.026)
The time after was I was very relaxed and it had that kind of run as high feeling, kind of like endorphins, a lot of release, a lot of tension had been released. It's a similar sort of feeling to what I've had after very intensive breathwork sessions. That kind of somatic, cathartic release. And we did finish with glutes. Yeah, so that was awesome. That was awesome. That was very...

Richard Aceves (37:19.961)
Beautiful, even better.

Dr Ed (37:28.242)
enlightening because I was doing the bridge, doing some bridges and he said do about 20, you were like let's go for 20 and really let your breath guide it. Then I started getting the cramp in the calf, my left calf, just like breathe through it, just keep breathing, focus on like focus on the exhales, make the exhales longer and that cramp will disappear, it will go up your leg and disappear and it disappeared.

Richard Aceves (37:44.619)
Mmm.

Dr Ed (37:56.822)
which is wild to me, you know, doing the opposite. This is kind of, this is where it's a bit synonymous with intensive breath work. You're doing something that the body doesn't want you to do anymore. It's like your muscle is cramping. So therefore you should stop, but you keep going. Just like in breath work where you're doing it hyperventilating very hard, your body saying stop, but you keep going. So I think there's some shared common ground there in terms of...

Richard Aceves (37:58.721)
Hahaha!

Richard Aceves (38:12.43)
Right.

Dr Ed (38:24.126)
um what that specific what specifically happened with me and yeah I just thought that was amazing and it turned out that you know it wasn't this area where I thought I had tension but it could have been you know just my calves yeah and yeah I'm uh I'm doing calf raises every day now I love it

Richard Aceves (38:36.549)
Caps out.

Richard Aceves (38:42.361)
Beautiful. I love it. Yeah, it's interesting. So, you know, I'm glad that Ed was able to guide you through a Swami session. And usually we do this for about an hour. And again, this is one of the things where I had a workshop on Saturday and I had this lady that was doing, we did a half hour Swami session and then we did some movements and then.

you know, theory talks and whatnot, and then back to another hour of Swami. Um, and so I have gotten pretty deep on, you know, the emotional mapping and, and different chains that, that hold on to different behavioral cycles and traumas and perceptions of the world based on the, on the tension in the muscles. And, uh, we finished the one hour Swami session. And for me, I, I always try and pick like the most skeptical looking person from the crowd. Um,

You know, I think it was her coach or her friend signed her up for the course. She wasn't really sure what was going on. At least that's what it looked like from my standpoint. Um, and we finished and we had a very, you know, she's like, why did you choose that side? And I was like, oh, this is what this means. And you know, we kind of had a little bit of a, I would say superficial conversation for a very deep conversation, but everything started to click on her. And she was like, holy shit. Like, how do you know so much about how I perceive the world and what has happened to me?

from just watching me breathe for an hour. So it's, the neck is actually connected to the calves. And so by getting connection to the calves, you're actually releasing a lot of the tension coming from the neck.

Dr Ed (40:20.654)
So what does that mean for me, for someone like me?

Richard Aceves (40:23.607)
Um...

Well, I won't blast you on a live podcast. It's not a live podcast. Essentially, there's a, the left calf is the, they're pensive muscles, right? They're the thinking muscles. For me, the left side is always thinking towards self and you're always thinking towards the outside, not so much internally. So there might be a cycle there of why you want it to go into the meditation, but also why it costs the chronic fatigue.

Because you went so far in and then you went so far out with the masters and everything, that you've had a hard time going back in. And so, I mean, there could be a few different things that we can have a conversation about, of how you're perceiving your true interoception, like your true internal dialogue is still more on the analytical side than on the feeling side. And so, it's thinking towards the outside world.

Dr Ed (41:15.522)
How about the right call?

Dr Ed (41:19.946)
Oh, okay. Oh, sorry. Left is inwards, right is... Okay.

Richard Aceves (41:22.805)
and right is outwards, yeah. So if you ever, like if you're ever having a conversation with somebody and you start a debate and you're starting to really push, you'll start to notice that they'll start to flicker their right calf. When if you have like a really deep conversation with somebody and you actually make them think about themselves and to give you real clear answers, you'll start to see them shake on the left side.

