The Burnout Curve: Why High Performers Burn Out Even When They Feel Fine | Performance Coach

- How we confused feeling calm with being resilient. - A healthy nervous system isn't necessarily a calm nervous system. It's business leaders that I find the hardest to work with because rest and recovery is like sacrilege. - Can anyone live modern life truly regulated? - I work with clients across states and traits. Really important because state we can change. Traits are more difficult because they're more deeply ingrained in the psyche and in the physiology. Whenever we say fatigue, tiredness sets in. A lot of people at this stage will just override the tiredness. If we keep going past fatigue, we move towards injury, illness, depression. - The familiarity of this curve is striking. - One of the big things I get from my clients, why don't I lose my edge? - There is that worry, right? - If you think both you and I have really admitted within this last 30 minutes that we were here. - If I look at that, I know all of this. Like I fall on the wrong side of the curve. And I think a lot of people listening to this will do. If you know how do you manage and cope with that dilemma? - This is essentially the wellness paradox. This idea that you can be hyper-fugused on health and yet quite disconnected to maybe what your level of capacity on what your current state is, what your current trait is, and I'm so fast at it with this question, is it a client of mine who is sealed with complete impressions? And this person gives me four minutes a day. They are clockwork with this four minutes. - What do they do? - The big mantra I've got for clients, and it is. - Guys, we have hit 100K on YouTube. Can you see this epic plaque that is behind me? Thank you to every single one of you that has subscribed and helped grow the show, it means an absolute massive amount to me and everyone who works on this show. And if you haven't, if I could please kindly ask you to press subscribe, it would mean the absolute world. - Thank you. - Rob. Welcome. - Thank you. - So, I'm excited about it today, 'cause we're actually gonna speak about one of our most engaged topics on this podcast, which is neuro-wellness, which is actually a new term for nervous system regulation. And I talk about this a lot, you talk about this all the time, this is the entirety of your career. And I found it really interesting that it's searched nearly 1,000% on Google TikTok and Instagram, just that term, nervous system regulation. So everyone is kind of trying to figure out how they can regulate themselves in a very stressed world that we live in. But we're gonna take a bit of a different approach today, which is quite interesting. So, I actually wanna start with the question. Human beings were not designed to become all the time. So, how have we confused feeling calm with being resilient? - Oh, I love this. (laughing) So, one of the things that I speak to my clients a lot about is that a healthy nervous system isn't necessarily a calm nervous system. Now, this is kind of always almost counterintuitive to people who maybe come and say, "I just wanna feel calm." I want to probably wanna have new thoughts. Kind of just switch this off for a wee moment. And the reality is that, of course, trying to turn off your thoughts, like trying to iron water in some sort of ways, futile, and what we resist persists. And this idea that if we try to fight ourselves with our thoughts, then all of a sudden, we get cognitive dissonance. We start to become actually even more hung up on the fact that we can't switch off our thoughts, which is really not beneficial for any sort of decision-making or emotional well-being, sleep, focus, all these different things. So whenever we talk about nervous system regulation, and I even veer away now from the term nervous system regulation and move much more towards nervous system capacity and our ability to have adaptive resilience, just kind of what you spoke to at the very beginning there. This idea that, yes, we can create the conditions within our nervous system and within our internal world, for calmness or quietness or stillness to arise. But the reality is that where we want to go is to build the container that holds the capacity to be able to still operate clearly with clarity. Whenever maybe external demands are starting to shift and not become overwhelmed by it, this is where I get really, really excited. Neural wellness, which is, I've heard of other terminologies in America, Neural athletics. - Oh, I like that. - Yeah, and it's this, I suppose, the different frameworks that are starting to come through within nervous system, and within brain health, for instance, free energy principle, which we might get into. The predictive processing and how this all starts to change the lens through which I look at stress and allows us to perhaps create better methodologies to deal with stress. - Well, I think that's really important because I mean, I want you to first explain kind of what you do and kind of how you're engaged in this process because you work with, you know, you coach executives, CEOs, you're working with the United Nations next week, like lots of people come to you who are incredibly high-performing, including myself. I've seen Rob for years now, and you've seen me in some of my best days and some of my absolute catastrophic not getting off the floor completely broken, which I'm very happy to get into today on the different types of states that we can all get in. And I think it's interesting because I think people turn to you and they're like, you know, I don't want to burn out. So can you explain to me a little bit about kind of how you are with nervous system capacities? I think that's great rather than regulation. - Yeah, yeah, I find this really interesting. So as you say, I work with a lot of high-functioning people who are hyper-focused on health actually a lot of the time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're really healthy or that their nervous system is in a really great state to handle it all. And I'll speak a little bit to that because let's say I'm working with an executive, a chief executive who can really only give me in terms of the tools that I'm trying to do, four minutes or five minutes a day. Much more important for me is for them to understand what it is we're trying to do with structuring rest sometimes or exposing ourselves to stress. So through breathwork, through meditation, through somatic experience in movement and sign, lifestyle protocols, essentially. What I try to do with clients is not say, look, we just have to head off to the Himalayas and sit in a cave, a dark cave for the next three weeks and become enlightened. Rather, allow yourself to have moments of reset or have a capacity on a container which is a little bit stronger. We're bigger for you to handle the things that are coming in. Well, I found it really interesting in the Wall Street Journal survey found that 94% of small business leaders had experienced symptoms of burnout in the previous year. And I'm just gonna put my hand off a villa. I'm definitely part of that 94% because I went to, I don't know if I've told you about this, but I went to Charlwellness the other week, which is kind of like a holistic longevity place. They've got one of my, I mean, they've got one in Spain. And I went there and you arrive and they do, the body composition and thank goodness, I was tick tick tick tick. I need a bit more muscle mass, but apart from that I was all good working on the muscle mass. But then they did my cognitive capacity and they also did this at like eight pm at night after flying all day. So I was like, this is not going to be great. But what I found really interesting is, they told me at the end, they had this chart and I should put it on my Instagram if any one wants to go and see. And my stress was through max. Like there was the maximum line. And my stress went off and passed it by about a good third. It was like right at the end of the chart. And I was like, that's not good. And