Unarmored Talk

Breaking the PTSD Narrative: One Breath at a Time? (Ep. 2 of 6)

• Mario P. Fields - Sergeant Major (Ret.) • Episode 144

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What if the key to healing pain and PTSD wasn’t medication, but your breath? 🫁

In this episode, Dr. David Rubenstein reveals how a discovery in 1994 reshaped our understanding of chronic pain, stress, and trauma. With over 22,000 measurements, his research shows how breathing patterns directly influence cortisol, sleep, and even trauma response.

Using gentle “motion recipes,” he helps the brain recalibrate 🧠—creating lasting relief instead of temporary fixes. Backed by university research, this breakthrough shows how one breath at a time can break the cycle of pain and stress. 🌟

Link:
https://totalreliefmethod.com/how-it-works/

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Mario P. Fields:

Welcome back to Unarmored Talk Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and watching each episode and continue, please, to share with your friends and family members and colleagues, and don't forget to leave a rating or review if you feel this is an awesome show. And you can connect to all of my social media on the parade deck Just look in the show notes. Media on the parade deck just look in the show notes. Or you can put in the search engine mario p fields, parade deck and get all access to my social media.

Mario P. Fields:

Well, let's get ready to interview another guest who is willing to remove their armor to help other people, everyone. We finished the first episode with the power of the diaphragm and how it is connected to key components of our body, and then that secondary set of muscles that David talked about in helping us breathe and we're not breathing at optimum levels. What happens when it comes to depression, when it comes to as it pertains to anxiety, and then pain in your body? But one thing we didn't talk about in that first episode is, david, where did this vision come from? My friend?

Dr. David Rubenstein:

Well, in my earliest part of my career I was a personal fitness instructor. I went through a program from UCLA that was at the time. There was two programs in the whole nation. There were science-based extended programs. They were two plus years long to finish it.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

And the one thing I kept seeing in the exercise environments that I was in is that people that I knew would get hurt and they'd be gone for a long time and they'd come back and then other people. It was like it was just an accepted thing and that didn't make sense to me. And so I and what people would do to fix themselves seemed to only have a temporary effect, and that bothered me deeply, that temporariness, and I thought to myself well, there's got to be a way to fix low back pain, for example, and have it remain fixed. There's got to be there. And so in 1994, it was the same year that I did the first what we call calibration to a man named Mike Beeson, his name. He was a Harvard trained psychologist, and my mission at the time was I had to find a way, build a better mousetrap, if you will, that would handle pains in the body, particularly chronic ones, and get them gone. In my mind there just had to be a way to do that. That wasn't temporary, and everybody knows there's all kinds of things that everybody also already knows that are temporary, and so I knew there had to be a way.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

And in 1994, with this guy named Mike, he was very, very well to do and he had a chronic neck and headache problem that he could not get to go away. He had it for I think it was five or six years at the time. It invaded his life, his work, and he was a really passionate guy. To help other people in business was his occupation, and so when I met him he said you know, this is what my problem is. I said I want you to get another set of x-rays and he said look, I got three sets. What am I going to do with a fourth set, david? I said there's something there. I think there's really something there that we need to see, and if it's not what I think it is, then I'll buy the x-rays. He said deal.

Mario P. Fields:

Wait a minute.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

Wait a minute.

Mario P. Fields:

Everyone, and I don't mean to stop David, but again a hallmark of just this human being who just is from his heart, david, I've just got to highlight this. He's watching people with the temporary fix and deep in his heart he's going there's got to be a way to help these humans. Now, david, I know you just kind of went over that, but I'm listening, going wow, and I'm going to put all this effort and energy in my money, my own money, to help humans not be in pain for the rest of their lives. Number two is I am so passionate, mike, that I'm going to pay for the x-ray. By the way, x-rays aren't 50 bucks Right. Even if it was the 1990s, they still weren't 50 bucks right. Even if it was the 19 to mid 90s, they still weren't 50 bucks. That that's impressive. But I just wanted to highlight those because that's I just wanted to make sure I heard correctly. Thank you mario, wow.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