Dr Ed (41:44.17)
I just shook on my left side then.

Richard Aceves (41:46.517)
Yeah, because you started to think about your past behavioral cycles. That's how you start to see it, right? So people say that it's like ADHD and so they need to be moving. Notice that they're trying to constantly think, but not actually connect to the thoughts. So trying to, it's like a survival mechanism. And so then if you start to do it enough, but you never actually are truly connecting from the physical, the mentally emotional, then you start to have the high neck pain.

Dr Ed (42:13.735)
Mm-hmm. That's very interesting. We would give car phrases to most clients and it was a good practice because it allows you to be very clear on the thoughts that you have. So doing them either before you get on with your day or doing them before a walk or whenever you need to think something through.

Richard Aceves (42:15.157)
At least that's what I've noticed.

Dr Ed (42:34.43)
So good. Yeah, it was awesome. And yeah, it's great having an instructor there to guide to, because I tried, I looked, I watched the YouTube, guided one that you did. And it's obviously, you know, when you're first doing it, it's best to have someone really show you how it's done. So I did try it once before I did it with Ed, but when I do it with Ed, obviously, that's when I got the most benefit. And we also had some music playing in the background as well. And that was, that was really helpful.

Richard Aceves (43:03.854)
Beautiful.

Dr Ed (43:04.33)
And yeah, you start with the psoas, right? You're applying the pressure there. And it's hard when you're doing it by yourself. It's hard because it's an open, it's open-ended, right? There's no like specific time that you should do it for. It's all going to feel. So yeah, it's a very broad practice.

Richard Aceves (43:08.537)
Yeah.

Richard Aceves (43:22.679)
Right.

Richard Aceves (43:31.724)
Yeah, there's guidelines.

Dr Ed (43:34.406)
Yeah, I can see why it's tremendously beneficial. And yeah, I'd love to do an hour long one with you both as well.

Richard Aceves (43:45.505)
Yeah, we'll have to set it up. Beautiful, is there anything that you're currently, I mean, obviously there's lots of things that you're working on, is there anything specific that you're directing towards or studying for?

Dr Ed (43:58.926)
If you need some philanthropist who's interested in breathwork to give them lots of money, that would help.

Richard Aceves (44:04.249)
There we go. Beautiful. So if you're somebody out there that wants to develop this breathwork section of psychology, please reach out. Yeah. Field. There we go.

Dr Ed (44:14.954)
field I think. What's your opinion on breathwork? Have you practiced in any traditions or done any workshops?

Richard Aceves (44:24.413)
I've no, a lot of it just has come from my own experience and experimenting with different breathing and movement. And I'm coming more from the movement side of things and strength and conditioning, CrossFit, sports specific movement specialists, whatever you want to label it as. And so a lot of what I've done has been really just exploring

um, using breath as a way to move correctly with, with heavier loads and, and weights and, and getting people out of pain. Um, I've seen a couple of things here there, but I haven't actually done like a deep dive, uh, I'm a very, uh, hands on learner. And so I just start to experiment and then I get very deep into it and I try to explore every possible outcome from that scenario. Um,

I think that there is a lot of power within breath work. I think that there is also the Western world, which loves to industrialize things, which then gears towards shitty results. So you could see yoga being one of them, right? So yoga is essentially a religious practice for Buddhism and, you know,

It came to the US and it started off as obviously wanting to better people's lives. But as you start to see the industrialization and the money machine behind yoga, now there's a yoga studio on every block. And so, and everybody's a yoga instructor and yeah, it takes time to get your certification, which is great. But for the most part, you know, when you look at these big yoga chains that are charging, you know, 20 or 30 euros a month.

or memberships or 50 years, 70 years, whatever, you start to lose the true understanding of it. And then I think it leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's palette, right? So I think the same is happening with Breathwork right now. There's people that were very good at branding and getting the name out there. And they start to sell these Breathwork masterclasses and certifications and...