then they showed me my resilience. And there was the line, the top maximum of resilience and mine hit the top maximum. So they were saying that I could hold a lot more stress than the average person. But then when it gets too much, unlike the average person, I physically collapse. Which you know is the truth to my story. And I think it's for a lot of people that can be quite high functioning. It's this weird trade off that you think you're coping quite well until the point when you're not, but when you're not, you are like disabled or not coping. And that is like extreme burnout. So I think like, how can you be highly stressed and functioning well without getting to that point of collapse? - Well, okay. So it might be helpful. I'm maybe going to draw a little illustration for you in a wee second on the human function curve, okay? - Okay. - Let's park that for just one second because the other point of it is, I work sometimes with clients across states and traits and states are like your present moment physiological state. which precedes behavior, of course, so, you know, you'll have heard sympathetic and parasympathetic fight or flight rest and digest. And this is the state that we are currently in. And this very much dictates our behavior, how we, what we are currently experiencing. The trait on the other hand is a bit more of a long term thing. So if you think your state is in the moment, right now, this morning, how is Sarah, how is Rob? Trade is over the last three weeks, three months, three years, how have I been living my life? And what has been the pattern in my body? So states and traits, these are really, really important because state, of course, we can change pretty much very quite closely. So if you bear with me, right, if I can. Right, let's do it. Okay, we're going to switch from cameras on because we're going to get personal. So if anyone's watching on Spotify, you're about to see this on YouTube. If not, we're explaining it. If you listen to this audio. Yeah, for sure. Let's switch on the cameras. Okay, so human function curve, okay? Like if we've got the vertical axis as performance, and we've got the horizontal axis, a stress, if you can imagine like a bell curve. Which goes up and down. Like a basically like a hill. Anyone that's listening on audio. Absolutely, just like a hill. And whenever we start performing, and we start doing our task at the beginning, you know, performance is kind of steadily rising, and stress is maybe rising to meet the occasion each, each time. There becomes a point along this curve whenever we reach the peak of the hill. So you've reached the top of the hill, whenever we say fatigue or tiredness sets in, okay? Now, a lot of people at this stage will just override the tiredness. I'll have another coffee. I'll, you know, I need to research the podcast. I need to do a presentation. I've got a big talk tomorrow. It doesn't matter if I'm tired, like this needs to get done. Yeah. So what happens is that if we don't have, let's change colors, let's say a nice little dotted line, which I'll speak about up here. Okay, so it comes, let's say, it's coming out of about the middle of the performance, of the bell curve. It's coming out before we get up to the peak at fatigue. If we keep going past fatigue, we move towards injury, illness, overwhelm, depression for sure, dissociation, depression, whenever you just become disengaged, everything becomes too much, uh, burnout, you know, this is, this is essentially where we see all the familiarity of the strikingly scary. And, you know, so, so essentially stress is continued along this line. We've done nothing to mitigate the tiredness. And so we've moved on towards illness, overwhelm, depression, burnout, disengagement. Now, for those of you that can see, I drawn a little, a nice little dotted line. Yeah. It looks like it's a rocket ship. Don't judge too much, but it looks like a rocket ship. Exactly. It's this little red dotted line that moves up as we start performing on our stress starts rising at the same time. Well, what is this? This is like little reset. This may be a walk in a park. This is a little bit of breathwork. This is, um, meditation. This is sleeping a little bit longer. This is taking two minutes before you get up, before you go into your emails. This is starting to, a bad time routine. These are, this is working out in the gym. Maybe it's doing a Yen yoga, maybe it's doing NSDR, maybe it's doing progressive muscle relaxation. NSDR is great. Right. People who might not know that as non-sleep depressed. Yeah. Like, um, really, really good reset where you're not necessarily sleeping, but you are aligned the conditions to arise of relaxation. And this red line allows us to take, to take a lot longer, let's say, to get to the fatigue moment. Because, of course, fatigue, let's say, just goes on up here. And whenever we then start to sense fatigue, then we can start to integrate the rest. Now, too many of my clients that I meet are somewhere along this curve towards the paranoid direction. Okay. So then something needs done for them to try to come back. And it needs to be a lot more than if we had started the gentle, let's say, rest protocols, structured rest. Yomu's can structure your stress. You can structure your rest. You know, an alloyed structured rest and structure stress to appear much earlier on in the bell curve. I attended Ted earlier this year and I found myself in conversations with the founders of Nowatch. You've probably seen me wear something on my wrist and lots of you have message me asking me what this is. It looks like a classic watch, but it's actually quietly tracking something much more meaningful. Your autonomic nervous system. This is a system that governs everything from how you respond, from excitement to anxiety, calm to overwhelm. Most variables just give you a score, but if you're anything like me, that score can sometimes think you feel worse, like you're already behind before your day even begins. Nowatch works differently. There is no judgment and there is no dopamine chasing dashboard. It simply reflects what your body is already experiencing and also helps you notice what it might be missing. It gives you minute by minute timeline of your stress responses and your recovery. The recovery is the most important part and it's the part that no one talks about and it is often the most revealing marker of our long-term health. In just five days it calibrates your body and it builds your personal health fingerprint. You can try for free now for 30 days and if you use the code LWBW you can also get 15% off. If you want to understand your body not just through performance but through self awareness then this is where I'd begin. Right, okay. It's so interesting because I look at that and it makes, intellectually it makes complete sense to me, right? And intellectually I know all of this but intellectually I fall on the wrong side of the curve and I think a lot of people listening to this will do, right? They they all know and I have this kind of question in my brain where I'm like okay well can anyone live modern life truly regulated? Because I feel like you know we can describe these situations but for instance you have a child. Beautiful child and you're about to have another one and you're running a company and you're flying all over the world. How do you still make sure that you can catch yourself for these small things? Because I can struggle and I think I've got a lot of information at my hands but we can still tip on the other side and my only kind of explanation is that you just have to do less but it's very hard when you're building or when you've got a family. You know how do you manage and cope with dilemma? So this is for me this is the best and I'm so fascinated with this question right now because I'm as you say I'm right in like the building phase of my own business. I'm right in the building phase of my own family and I'm sitting to you with sciatica going to my left leg. I'm sitting here with a star in my eye. So clearly there's