Laughing Through The Pain: Navigating Wellness

No Guest, no problem: Dodging rubbish cancellation attempts

• Richard & Andy • Season 1 • Episode 23

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Ever wondered if your career in breathwork could be as unpredictable as an actor's life? Join us on this candid exploration of the breathwork and life coaching landscape with Andrew Esam and Dr. Richard L. Blake. When a guest canceled last minute, Andrew and Richard turned the setback into an insightful "duo soad," revealing the often harsh realities of these professions. Richard's recent breathwork masterclass sparked some backlash due to his honesty about the financial risks involved, much like the precarious career path of actors. This episode underscores the necessity of having a backup plan and staying aware of the competitive nature of wellness fields.

Navigate the murky waters of misunderstandings and controversies with us as we address Richard's PhD research on conscious connected breathing (CCB) and its limited adoption in the NHS. A heated exchange with a critic who misinterpreted Richard's comments underscores the importance of accurately representing one's statements. We delve into the challenges of promoting breathwork within the NHS and reflect on the personal impact of such criticisms. The conversation broadens to cover the physiological effects of CCB, its potential benefits, and the importance of pre-registering studies to ensure research integrity, comparing it to traditional therapies like CBT for anxiety treatment.

Explore the world of alternative therapies, from the potential role of psychedelics to controversial topics like water quality and experimental stem cell treatments. Richard shares his personal journey with stem cell therapy for chronic pain, offering insights into the rigorous recovery process. Finally, we reflect on the growth of our podcast, celebrating connections and support from our listeners. This episode is a rollercoaster of emotions, knowledge, and personal stories, all aimed at providing a deeper understanding of wellness and the often unseen challenges within it.



3.23 - Link to Scott Galloway
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dylx_-MM9To

4.38 - Link to Jay Shetty
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2024/feb/29/jay-shetty-self-help-empire

4.40 - Link to Alan Dolan
https://www.breathguru.com/

6.17 - Taylor's Book on Shadow Culture
Taylor, E. (1999). Shadow culture: Psychology and spirituality’ in America. Counterpoint.

19.38 - Link to explanation to ‘replication crisis’
https://www.news-medical.net/life-sciences/What-is-the-Replication-Crisis.aspx


26.12 - Link to statistic to show shortage of 8,000 psychotherapists/psychiatrists in the US
Understanding the U.S. Behavioral Health Workforce Shortage. (2023, May 18). https://doi.org/10.26099/5km6-8193

30.20 - Link to Laughing Through The Pain Ryan Parke episode 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289623

32.53 - Link to Laughing Through The Pain Joseph Anew episode (as above)
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289623/14802414-beyond-the-biohack-discover-who-should-not-do-psychedelics

33.33 - Link to research stumbling block for MDMA use in therapy
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240620-fda-advisors-voted-against-mdma-therapy-researchers-are-still-fighting-for-it

35.15 - Link to Fiji Water and Cleveland Water
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072000322.html

37.11 - Link to Laughing Through The Pain - Dorian Soanes 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289623/14647825-debunking-nutrition-bs-from-salt-is-bad-to-veganism-and-detox-programs

40.34 - Link to CPI Stem Cells, Tijuana

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Richard @The_Breath_Geek
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl_gOq4wzRjwkwdjYycAeng
Webiste - www.TheBreathGeek.com
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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to Laughing Through the Pain Navigating Wellness with me, andrew Esam, and my co-host, dr Richard L Blake, and today we are with absolutely no one because we got stuck last minute. Now there's not too fair. There's a bad internet connection. Rich, how are you doing?

Speaker 2:

I'm well. Yeah, I'm well. Internet issues are a part and parcel of doing podcasting, but uh, we roll with the punches, don't we? It is hard doing a podcast. I think people um think it's it's all just fun. There's a lot of setup that goes in, there's a lot of admin, there's a lot of cancellations, a lot of people not able to make it, but hey, you get. You get me and andy now which?

Speaker 1:

is what I really wanted, isn't it? What's it called?