Richard Aceves (46:47.433)
I don't, I've never been one for a, do a weekend retreat and then you get a certification. And I think that that's where the breath work is heading now is you come to this weekend retreat, we breathe for a weekend and then here's your certification and you stop really evolving the craft. And so I think that's where the breath work is heading. I think that there's a lot of benefits, and again, you can obviously see it.

you know, from a psychological perspective and a mental wellbeing perspective. I think a lot of the times we put more stress on the breath than we should. We need to understand that breathing is a tool to get you to become present and to accept the state that you're currently in. So listening to the breath is a tool, but the system, the heart, the bigger system that's controlling how you're gonna be breathing is also the heart rate. So if you start to negate certain

Again, if you start to fragment or segment, just breath work is doing this, we're missing a big part. So in the long run, we're gonna start to cause not necessarily harm, but just no more long-term value. Because you can only apply so much stress to, right? So like the breathing, like once you understand you've developed the skill to do the hard breath, how much more stress can you really add onto it? And so when you go to the real world,

and you have work and classes or somebody tries to mug you or there's X, Y, and Z that starts to become too much stimulus inward, the breath can only take you so far and that's where I think movement also needs to become a part of it. But I think that it's a great starting point for anybody, especially if you have, again, chronic fatigue or you're really kind of on a down or having anxiety disorders and panic attacks and such.

Dr Ed (48:40.87)
Yeah, I would say that it's always best to start slow with these kinds of things. It's like in exercise as well and running, with lifting weights, whatever. I don't think I would have had as profound benefits from more intensive or faster based breath work if I hadn't have done the more slow and gentle stuff and laid that foundation for a long time before. And having a guide. Yeah.

Richard Aceves (48:45.089)
Mm-hmm.

Richard Aceves (49:06.081)
Yeah, that's always important.

Dr Ed (49:07.99)
there's people now dying from the Wim Hof but mostly because they're freezing themselves to death I think. Or they're doing the breath work in bodies of water which is just the last place you should be doing that so yeah always do it away from water.

Richard Aceves (49:13.349)
Like, what are you people doing?

Richard Aceves (49:22.489)
Right.

I mean, but it does kind of showcase you what it is, right? Like it's always, you know, you can't negate the elephant in the room. Like, okay, maybe a hundred years ago, you needed to survive a cold winter, right? And obviously lots of people have died of cold winters in the past because they didn't have heating, X, Y, and Z, but it's not something that you should just continuously put your body through for what?

I think that, again, people start to miss, the problem is people start to get addicted, like we talked about, like the crying, right? Like they want that experience. And it's just, it's another form of addiction. It's like, okay, well, you know, I won't be drinking, but I'm gonna be doing an ice bath and I'm gonna go colder and colder and colder until you can't go anymore cold because you'd be in an ice cube. And then after that, then it's like, okay, so and I'll just do longer, where you're just.

continuously searching for a stimulus that is still only treating a symptom and not necessarily resulting in understanding the root cause of why you're using so much cold water to run away from your problems.

Dr Ed (50:33.242)
I was going to say, I take it you're not an ice bath man every day. But I think the most profound experience I've had with breathwork was in Amsterdam. And it was at a breathwork workshop before this conference, the interdisciplinary conference for psychedelic research. And it was led by an amazing guide and her team. And I'd love to introduce you to them so you can experience it.

Richard Aceves (50:39.355)
Yeah, don't be that Iceman at Bath every day.

Richard Aceves (50:59.993)
Yeah.

Dr Ed (51:02.534)
And the insight that I gained from this workshop, five hour workshop, breathing was only one hour of it. So I think what you do before and after the breath work is just as important as the breath work itself. So how you prime yourself, how you integrate afterwards. The insight that I had was that I don't need to keep searching for anything. I'm good just as it's all it is just being me. And that's all it ever was. Not in an egotistical way, but in a way of.

Richard Aceves (51:29.741)
Right.