a physicality and the nervous system is maybe saying I'm I'm feeling the stress or I'm feeling the tartness. Now this happened to me as well in fact I'm quite a good example of this. Last year was was a big big busy year for me and doing a lot of travel and by Christmas I hosted a day retreat in Christmas on the way home. I actually had my son with me in the prom and I was lifting the prom up the stairs. I got to top the stairs and I fainted or I collapsed on the grind. I think I was semi conscious but I just like in the tube completely I completely essentially physically I could not go on and my wife who who works in the business said to me Rob next year we need to structure your weeks and days and months much much better. So I also had a lot by this was injury you know if we go on doing that I had gone past the take. I was I can remember I was getting the cold I was getting a little bit of ill I got into injury and illness actually there was were the two things that were showing up for me. Over a while my still wasn't feeling it psychologically. Depression I was okay Bernoy you know maybe it's the closest to to that stage I had done. So even myself who preaches and teaches this to two my clients every single day I had to take a little bit of my own medicine in terms of the advice that I was giving my clients so there's a client of mine who is CEO to accompany in the thousands and very very high-functioning person. This person gives me four minutes a day literally four minutes a day but they are like clockwork with this with this four minutes that they do where it feels like home for them. Wow what do they do and four minutes of box box breath box breathing which is it's inhale for where she's up about seven seconds now so it's inhale for seven hold for seven exhale for seven hold for seven really really simple breath work technique that we find for her that actually felt like it calmed her felt like home felt like a moment where she was uncontactable. That's not to say that that box breath is the thing that everyone should be doing for four minutes a day but a lot of this for me is about trying to find the little little window That is what are these dotted red lines along the way for another person that might be dance For someone else that might be reading about their their latest football team You know like maybe it is an escape that actually just makes them completely switch off and switch off the brain and feel very relaxed I'm quite interested in in how we can We can use these actual practical tools without having to say I need to go on a retreat for five days and do This time a huge intervention how can I make it part of my my daily? So I have a minute me personally. I have like an eight minute little routine that I do in the morning Two minutes of sitting doing absolutely nothing listening I quite literally listening. What am I trying not to notice? Was it is it happiness sadness is it well? What am I am I tired? Am I grumpy? Am I whatever it is two minutes? Not not very structured not very Timed let's say but roughly two minutes. I'll switch and I'll do just some five seconds in five seconds out breath That's up to about four minutes Then I just do a little bit of movement and then some shaking to finish and you know, I feel it's my little eight minute Sustainable practice that I can do on the daily. So that's that's what I'm doing With each of my clients we try to find how much time can we give on a busy week how much time can we do give on a normal week And what are we what are we willing to do? Well, I think that's the thing. I think mine is Mine is really simple mine's walking to the coffee shop in the morning And getting a coffee. It's actually getting up and I'm doing a Terminate walk in the morning just for myself. Yeah, and getting that sunlight that to me is yeah It's such an important way of me just kind of figuring out how I feeling I ask myself certain questions as I'm walking like how am I feeling in my body? Am I really tired today? Like before I try and activate too much caffeine, but it's it's true And I think you know, there's this interesting part I think in the human function curve when I was reading about it Which is if you have too little activation Right you're you under perform because I think we all need stress to a certain point that we all need good stress within us Yeah, then you have like moderate activation and then you have too much activation And I think a lot of people on this podcast will lean Towards the too much activation, so we're constantly trying to Re-regulate, but I think for me the thing that I have found to be the most Confusing online is that there seems to I think everyone has such different capacities of stress Yeah, and it's understanding just where your stress capacity is and I think that was a really big thing for me at sharp Which was realizing that I maybe had more capacity than other people And I think if you are somebody who is building something you actually that is an advantage until it's not Yeah, and just even having someone say looking at your cognitive results. This is where you sit Allow me to actually feel more comfort in pushing myself Just making sure that I am actually giving myself The rest recovery space which I'm getting better at yeah, yeah, yeah, but like actually going no I I like I enjoy pushing myself Well, yes, absolutely, you know within that let's say this is the human function curve on on the left of fatigue They would call it you stress, you know, and on the right of fatigue. They would call it distress and as you say their stress is good up until a point, you know called baths or called exposure or sauna high-intensity training resistance training breathwork meditation like all of these Can be activated for the body But they can be good for the body because they create Growth within the physiology. So I spoke a little bit about Crawl Fristons Yeah, that's principle. Yeah, okay, so This is really really interesting. Neuroscience mathematician and it's a very it's not very common mainstream Theoretical framework on a high brain and the body work together Okay, and Crawl Fristons free energy principle is essentially like high line High the body predicts what's going to be needed To fulfill the moment's tasks. Okay, so the body is constantly predicting what hormones do I need to release what state do I need to be in in order to in order to meet the next moment? Okay, now I as long as that Prediction of the anticipated thing that's about to happen meets the the reality and they they match we feel safe in our physiology Whenever with it doesn't that's called a prediction error. So it kind of makes sense prediction error is Oh, the reality is actually different from the the prediction that I made There's a space here within the prediction error where if it's too great the prediction error is too great It's like too overwhelming. It's too much of a Of a shock to the system of a shock to the psyche and it essentially marks your physiology and we go into You know fight flight shutdown And this you know like a car crash, you know something completely out of the blue can be extremely traumatic for people can physically Mark them, but physiologically and emotionally can really really mark them. Okay, so that's like a prediction error on the most extreme case But a prediction error that is just above the Just creating enough novelty enough curiosity that's where growth and learning that's where the physiology and the brain is encouraged to Update its model of reality and adapt create adaptive resilience. So this is the whole reason behind Doing an activating breathwork or doing cold exposure or doing hit training is that the body is like oh my goodness Like this is quite intense. I've I'm experiencing a physiological state change Therefore, it has to update that new model reality and say I need to get ready for this if this is going to be the next time that I do this Noi There's a there's a process called allostasis If you're familiar with allostasis, this is essentially the the body