Speaker 2:

it's a solo side a solo soad, yeah, like an episode, but it's not really quite a solo. So I guess solo so it would just be one of us, but it's I don't know duo soad okay, excellent well I really want to jump into.

Speaker 1:

I heard you there was. Someone might have tried to cancel you, or maybe many people tried to cancel you, but certainly one person. Can we get into that?

Speaker 2:

yeah, we can. Yeah, so this happened a couple of days ago maybe. Yeah, a couple of days ago I was on a breathwork masterclass of two of our podcast guests and they are doing this sort of inner circle teaching people advanced things in breathwork, or at least that's what I thought it was. I think there's a variety of people on there, from breathwork practitioners to people who are just curious about breathwork, so they brought me in as a as an expert and jokes from them expert, blah, blah, blah. But one of the things that I I talk about with that is james downer and jamie clements is the darker sides of breathwork are not necessarily darker sides, but things, the uncomfortable things, people, the things. People don't really want to hear some uncomfortable truths because I'm not really as incentivized to make money off of breathwork because I don't sell myself as a breath worker. I do other things, so I don't have to just say things to make money and to sell breathwork. So I think that's one of the problems with breathwork is everyone's trying to sell breathwork, so they're never going to tell you about the problems and a lot of breathwork teacher training schools. They want to tell you the good stuff about breathwork. They want to tell you that being a breathworker is a great career and you're going to make loads of money and you're going to help people, and for some people that's true, but for the majority of people it's a real slog. It's really difficult. So I discovered this statistic is based on life coaches and breathwork breathworkers are not life coaches, but I think it's probably a statistic that crosses over that only 30% of people who train to become life coaches actually make it to be full-time life coaches. So 70% of them have other income sources. They're supported by a partner, they are doing other things. They're teaching Reiki, they're doing massage, they're driving Uber, they're waiting tables. It's very difficult to make a full-time living off of breathwork and I wanted people to know that. I wanted people to know hey, there are risks to spending a fair few grand on a breathwork teacher training. You may not make your money back, you may not make a profit on this.

Speaker 2:

And it was also in I'd recently heard it was Scott Galloway talking about his advice to his children and to people in general is pick a career where there's a really high employment rate. So he would say, like the top 10% of lawyers are flying around in private jets and they're attracting women way higher than their looks because they have a lot of money. And same for women. The top female 10% are also earning huge amounts of money. Everyone knows that and probably the bottom 10% of lawyers are probably making a fair bit of money as well.

Speaker 2:

Compare that to something like acting. I think he said like there's only like only a small percentage of actors in the world last year made enough to cover their health insurance. So people know to be an actor, you have to be absolutely exceptional. There are very few acting roles and maybe 99 of people who want to become actors can't become actors, and we know that, right, we know it's hyper competitive. And so when someone goes off to acting school, we say like, all right, best of luck, hope you have a fallback, maybe get that degree whilst you're acting as well, just in case you the acting doesn't work out. And we let.

Speaker 2:

We understand that it's a dream and that there's a big risk there, whereas I don't think people realize that with life coaching and breath work, I think they just think well, I'm going to be a breath coach, I'm going to be like Jay Shetty or Alan Dolan or someone like that who is is making full-time living of it. And so I went into this program and said these things and I irritated one person in particular. I'm sure I irritated a lot of people. You irritated a lot of people, yeah, but because of that, yeah, fair enough, I don't blame them. But you can be irritated with me, but don't make up stuff about me. This is what happened.

Speaker 1:

I wonder why it was so awesome, be irritated with me, but don't make up stuff about me. That's, this is what happened. So I was awesome because if you've got, say I, I gave up my. I did a psychology degree at university and then, when I looked at the career prospects and the time it would take to become a psychologist, that kind of balance didn't make sense to me. So I wonder why it is uniquely this kind of career that has such a kind of denial about the best will make it doesn't seem controversial to me.