Dr Ed (51:31.298)
You don't need to keep chasing after these X, Y, Z, do these different things all the time. Yeah. I just do it out of enjoyment now. So when Ed tells me about infrared and red light and things like that, I buy a device because I'm interested in it, but I'm not thinking, oh, this is it. This is going to fix me or this is going to cure whatever. And that's why I was like when I had chronic fatigue and rightly so, you know, I was problem solving the whole entire time. Like this will help me.

Richard Aceves (51:36.005)
Exactly.

Richard Aceves (51:52.355)
Right.

Dr Ed (52:00.854)
this will fix me, this will fix me. But the thing that I mainly needed apart from, you know, reducing stress and doing breath work and getting natural light and stuff like that was time. And, and, and the support network of people around you, it's so, health is so holistic that we get lost. Yeah.

Richard Aceves (52:13.762)
Right.

Richard Aceves (52:20.889)
The environment is a big part. Yeah, I always say there's a, I always have this conversation of passive versus active. If you're looking for the next thing that's gonna heal you, it's never gonna work because you're relying on the tool and the exterior. So you're still going at it from the victim mentality rather than the wisdom side of things of like, okay, I'm gonna see what I experience here and see what I can take away from it. And so I think that's always a very big thing. I say the same thing with Swami.

Swami won't make you better. It creates awareness, but you could do the breathing and still take a nap. You could, you know, you can do X, Y, and Z because you're trying to, in my head, I always have the narrative of like, if you think that I'm gonna help you, you're always going to fail because already in your head, you're using me as a justification of why you don't want to change. And I think that's a really big undertaking, right? The willingness versus capability. If you come in from...

this is going to help me. You're already in a victim mentality and you're finding ways and justifications to not change or evolve as a human.

Dr Ed (53:28.382)
And do you, I guess you give this, you know, speech before you start doing this work with people, is that correct? Or will you react and see, or will you just, or will you put this out and inform everyone before you lead sessions?

Richard Aceves (53:36.802)
Yeah, 100%.

Richard Aceves (53:44.913)
Yeah, I mean, we always have these conversations and I'm like, I'm here to navigate and I can see things. And yeah, and again, it takes time, right? I mean, it's just there is no, you know, like you said, I needed time to heal from the chronic fatigue. You needed time to continuously positively adapt to more and more stress. That's all it was. And you needed time to rest. You know what I mean? But the people skew these timelines. And again, going back to

Dr Ed (53:48.778)
Navigate. You're a navigator. I like that.

Richard Aceves (54:14.457)
where breath work will end up going this year and how you're gonna start to see the industrialization of everybody wanting to become a breath practitioner and trying to sell their weekend courses is they're trying to gain a quick nickel instead of waiting it out for the long time.

Dr Ed (54:31.534)
So how do you incorporate that in what you're doing? Because I know you offer retreats, but I'm aware they're staggered, they're in longer periods of time, you know, they're in a few months time as a workshop in one week. How do you combat that in your head and not get...

Richard Aceves (54:44.085)
Yeah, so I mean, I plant seeds and then the physical, the movement, the work that's done afterwards is a big part, right? So I never, I won't heal anybody, but we'll get the answers that we need. So I always go and search for the root cause and then we create plans forward. And then it's the willingness and the capability of the person to take responsibility for themselves to do the work.

Dr Ed (55:11.425)
Yeah.

Richard Aceves (55:11.905)
It's like saying, okay, well, I'm gonna buy your course, but I'm not gonna take it, but I'm gonna have the certification and then therefore I'm better. Not really, right? So it's the capacity to have solutions and the capacity to understand that we are humans and there is no linear progression. You are gonna have downfalls, right? I mean, I'm guessing with your chronic fatigue, you started to feel good and then you would crash again, feel good.

Dr Ed (55:32.852)
Yeah.

Richard Aceves (55:40.577)
And so we're just diminishing the amplitude of mistakes or the amplitude of fatigue that you get the next time and the next time and the next time.