So, um, going on with the story, he so x-rays came back and he had, uh, what's called a cervical rib, which is, you know, you have your ribs on your rib cage. But he had one in his neck and it's very rare I think it's one in every 500 000 people or something very, very large, very, very unusual. And it's like, well, there it is. And in that moment I heard my brain say well, what if I could help his brain rethink on how he contracted muscles, and maybe that will make it go away, what we call the very first calibration, which is a very slow motion with very low amount of force in it to recalibrate his brain. And so we did this motion.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

It was maybe three or four minutes, and when it was all over, he did something he just doesn't do, which is? He turned around and looked at me, which he couldn't do, and he asked me the question what did you do? My answer was I don't know. I was just following my intuition, which, you know, for me intuition, real intuition, really means the Holy Spirit's involved, amen. And his pain was gone, not less, it was gone. And again he said well, how did that work? His pain was gone, not less. It was gone. And again he said well, how did that work? And I said I don't know. That was the launch point. That's when the rocket left the pad of I found something. I don't know what it is exactly. I'm going to work with this sucker until I you know, until the day is done.

Mario P. Fields:

And so they real quick. You know, what I appreciate about you is your honesty. You didn't even I mean come on, let's be honest, I mean you're a doctor. You didn't even try to find some very high level way of articulating what has happened. Then, as mike leaves, you're going. What the hell just happened? But I can just, I just had to mark but I just visualized mike going, man, I haven't been able to do this since I was like 20 what happened and you look at him and he turned.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

I was standing behind him, he was sitting in a chair and we did these neck turns and he turned all the way around. He couldn't Like. This was his range of motion and he was going to chiropractors three times a week, massage twice a week and physical therapy blocks of physical therapy here and there for years, and so it was not a small problem and when that happened I knew I found something and it was kind of like grabbing the tiger by the tail yeah and so, after over the next 10 years, I developed, I took that model of what happened and I kind of broke it down.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

What did I actually do? What happened was there was what I call now a motion recipe, which is very specific on speed, very specific on power, which is only 10% or below. How much power can you lift with a bicep curl? Let's say it's 50 pounds. Well then, the bicep was calibrated with only five pounds of force or less. And this amazing thing happens when this process is introduced to your muscle system, and that is that your brain goes into a trance state, and that trance state was verified by the Arizona State University Neurological Laboratory and it's a new trance state. It's not something that they have seen before, and that trance state was was actually identified in in this neurological laboratory through eeg scans, the scans of the brain, and so that recipe.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

I began to develop that recipe throughout all of the muscles of the body except the private ones, and there's so few muscles related to the private ones that it's not a not a big deal. So the the next thing that happened was that I realized that when this was applied, what would happen to the person is the side effects were even better than the release of the pain. What I mean is their focus and concentration would become like Superman. Focus and concentration it was wild Addictions would just vanish, almost like magic, almost like magic. Things like their stress would come down, depression, anxiety gone, and it would happen in a very short period of time and so I got to this point where I realized that the chronic stress that people were under was a larger problem than their body pain.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

So I turned my focus onto the chronic stress and looked at that problem more seriously than the chronic pain and guess what? It amplified the speed and depth of the release of the chronic pain and depth of the release of the chronic pain. Wow, that was a tide shift, a very huge shift in what we were doing at the time. And so people say you know, I'm here for chronic pain. And I say well, what about your stress? When your stress goes up, does your pain go up? Everybody always says yes. And when your stress goes down, does your pain go up? Everybody always says yes. And when your stress goes down, to your pain go down.

Mario P. Fields:

Yes, you, you know, and we just talked about this before the show, not this, but now that you've that, you're refining and providing more refinement to our basic discussion before the show I'm living, living an example. When you asked me that question, mario, are you living, are you in pain? And I said I used to be in pain, but what I've noticed and I didn't have the science behind it until you, until this show I said I noticed in the last few months, completely living in a moment like your first episode, completely significantly reduced stress and what I've noticed is the chronic stress that went away, depression went away and the pain went away.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