predicting So feet on from part of frisson's free energy principle allostasis is The the predicting of the hormones that are needed Allostatic load is the important part here. Allostatic load is your cumulative burden that gets put into the body over time creates traits trait changes So I talked about states and traits are there on the traits start to get changed whenever the allostatic load starts to become too Combersome allostatic load is what robots Physical exercise. It's the stuff that we put on our skin. It's any sort of irritants pollutants That that the body takes on over time negative self-talk like like genuinely like talking to yourself in a really bad way Of course creates the whole book of mine That's exactly we can make self-compact here exactly so not being self-compassion I mean you could speak much better to that that I can and if if that is If that is creating cortisol in the body cortisol like let's look cortisol not as the devil or anything It's just like a hormone that is mobilizing let's mobilize for action It's saying to mitochondria like we need it to get up in the morning. Yeah. Yeah, like You just mentioned cortisol Google searches for cortisol hitting all time high for multiple consecutive months Well everyone was looking at the root causes of burnouts. I felt like this is very relatable right now Absolutely and cortisol, you know people are like how can I just reduce my cortisol? I know no no like if we don't have cortisol we that like we don't we don't get out of bed We don't take action. I'm you know we die So cortisol's brilliant brilliant the hormone and should be like have a cable and be a star in the body But but we have this perception that we just hadn't need to reduce it all No, we need to we need to work with it and that's cortisol rises in the morning We need to work with that and allow the natural hormones to take place so alostatic load is is the kind of accumulation of these of these different stressors in the body and The alostatic set-point can change. So of course The indicators of a high alostatic load or high respiratory rate low HRV high resting heart rate high blood pressure muscle tension all of these things would would would say to Let's say a coach like me who would be looking at this saying okay like where can we start to Adjust your alostatic load whom you'll stasis which people might be much more familiar with is much more set You know like we there isn't much That the body can do to think your pH level up higher or lower But there's a lot that can happen with alostasis But the great great news here is that if alostatic load can go up it can for sure come down And this is adopted for resilience. This is this is it in a nutshell that um You know, I talked about Carl Friston's free energy principle that He might or the theory or the theoretical framework would say that That's used to getting up in the morning. You know if you get up every single morning and you rule across the bed and you go to look at your phone You're getting dopamine hits you're getting all the hormone release. Yeah, for essentially doing nothing, you know, you've maybe moved a foot and you've looked at your phone. What actually starts to happen on the daily then is that the body, if you've done that, let's say, for three weeks, three months, three years, the body starts to predict that it needs to release cortisol, adrenaline, a neuro-epinephrine, at 6 a.m., 7 a.m. every morning, because that's the pattern, the cycle that you've been doing. So, the prediction starts to become a reality almost. The stimulus is no longer there. Let's say you stop looking at your phone in the morning, because you're like, "Oh, I've just listened to this podcast," and I think I was saying that, you know, maybe I'm just going to try this at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, if you try that, you're probably going to have all of the same release in your body that you get whenever you look at the phone. So, what's your psychology going to do? Your psyche going to do? It's going to say, "Oh, I have that same feeling that I get whenever I look at my phone, so I want to go and look at my phone." This is where we have to almost fight against the physiology and try to build a new pattern for it to start to predict. And this is quite exciting. We have had so many guests on the show to discuss the importance of the vagus nerve and actually devices that could support your nervous system health. As someone with ADHD, I've learned that supporting your nervous system is foundational to your overall well-being. And vagus nerve stimulators like pulsetto can genuinely be beneficial, similar to somatic bodywork. Now, over the past year, I've seen the biggest shift in my health personally hasn't come from adding more to my routine and overwhelming myself, but actually creating moments where my body feels safe enough to genuinely slow down, which I think we all need reminding of. So that's why I wanted to share what's genuinely been helping me. And that is this vagus nerve stimulator, pulsetto. Now, it's become a small ritual that I turn to when my mind feels really busy or during moments of meditation because it helps connect me more to my body and feel grounded. It supports what I'm already building rather than adding pressure. So, what I do is I pop it on my neck, I turn it on, and I use it for 40 to 10 minutes every single day, and it connects to my vagus nerve, which puts me from the stress response into more rest and digest. And if you're someone that really likes touch and bodywork, this might be genuinely really helpful. So, if you're serious about connecting more to your nervous system, pulsetto can be genuinely transformative. If you're looking to support your one with routine, I'd recommend giving it a try. And what's amazing is that you can discover pulsetto using my code Sarah Ann at checkout. There is also a 30 day money back guarantees. If you see that it works or it doesn't work, you can send it back. As always, I only share products that I genuinely have used and enjoyed and believe in, and I think could help you too. It's important that pulsetto is a wellness device designed to only support relaxation and well-being. Individual experiences may vary, not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. So, if sounds interesting, give it a go, and let me know what you think. I find this whole kind of prediction machine really interesting because you're talking about it on the physiology side of the body in Dr. Lisa Falman Barrett. He was one of my favorite episodes of all time. Came on here and spoke about the prediction machine of the brain and how the brain uses kind of past memories to predict your outcome with your emotion. And I always found that so interesting, because I think the life we live in is uncertain, like it just is. And as much as much certainty as one wants to try and create, we just calm. And I found this very interesting theory called the darkroom problem, which I kind of want to read out, because I think it's really interesting. So the argument goes, if the brain's main goal was to simply avoid surprise and make everything as predictable as possible, then surely the perfect place to be would be, is the dark, a silent room where nothing changes. But obviously, that's not how humans behave. Because we seek out novelty, right? We travel, we date, we explore, we listen to music, we watch films, we want to learn new things like this podcast. So we deliberately put ourselves in situations where we don't know exactly what is going to happen next. So what is that actually doing to our brain? It may be less about eliminating uncertainty altogether, and more about trying to understand what's going on well enough to know how to respond. That's the bit that I find really interesting. So if you genuinely do walk into a dark room, you don't just normally sit there in the darkness. You normally turn a light on. And the reason you turn a light on is because your brain wants more information. It wants to understand where you are, what's