Dr Ed (55:47.73)
Yeah, my sister sent me a great graphic when I was quite sick and it's healing isn't linear and it's kind of like a three game like that, but it's the ultimately is going up, but it's like, it's a rocky road. Yeah. Finding. Yeah. Finding. Good. Exactly. Oh, great. You brought up the industrialization and everything like that. That's the kind of, that's why I'm doing the work that I want that I'm doing. You know, you're seeing, I've published a few papers in 2023 and it talks about trying to calibrate the hype with evidence so that the

Richard Aceves (55:54.435)
Right.

Richard Aceves (56:00.504)
Exactly.

Dr Ed (56:16.942)
field of breathwork and scientific research can grow and evolve in a sustainable evidence-based manner, not like meditation and mindfulness, which 30 years ago there was a few hundred papers, now there's 10,000 plus. And it's been given this brand of like muck mindfulness, you know. So I don't want that to happen with breathwork and that's why I'm doing the research that I'm doing.

Richard Aceves (56:31.999)
Right. Jam.

Richard Aceves (56:37.634)
Right.

Dr Ed (56:44.87)
in our papers and in our reviews that you'll see that we're advocating heavily for very good clinical robust research into this and we list out all these contraindications of these very intense fast-paced breathwork practices just to inform people know what you're doing before you jump in and it's extremely important for breath workers, facilitators to

Richard Aceves (57:05.358)
Right.

Dr Ed (57:14.166)
done training for a long period of time and worked with people in the altered states of consciousness because you have to help people navigate.

Richard Aceves (57:22.589)
It can lead people right and that's the same thing with, right exactly. You can open up doors that will never be closed again.

Dr Ed (57:24.632)
Yeah, similar to cycle devs, right?

Dr Ed (57:32.074)
And yeah, I have a friend who's working on creating a board to try and, yeah, make sure that it's not just the Wild West out there and just leading, you know, groups of tens or hundreds of people in a very intense breath work routine with just one person. That's crazy. You know, there should be at least one facilitator per four to six people if you're doing the really intense.

Richard Aceves (57:54.081)
Right.

Dr Ed (57:58.514)
If you think about slow pace breathing and things of that sort, is that the safety and risk and tolerability profile is good. But again, even having an instructor in the slow pace method is fantastic as well. And it's always, yeah, I hear you, I echo everything you're saying about proper, you know, accreditation and proper learning before just disseminating it willy nilly. And yeah, that's why I would do the work that I do.

Richard Aceves (58:27.609)
So if there are people out there that are listening to this and are thinking of taking a breathwork course or going to one of these retreats, outside of suggesting movement ayahuasca and suami of course, what would you say would be maybe your top three things to look out for if it's going to be more of a scam or this sort of woo type bullshit or actual legitimate breathwork practitioner?

Or what could they ask the hosts to make sure that it's something that feels a little bit more legitimate.

Dr Ed (59:03.798)
Well, if they're not providing informed consent of listing out the potential contraindications, that's a red flag. If they're not saying, you shouldn't be doing this if you have panic disorder, and you're prone to aneurysms, any cerebral cardiovascular diseases and things of that sort, panic disorder, epilepsy.

Richard Aceves (59:11.808)
Okay.

Hmm.

Richard Aceves (59:30.006)
No.

Dr Ed (59:32.222)
If you're prone to epilepsy or strokes, if they're not saying this sort of stuff before, yeah, they shouldn't, you shouldn't be going along to those kinds of workshops. And, um, key thing is to know is that what's the, to ask is that, you know, what's the integration period? Like after do I have a period, is there going to be a period of time where we just integrate so you're not just going into a hyperventilation and then just stopping and just walking out into the world. You know, if you're

Richard Aceves (01:00:00.388)
Right.

Dr Ed (01:00:00.686)
hyperventilating for an hour, hour and a half. What it's going to, some powerful things are going to happen inside of you, you know, there's going to be some effects, positive or negative. So just asking in a head like, you know, what's the structure of it? Is there a period of integration afterwards? And usually that would take the form of group discussion and things of that sort. If you're looking for legitimate breathwork workshops in terms of this hyper

Richard Aceves (01:00:08.258)
No.