And I had no science, no explanation, I just said, man, it happened well, there there is a scientific explanation for this phenomenon of when your stress goes away, your pain goes away, and I'm going to say there's level of levels of that scientific explanation. I'll just give you a level one. It's very, very simple. One of the there's three stress hormones that are, they say, neural hormones that react in our brain and body Adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine. Cortisol is the bad one. Why? Because cortisol amplifies our body pain. Adrenaline can amplify our body pain also, but it's a lesser amplification. So when you drop the stress hormones, the pain naturally comes down. And what we see in the office all the time is that when we deal with their stress, all of their pain is cut in half or more. It's never less than half. So if a person comes in and they're like in an on a one to one to ten scale, ten being the highest pain, take me to the er. If you have a level eight pain, well I know the real number is a four. Now the difference between an eight and a four on that pain scale is when it's that high an eight, you cannot function. The eight is the level that starts to alter your behavior. What you're willing to do go out and socialize or not do your yard work or not have a conversation with your wife or not, all of those things are altered at that level of pain. But a four, a four is take some aspirin, you know it's uh, it's not something that for most men or women that's going to stop them from doing something. It's a nuisance and I wish it wasn't there. So that's where we start. Usually in the first session all of their body pain goes down by 50 and in some cases it just, it just goes away and it looks like magic. It's not magic, it's the getting rid of the stress hormones which amplify body pain. You get rid of those and the actual mechanical cause to that pain.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

And just going back to the diaphragm, for just one minute, Mario, the diaphragm connects to the low spine and when it's not working you get low back pain because you have a lot of muscles. Why the brain is telling those muscles you've got to stabilize the spine because number one stabilizer is on vacation, called the diaphragm, and this has an effect. You go up the spine and what's going to happen to the head and the neck? They're going to go forward and it's going to put stress on this part of the spine and that has a greater effect on brain function than low back pain. And when you fix the low back, the neck problem goes away. Why? Because that's where the backup muscles, called accessory breathers, they turn on and they overwork and they pull the head into the body and we call that compression when, when your head goes down from breathing because you're breathing up here in the chest, it causes pathology or ongoing problems. And so you go and you get, you know, therapy on your neck.

Mario P. Fields:

That's not the cause I would have never imagined going to a doctor or a physician and they say Mario, you're here for some pain in your lower back, whatever. And doctor would just say Dr Rubenstein, that's nice, that's nice, let's check your stress. Yeah, what? And you know, and let's, ok, let's, let's work on your chronic stress first. What an amazing approach. And even without being it, I mean, I love you so much. I wish I actually this may sound weird, but I don't care I wish I actually was still depressed and in pain, just so I could fly to California.

Dr. David Rubenstein:

Because I would have a lead.

Mario P. Fields:

You know it's going to come out. But you know everyone, you know the origin of Dr Rubenstein's method in 1994, having Mike be willing to take that donation for an x-ray and we did kind of talk about breathing on that first episode and we did kind of talk about breathing on that first episode and we're kind of ending with a little bit of breathing, which I know listeners of yours are not going to like me. We're going to end it here because the next episode, now that we've got the origin, how did Dr Rubenstein even have this vision? Hell, you heard him. He's like I don't know, I need to do some more research decades later. Next we're going to talk about that rate of breathing and that component and more everyone. Doctor, is there anything you would like to say for this audience as we close out this delicious episode number two?

Dr. David Rubenstein:

yes, I'll try and be really brief. Number one we know scientifically that 70% of the pain that you feel is generated from another area of your body. We know that scientifically. And the second part is that I conducted a study 22,000 measurements and the data fell into categories very clearly, which is unusual. There's usually more, it's usually not so clear. And this data, what it pointed to, is that your respiratory rate, how fast you breathe, will predict your body pain, your sleep quality and quantity, your reactivity to stress and your trauma background, and there's another dozen things it predicts. But having that chart, which maybe we can even show the audience next time, is so clear and so reliable that your respiratory rate predicts your life.

Mario P. Fields:

Your respiratory rate predicts your life. Next episode Everyone we're out. I want to say again God bless you, god bless your families and I will continue to pray for all living beings around you, listeners and viewers, until episode three. See you later. Thank you for listening to this most recent episode and remember you can listen and watch all of the previous episodes on my YouTube channel. The best way to connect to me and all of my social media is follow me on the parade deck, that is wwwparade deckcom, or you can click on the link in the show notes. I'll see you guys soon.

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