going on around you, and what you should do next. So sometimes we actually move towards uncertainty in order to resolve it. And I think that's really interesting, because it gives a distinction about when we talk about nervous system regulation, right? Maybe the nervous system isn't trying to create a life with no uncertainty, maybe it's trying to keep uncertainty manageable enough so that we stay engaged with it, and we learn from it, and then we adapt. Yes, I love this. And for me, I love this. So there's the music analogy, of course. We can kind of apply here that if you were just to listen to piece of music, and every single note would just kind of change from one to the other. It might be for a moment, you'd be like, oh yeah, it's quite nice. But after a while, you've got this boring, you know, I'm just going to switch my music off. Equally, if it starts to change tone, it changes melody, it adds a lyric or a voice somewhere, all of a sudden it catches your attention, and you kind of move towards it, and it's curiosity. We're curious. We're curious in it being, you know, who seek to learn and to grow. And that's where growth happens in the prediction error. The prediction error in the case of the music is the change of the beat, or the melody that changes, or the note that you've become accustomed to something, and then another note comes in. That's prediction error, and it's not massive. It doesn't create a huge trauma in the psyche. So it's that space that learning and emotion can actually come forward. From my point of view, with breath, synchronizing to music can be a really exciting space. Yeah, because if you think about the synchronization that you can create, using Karl Fritz and his free energy principle of music and beat and rhythm, and that's safety and that's predictability, and then start to create within that same music, beats that are just off the one, or prediction errors that are enough to change the brain pattern from the synchronization. Then an updated model of reality has to get implemented each time, and so you stay kind of alert within that space. Which is why often you can listen to music and you can evoke emotion, people can cry, people can laugh, and whenever you sync that up with the breath, it can be a very, very powerful experience for people. Well, that's what we did. So we did many breath works together, you and I, but you have seen me in probably my worst day of all time a couple of years ago. If you read the book, you'll know why I was in that state, but you came to my house, and I was so dysregulated when you turned up at my house. I was not on a good space, and I just, I had complete kind of, I had no sensation in my body at that point, and you came over, I don't know how long do we do breath work for like two to three hours? Yeah, it was a long session. There was a lot of the go-through, wasn't there? It was a lot. I mean, I think I passed out half, I think I was not passed out, but in a dream like state. Because I do think breath work can have a real, you know, people describe it very similarly to being on psychedelics. They can call it like, you know, the psychedelic breath or the psychedelic experience without taking psychedelics. You can kind of have a similar experience just with, with breath work, but you also matched it to music. And so my breath went through, I didn't just do one type of breath work, I went through like so many different stages of breath work near the end. Like, can you talk through that experience? Because I think that's very different to the box breathing that you were just talking about. 100% yeah, and I think, you know, I sometimes kind of describe them as the micro and the macro, let's say. So like the micro is the box breathing and what I would consider functional breath performance breath work and the breath work that I do already with my two-year-old son. And I do with my, you know, 80-year-old mother, you know, it's the breath that ideally we should be trying to integrate across every single person. I would say there in with functional breath work, there is a breath work for every single person in the world. Might not be the same breath work, but there is a breath work that they could explore within the kind of functional breath work range and realm. What we did would move more towards the kind of macro and the, I needed all the help I could get that point. Yeah, we were doing for exactly. And we did, we explored altered state breathing and transformational breath work, which is another tool, let's say in the armory that I would use with clients to create an experience. Mae'n iawn i'r cyfle i'r cyfle i'r cyfle i'r cyfle i'r cyfle i'r cyfle i'r cyfle i'r cy Ys gwrdd yn ffordd, sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sy ac mae'n gwaithio'r gwaithio, mae'n gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaith ac mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'r bryddio, ac mae'n gweithio'r bryddio'r bryddio'r bryddio'r bryddio'r bryddio'r bryddio'r bry a'r cydellol. Ys yw'r cydellol. Ys yw'r cydellol. Ys yw'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellolol. A'r cydellolol. A'r cydellolol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. A'r cydellol. a'r ffordd o'r bod yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen. Dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen. Mae'n dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd. Mae'r dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen o'r bodd yn dynorfen. Yn gwybod yng Nghymru a'r Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth a a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. Yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. A'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. A'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. A'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. A'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. A'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. A'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. A'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. A'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd, a'r cyflwyn yn ymlydd. a'r unrhyw i'n ddod. you know, I have a loomie light and I have my curtains open, which works in the summer. But I naturally wake up, which is a wake-armist day, but that's why I guess it's so important to have these routines, maybe in the morning, than anywhere else, because actually if you're kind of base-leveling, where you're feeling, that actually sets you in a better way to have these moments of where you are in your state, right? Yeah. Might be that right? Yes, you've hit the nail on the head, and if you think, like, both you and I have freely admitted within this last 30 minutes, that we were actually like somewhere along, like, I mean, I was at the end of that curve. Yeah, you're just a Sarah. All right. Oh, right away. So who was in the hospital here with the cross? You know, before you, as you say, you've got all this information. I know, and this is a thing, and that's why I think it's important to talk about this on the show, because I think people can look at someone who has, or they'll look at you as, you know, an executive breathwork coach, and think, "Oh, yeah, Rob's just always got it all figured out." I also think we go into these crafts because we need them, right? We need them in ourselves, and we have a personal interest, and I'm still figuring, I definitely know my capacity met more than I used to, but I think the thing that happens with stress, that a lot of people don't do is they don't connect to where they are. And so they can just tell themselves their stress, but they're not really as in where their capacity for stress is, or that was my story anyway. Whereas now I can figure out, like, I'm in a, I'm in a, not, I'm going to start kind of down-leveling very soon if I don't catch myself. And no, well, you know, the wellness paradox in this idea that we can be hyper-focused on health, and yet not know where, maybe where we are on that human