Dr Ed (01:00:30.19)
I would look at my review in neuroscience and biobehavioural reviews and it's called high ventilation breathwork. And it just lists out the different programmes, so there's like holotropic breathing, there's rebirthing, there's something called conscious connected breathing, but it's you, these are all like, they're all used in different traditions, in different workshops as well. But it's just to make sure that you talk with the facilitators beforehand.

make sure they're given the proper informed consent. Yeah, just get a sense of what the people are like first, obviously. It's great to have a connection with the facilitator before you, you know, trust them in the process. Just like a guide in psychedelics.

Richard Aceves (01:01:11.077)
Beautiful.

Richard Aceves (01:01:23.125)
Right, awesome. Beautiful. Anything else to add, Mr. Ed?

Dr Ed (01:01:30.294)
Oh, you're talking to me? Whatever. I was playing the doctorate joke again. No, if we want to find more about your papers, people can just search on PubMed. Yeah, PubMed.

Richard Aceves (01:01:32.13)
Yes, sir.

Richard Aceves (01:01:45.302)
Send me the links and I'll put them on the description. Yeah.

Dr Ed (01:01:47.242)
Sweet, yeah, and you can just go to my Twitter slash X, breath underscore guy.

Richard Aceves (01:01:54.465)
Perfect, I'll put all that on the...

Dr Ed (01:01:57.858)
Awesome. Yeah, I was just thinking back to the whole planting seeds for the long-term because there's no linear progression. So usually people will tell you quite harsh truths sometimes. And I think we're softer on that, but someone like, I was listening to a podcast with Jack Cruz recently and he calls it giving people a punch in the mouth because then they actually wake up and decide to change and that's, that's the technique that he uses. Um,

Richard Aceves (01:02:02.712)
Yeah.

Richard Aceves (01:02:20.388)
Right.

Dr Ed (01:02:24.258)
just got me thinking about that. But yeah, we don't punch you in the mouth, but you have your own little term that you use to plant seeds for the future.

Richard Aceves (01:02:32.29)
Yeah, ninja fuck people.

Dr Ed (01:02:35.617)
One on that. No, what did you say?

Richard Aceves (01:02:35.973)
Have you ever heard that term, guy? Ninja fuck. It's called ninja fucking. So essentially, you're putting in words in the brain that make you wonder and ponder, and then it might not mean anything right now, but then a few weeks, a few months, a few years later, it's like, oh shit, that's what he was talking about. It's a great Dane Cook comedy routine.

Dr Ed (01:03:03.758)
Okay.

Richard Aceves (01:03:04.517)
I don't know if you remember Dane Cook. Ninja F, yeah, you have. You may have, I don't know, you're gonna soon find out. That's the best part. He explains it as you're about to go out with your guy friends and you tell your wife or your partner, you're like, hey, I'm going out with a guy friend. She goes, oh, okay, have fun. And cuts it short. And you start walking out to the car like, this is gonna be a good time. She said, have fun, all right, we're gonna have some beers, we're gonna go dancing. And then he starts driving, he's like,

Dr Ed (01:03:06.326)
How about just being a ninja aft? How about just being, as it just happened to me?

Dr Ed (01:03:33.627)
That's what she meant.

Richard Aceves (01:03:33.913)
Did she mean like have fun or like, okay, have fun? Like where the fuck are you going? Should I have not gone? Is she mad at me? Is she upset that I'm going out? And so it starts the whole process. So I've stolen that from Dane Cook and used it quite often. It's a great bit.

Dr Ed (01:03:44.45)
Thank you.

Dr Ed (01:03:48.462)
Thanks for watching!

Good place to end. Thanks for listening, everyone.

Richard Aceves (01:03:53.193)
Yeah. Thank you very much. Go follow Mr. Guide. Do you have Instagram or only X? Twitter, the X, the everything app. Beautiful. I gotta start getting more on the Twitter. One minute on the X. Anywho, thank you very much for listening guys and we'll catch you soon.

Dr Ed (01:03:59.998)
Just the Twitter.

Dr Ed (01:04:08.114)
Yeah.