Speaker 2:

Um, so sorry, yeah, well, I, you were saying these things and uh, yeah, well, just on that point, I think I spoke to someone a very intelligent advisor, mentor type person, who is in the public sphere and is used to that kind of thing, and she was just saying, look, people just don't want to experience any discomfort these days, they just want to be coddled, they just want to be told what they want to hear. And she said it in a nice way which, like you, you just need to toughen up. But anyway, let me get to explaining what actually happened. So I then got asked a question based on my PhD research, where they asked me why hadn't conscious connected breathing expanded into the NHS and into the mainstream? And I started talking about this paper by someone called Taylor and it was published in 1999. And it talks about the shadow culture that tends to be attracted to all psychological research, including breathwork and things like yoga and Reiki and the Hoffman process, the path of love. All those types of people would be in the shadow culture, and this shadow culture tends to be people who don't believe in mainstream religions, don't have mainstream points of view, are white, tend to be middle class, tend to be female and tend to be over-educated. And this person I was basically saying these people aren't necessarily interested in pushing things into the mainstream. They're not necessarily interested in getting breathwork into the NHS. I think that's true. I think these types of people, that's fine. There's no judgment there. It takes a lot of work to push things into the mainstream. And if you're not in the mainstream, what's the incentive to push breathwork into the mainstream? There isn't one and I don't judge them for that.

Speaker 2:

But this person, this lady in this thing, said that I was bizarrely misogynistic for saying that over-educated women have kept breathwork out of the nhs. So she completely twisted my words because I had not say it kept. She added the word kept out in there. And then she, and then she goes on to be like and what is over-educated? Anyway, the guy with with the PhD is saying overeducated. I bet there's never been a man who's been called overeducated. It's like well, you have just called me overeducated. And overeducated is not an insult, it's just a description of people who have probably a master's degree and above. And it wasn't my words, it was the words from a published paper by Taylor. It's not an insult to be overeducated, it's a badge of honor.

Speaker 2:

But for some reason this woman thought that I was um poly misogynistic and has gone after me and she wrote this really long post and then she was like the reason why breathwork hasn't made it into the nhs is because of money and things like that. And so in my reply I wrote yeah, at minute 7, 32, go back and watch where I say another major factor is there's been no money behind breathwork. Why are you calling me out on the money thing when at 7 minutes 32 I say exactly that? And then I also in my reply I don't know if it's been posted yet, but it's in an internal I also like I I said like I'd invite you to reconsider your extremely harsh accusations of misogyny. Go back and watch it.

Speaker 2:

I've sent this to other people. I've sent this to feminists and they've said there's no misogyny there at all. She's just put her own spin because she doesn't like you, because she's irritated by what you have to say. So that's it. It's still ongoing. My I've invited this person to have a conversation because I hate these keyboard warriors let's get her on the pod immediately get on the pod.

Speaker 2:

I do not want to platform someone who's just going to make stuff up about me as if she's like completely twisting my words, adding in things and then lying.

Speaker 1:

That sounds a bit misogynistic to me. I think we should get her on.

Speaker 2:

But she's saying so well, it sounds like you had a great time. Did you get a lot? What else?

Speaker 1:

from the from the breath workshop from the thing.

Speaker 2:

No, not really just a cancellation attempt.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if this is a cancellation attempt okay, but it's really nasty.

Speaker 2:

I'm not cut out for this kind of thing. I'm not cut out for people to make stuff up about me what's the the word Snowflake?

Speaker 1:

That's what I am. I take things to heart. I take things so personally. I remember when I used to play football. If I'd do a bad tackle on someone and they were pissed off with me, I would try and make amends. It's like what is the point of that? You're just never going to see them again it time they probably wouldn't recognize you anyway. But it really meant a lot to me. That person would like me or at least not hate me.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, yeah, I guess I don't. I I am definitely gonna have to get used to people not liking me because of my personality, but I just don't want people to accuse me of things like pretty serious things, like misogyny, when there is no misogyny there and there certainly was no intent there and even the words I use were not misogynist, saying describing a group of people that are women. It's not insult. Just say this group tends to be women. It's great, like that's cool. They do tend to be women. If you go to things like path of love or if you go to cis or you go to breath workshops, they tend to be women. They tend to be more women than men. I tend to be in the minority. I don't mind that. It's not a judgment, it's just reality. And she, but she's taking it to be like, oh, that's bad. Women aren't allowed to congregate and this guy won't let us. What get?