function curve. And I find that a really, really helpful one whenever I'm working with clients, just to say, where do you think you are versus, you know, how is your sleep? How do you feel your stress levels are? What age when it is? Is your sciatic or your pain in your back there? And for me, it's been, it's, it's great, it's like, well, actually, maybe I need to, to integrate a couple more, just like, three-minute and five minutes, as you said, I've got two-year-old. I'm in the United Nations. I fly to New York on Thursday, and as part of the general assembly program, we're doing a panel talk and then an experience for both the internal United Nations staff, but partners of the United Nations across the world, and we're livestreaming it, so please tune in. But what we want to do there is to give a couple of tools to create awareness that whenever you're stressed, this might be the way it's showing up, that your capacity for it might be really, really high. And that's good as well, so you can push on. I don't need actually think, just the way the world is, I don't actually think it is the time to like, hibernate and to not work at all, like, I think, you know, with everything that's going on the world, AI and everything that's coming, it's really good to be, to be building and to be, to be creating, creating almost like a foundation for yourself, and this is, this is the space that I'm in, so one of the big things I get from my clients, I don't want to lose my edge, I don't want to, you know, like, not be ambitious or not work really hard, because there is that worry of, I have had this, of slowing down. I mean, I know it to slow down, to speed up is such an important part of, you know, running company or supporting your family, or whatever it is that that person's doing, but there's still that push and pull of time, because time is so essential, and I think it's one of the biggest, biggest forms of wealth that we have. I never say that you're rich, if you've got money in your bank, I know someone's rich by the time they have available on that calendar, and that's a real difference to me, because I feel like, I have no time, or I feel like I'm always losing time. And I'm always like, wow, I've had more space for time, I think I'd feel way more wealthier than I was, or than I am. And so I always think time is one of the biggest forms of currency that we have, and slowing that down can also make you feel that you're losing out, but actually it's the opposite. And I have these conversations with my clients, because time is a feeling, isn't it? You can feel like free, you know, you can be the busiest person in the world, but feel quite relaxed through it, and like you're enjoying it, you're a flow, and not feel overwhelmed, and then you feel like you've time. Yeah, and it's a really strange thing, you know, some of my clients can be the busiest, busiest, but they're in a really good space, and so yet they feel like they've got all the time in the world. And so I see. That's richness to me. Yeah, yeah, and this is, and for me it's like time is a feeling state, I think of it like freedom, you know, it's conceptual, we've conceptualized what time is anyway, right? But like, I still managed to get the wee man and my son into the bath, I still managed to get into nursery this morning, I still managed to come and chat the day to see a client later on. I feel like I have time, but because from my kind of little moment in December, whenever I collapse at the top of the stairs, I've worked quite hard on creating structured rest within my day and week and month, athletes are really, they're the easiest for me to work with, because like they understand recovery, rest and recovery is like part of their performance. It's business leaders that I find the hardest to work with, because rest and recovery is like sacrilege to that, you know, they won't, they're like, oh no, no, no, because I've got another thing to do, another thing to do. And I think it's a, it's a, it's an interesting reflection for some of those, if that's you, if that's your personality, just think, what is it? Where is it in my life that I feel that sense of calm, calm or peace, you know, insert the word calm, can sometimes be something different to someone else, but that word where you just kind of feel like you lack a little bit, I get it in the sauna. Yeah, people have said that to me actually. I get that when I'm on a walk in nature, that's my, honestly, the moment that I'm driving outside of a city, and people say this and I'm going to completely butcher the science behind this, which is not normally my thing, but haven't, I can't remember exactly what it is, but it's when you're not, when you can see the horizon, your cortisol lowers, you realize that you've kind of got more visual space, which allows your body to feel that you're not so cramped in, which is why I think New York is one of the most exciting places on the earth. And I live there, but I was in my worst state of health ever, because you can't see anywhere. And so you do feel like you're cramped and there is zero green space in New York, you know, you got, unless you're living kind of near Central Park, you are devoid of any green space. And so it's really interesting that I have that calmness as soon as I'm in nature, it's just being in nature. And even, you know, if I do a working week outside and I'm in the countryside, wherever that is in the world, like I finished writing my book in Austria, the calmness of my week, so much more was thrown at me, but I could handle it so much better, I find that such an interesting concept. Yeah, I'm very interesting that it's your walk in the morning as you're kind of peaceful moment of the day, and I think it's really, really important to just ask yourself that question, when do I feel like that? When I feel like I just let go a little bit where there's no, there's like, I wondered whether whenever I was in the sauna, whether it's because I'm uncontactable or is it the sense of just like feeling like my body started to relax. Well, there are people that use their airpods and saunas and I'm like, I know, yeah, this starts to wide me up, I have to do my box breath, you know. Like guys, just 10 minutes without careful. But interestingly, just to kind of speak to your point about kind of being able to see, you know, item front of you wide, wide horizon, maybe from previously working with a colleague on EMDR, they say that this is a lot where EMDR is taken from, yeah, because we naturally, as we're walking, we're scanning their horizon for threat, this is kind of what we're doing as we walk forever. Well, we hope. I think a lot of us now actually look at our phones when we walk. Yeah. I actually say to people, when you run, look up, because I think a lot of us will run just looking down at the pavement. Don't look up the whole time because you will fall over. But like, is this really interesting sensation that if you go for a run and you actually look up, I do feel such a big adept of freedom. It's really interesting at the release that you can get in your body from just looking up when you're running because actually if you think about it, we're normally running, looking down. Yeah. And similarly, you know, most of us are walking along on our phone, but we're not normally, as you said, scanning and let's we're like actually going out on a proper weekend walk or we're like, okay, that's what I want to do and that's how I want to use my time. But look around when you're out, I think most people are looking at their phones. Yeah. And I think that being intentional about how, what is this, what, you know, what is this, this for rest, is this, am I trying to actively rest and people think resting is, I'll go out for a walk, but I'll, you know, listen to a podcast while also scrolling, you know, from my emails and everything else and I was clearly not digital rest, you know. And so can we, can we look at, okay, I'm going to physical rest, maybe not. walk at all or just relax or spiritual rest. I don't have to do meditation and you know better myself self-development and can I do that's a big one yeah this is I've seen it a lot now because I've had to stop listening to podcasts or I have such a yeah I read a lot of non-fiction that when I in the gym I'm trying to learn and I've got to a point where I'm like I have to switch off from using that time as another place to learn yeah I need to not be listening to a podcast when I'm in the gym yeah yeah it's that but it's interesting because you just naturally are you're naturally connected to doing it absolutely and you know there's also a there's maybe an inherent subtle belief within your system that you should be using this time as well to learn as well as train 100% of a lot of time you see it's the time efficiency yeah and then can you get to your space where okay what if what if I don't you know yeah what if I I allow myself to truly just be on the treadmill or be lifted away and you know this is essentially where you know we touched on the default mode network the central sector and network but within the gym a lot of people go internal you know they're whenever we can of course we're maybe lifting a weight or we're doing something but the dots were daydreaming can can start to take place this where creativity lives you know the default mode network can be highly active and very creative people and align yourself that space to rest in a sense you know to rest from the the self-development podcast or the learning podcast and not to say you should you should listen to this one but to give yourself that space to actually allow inspiration and creativity to to arise rather than you know trying to force it through can need to think my way through this situation having these little moments create the conditions for creativity yeah create the conditions well actually we had this insane neuroscientist on here David Rock and he bought the theory to mind or why we have creative thoughts in the shower because honestly I think so many people are like oh I've had this really interesting thought and it came in the shower it doesn't come when you're writing your deaths yeah and you know he said that's because you are not using your brain you are literally kind of in a in a meditation so you're feeling the water in your body and you have so many different parts that are kind of subconsciously saved memories constant memories that you're scanning throughout the day and they kind of can come to the sphere during the shower because your mind is quieting down yeah and it's so interesting that we actually that we don't think about that as much we don't think about not learning yeah utilizing calmness and quietness exactly because by nature there is no structure to that there is no method and we kind of cling to and I'm as bad as everyone else like kind of king of methodologies like okay give a client four four week protocol that I would like to do this what you should do every single day and sometimes I try to integrate okay this week like I really want you to strictly do nothing do less no performance so anyone that's listening then I mean obviously we speak about the transformational breathwork which I would a thousand percent recommend for everyone to try well actually it's probably wrong not everyone should try I'm sure this you're pretty telling me that's completely wrong but people that are very interested in this and doing it as kind of a big experience as it is an amazing I felt so calm after that yeah but for kind of the everyday approach to breathwork how should somebody be formatting this into their routine and what type of breathwork is kind of maybe the best for that equilibrium yeah all that state dependent dose that you were speaking about earlier on yeah okay so two things I'll speak just very quickly to that you're feeling of calm after the transformational breathwork in let's say regulated a healthy nervous system we have what's called the parasympathetic rebound and that's to say that whenever you peak up to sympathetic you rebound back into parasympathetic so sympathetic is the fight and flight and parasympathetic rest and digest okay and the the parasympathetic rebound allows you to feel that contrast of the high and high ventilation breathwork took you right up there the music was quite light my voice gets lighter the person's going through an experience and then all of a sudden boom the rebound happens and they come really back into oh this is what it's like to relax so for some people who have been so kind of tightly wind up living quite chronically and sympathetic switched on cortisol always getting released because those traits that we were talking about are there have been kind of just patterned in that can be really revolutionary to feel oh my goodness this I didn't even realize I was holding on so much in my body because it's like yeah and it's unconscious so we don't you know and some people you people might be listening to this now I'm completely relaxed right now it's unbelievable how much you can relax a little bit more and clinical hypnosis quite interesting for this you know there's there's there's there's within clinical hypnosis there's self hypnosis and sometimes I work with clients just to you know to for them to self hypnotize you know this idea of allowing yourself to drop into relaxation a little bit more so that I just wanted to say quickly about the parasympathetic rebound to to speak to you feeling calm after this session with regards to more of the micro work that the kind of how do you integrate to any of this more functional breath work on on a daily or a weekly basis like let less is more again you know there's not let's say there's not like this one size fits all this breath works the best thing for you I'm working with a client at the minute with a with a diaphragm dysfunction so it this person can breathe maybe two seconds in and at max three seconds out before he starts to feel the feeling of panic because he doesn't feel he's got enough breath so you know I I cover out that by saying that if I was to give a breath work to someone I would go try to push around the in for five and out for five this kind it's called coherent breathing and now I think a lot of people are calling it HRV breathing because it's really linked into to increasing the beats of your heart rate variability this is this heart rate variability is a very good indicator of an adaptive resilient nervous system the higher it is generally the more adaptable you're able to move up and move down and come back to center what would be known as your window of tolerance so anything that kind of starts to hit into the five five that 10 second breath cycle five in five out so four in six out can also be really really nice and that would be generally what I would prescribe to to a client initially to say okay you want to you want to start breathwork before I even meet you if you can play around with kind of breathing in for roughly five seconds breathe out for roughly five seconds we're seeing each other on Tuesday it's Thursday today whatever so for the next four days just try to do that for three or four minutes every day and then I want to hear a little bit about how I was for you by the time you arrived aside from that I'm big in like the big mantra I've got clients in the minute is do this do nothing and can you just allow yourself to sit and do this do nothing quite simply for four or five minutes but I'll go a little bit further with this because I've just been in Greece with a client for two or three weeks and um and each morning I uh I just I loved it on the water I was able to kind of get up the water there was no wind each morning so the water's like a football field like so so flat and the sun comes up and shines along as buta dances off the water stunning and for the first week or so I it was very calm you know I um I was able just to watch it I kind of had the perfect conditions for meditation sat upright and everything was like this is how it should be and then my my wife my my son came out the next week and my son's two as we've ascertained and so like he would wake up sometimes in and around at the same time and it was a lot more chaotic let's say my you know also trying to make sure he doesn't fall off the side of a boat so there's an element of stress and I remember thinking to myself oh my my my this moment is like ruined it should be like very quiet very quiet and it should be very very still and like the way that I portray a moment to be and yet there was a beautiful realization even within that that's just not like that doesn't have to be exactly life is always accessible only if we notice it if we put if it's us to put the shoots the expectations the parameters are ruined a moment there's it's only you send us up to create suffering and so I to be honest the second week that of with my son jumping around with you know um conversation with you know whatever those were actually even more beautiful peaceful moments and I started to reflect upon the fact that peace calmness you know insert the word of that letting go thing that I was talking about that I feel felt in the song I started to feel it right there and then because I let go of the the expectation of how it should be and that all came from that all came from allowing myself not to have a structure of this has to be this amount of breath to this amount of breath inhale to exhale this has to be Mae'n gwneud yw'n gwneud mewn gwneud eich gwneud eich gwneud eich gwneud eich gwneud eich gwneud e Mae'n yw'r gweithio, ac mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. You can start to actually really embrace an ambiance in the experience of feeling into your body. That's mind-body connection. I'm really excited by all this because it's like linking the spiritual to science and the neuroscience. They're meeting in the middle, and that's really, really exciting because then it becomes more mainstream as more people start to actually have the felt experience of what we're talking about, not right now, which might, to someone else, feel like it's gone a little bit, you know, I can't quite experience what you're saying. The practice is trying to do and align yourself to. I think that's a thing. I love it, scheduling time, stillness, but sometimes you have to do that. I mean, I actually do have to schedule my diary going to the gym, so if it helps somebody to schedule stillness, then I mean, I think anything that can help you get to a level of putting it in your diary, and I think if it's not in someone's diary, it might not happen. So I do schedule my diary, too. Yes. Some of the busiest people that I work with, they have their times blocked whenever they're speaking with me or doing a session with me and doing their homework, so to speak. If there is a five, you know, one o'clock to one o'clock, I have to do my whatever from raw breath work, they don't schedule a meeting over those 15 minutes because they see it. That's what I mean. Yeah. So it creates the space and maybe initially the hotspot needs to happen. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do it forever, but maybe that's what needs to happen initially for you to build the habit. To build the habit, then realize that actually the habit's really nice, and then you start to make it a priority, and then all of a sudden you feel like you've time. You always have time because you're like, "Oh, that's the thing that I love." And there's the richness in life. There's the richness in life. Which is amazing. It's the full circle. Yeah, we've gone right. Well, I love to take, because I think it is this new awareness of not constantly feeling like we have to be in this equilibrium of calmness, and, you know, because you can get really tied into this online so much so that, you know, you can then start to think like, "Why am I not the only one feeling?" You know, regulated or dysregulated, I mean, I think they're so abstract sometimes in their terms that sometimes people don't even know what state they're in. Yeah. So, I definitely would advise people to try some breathwork in the morning, even if it's for 30 seconds to start. Three breaths. Right. And building on that. But as you said, finding out, that even just helps connect to the state that one is in is so helpful. And I would also just say, "Check what alarm you're waking up to as well as my other, that was such a revelation for me." Yeah. But I always live with my final question, which is Rob, what does live for me well mean to you? Hmm. I'm hugely into increasing my intimacy with life. So I played a role with the word whenever I've thought about why am I even practicing meditation or breath or why is it that I'm interested in this. And for me, it always comes down to start it off like peacefulness. I wanted peace, but then I'm like, "Did I want peace?" Because it's not death. Whenever nothing is happening, you know, it's peace, you know, "What is your description of peace?" I actually know it's to be more intimate with the moment-to-moment of life, to feel like I have a greater range of depth with the experience of just simply being here. You know, I think we're presence, present-woman awareness. The reality whenever I keep on turning this around in my mind is we're always present. Even whenever you're like, "Oh, I was talking to that person, but my mind was somewhere else." And if you that knows that you were disconnected during that moment, so there was a part of you that was present, of course. And so I've kind of accepted that I'm always present. I'm not necessarily chasing to be more present, which whenever I ask other kind of clients and people in my circle and groups, why they're doing this work, presence is a huge answer. Intimacy of life is mine. Oh, I love that. It really connects me, actually, and I was just very, very quickly to the conversation I had with my coach yesterday. I had a very stressful day, and it was any stressful because I had too much of my day. There was nothing that went wrong. It was just that I just had not enough capacity for what I needed to do. And I didn't feel like I had enough time, which then made me feel that I wasn't going to get as much out as my session as I should do, and I wasn't going to be as present. And they automatically were like, what's wrong, like, how do you feel about this session today? And they were kind of like probing me. And I was like, oh, no, sorry, I'm just like, I haven't quite made it into the room yet, like trying to apologise for the situation I was in. And then I was like, why is that not a problem? You seem kind of present, and I'm like, never make brains still half on one place, and it's not here. Yeah. And they were kind of like, but why is this a problem? Like the whole point is that this face is like for you, and you should turn up in whatever state you're in. And it was this whole session, if we're just figuring out that actually I was there anyway. And the whole point was there to kind of discuss my capacity, and I was worried about not having enough capacity for the session. Yeah. And it was like really ironic moment that I had on myself of being like actually our capacity and presence changes the entire time, but I'm still here. Absolutely. And I think that's such an important thing to realise. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's the attention, your attention can hyper-focus into one thing, or it can be scattered into what's happening tomorrow, what's happening this morning. But the reality is you're still there in the moment, that that is presence. And so yeah, for me, those have been little aha moments that only occur whenever I give myself the space to have those experiences. I have my little red dog. And the red dog. This was, yeah. Well, I should do some breath work for my next interview just to get fully engaged. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing everything with us about breathwork, about the human function curve. I feel like I should stick that on my wall and have it as a visual check-in in the morning. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sarah. [Music]