Speaker 1:

a grip. Well, I know for a fact you're not misogynistic and that you're doing everything you can to get breathwork breathwork into the nhs, even as an over-educated cis straight white male yeah, well, well, I would do anything to change that because that would really help my career.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, I am. I'm limited by my, my gender and race and sexuality, but yeah, nonetheless, I am doing some stuff, hopefully to get breathwork into the nhs well on that.

Speaker 1:

Congratulations again on your phd, completing of your phd. Again bit disappointed. They didn't go too hard for you. I thought it was going to be like a kind of not dragon's den, but like one of those panel shows where they present their work and or like master chef where they bake something terrific and then the judges are like a little bit needly. But they were actually just loving you for about two hours and I was eating my dinner just thinking, oh, come on, do something, say something, counseling, but no such thing. So what is next for you after the phd? What? How do you see that research growing? Because pretty big sample, hundred odd people. Let's remind ourselves the results. It had a very good effect on anxiety.

Speaker 2:

Yes, very positive. Yeah, yeah, well, you say they went easy on me, but one of my PhD chair people did push back on something. He wanted me to take out the words hyperventilation from any part of my paper and I have been going back and forward with him on this. I didn't want to debate him too hard during the live oral defense because I just wanted to pass. So there is a little bit of debate about conscious connected breathing, whether or not it is hyperventilation.

Speaker 2:

Some people call it hypocapnic hyperventilation that's some of the research papers I have cited they use that term and other people call it voluntary, prolonged hyperventilation, hyper. I don't know if I'm not mansplaining this too much, but hyper just means over and ventilation just means breathing. It is over breathing, you're breathing more than normal. But I think when people hear hyperventilation, they go hyperventilation. They hyperventilate because they in a bad way, like oh my god, I'm hyperventilating, it was terrible, like I'm gonna have a panic attack. That is chronic or acute and uncontrolled, involuntary hyperventilation, which is a problem, whereas this is voluntary and it's it's not chronic and it's not acute and it doesn't lead to panic attacks in in most people. So I I think we should have that in there we. I think we should say look, this is a type of hyperventilation, but it's a safe one.

Speaker 1:

There are different types of hyperventilation I think I've read an article somewhere it might have been one of alan dolan, maybe in the guardian or something where they were just really saying it's like a voluntary hyperventilation and certainly my first couple of experiences of of conscious, connected breathing I couldn't think of a better way to describe it and I didn't necessarily think there was any negative connotations there, because you're going into it in a conscious way and you're supervised and you know what's going on, basically. But yeah, I did Now you mention it, I did remember that. I'm coming back a little bit on that. But yeah, for those people who don't know what's going on there, you are effectively just over oxygenating your blood. I'm not over oxygenating, but you're getting a lot more.

Speaker 2:

You are exactly doing exactly that. So there was a bit of a misconception about breath work where people would say you're super oxygenating your body. You're hyper oxygenating your body. You're not. You're hyper oxygenating your blood. But there's this thing called the boar effect and what happens is when you over-breathe, when you breathe in like super ventilation, you blow off all your carbon dioxide, and without carbon dioxide, the hemoglobin in the blood will not release the oxygen into the cells. So you're actually deoxygenating your body and over-oxygenating your blood, because it is that presence of carbon dioxide that's necessary.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, one of the things that happens one of the reasons why breathwork is so effective is because you get these changes in brain blood flow, called changes in cerebral hemodynamics, and when that happens is different parts of the brain get down-regulated and up-regulated. So the prefrontal cortex, the part of our thinking mind, the part that most of us spend we spend most of our time there in the modern day gets down, regulated a little bit, and then other parts of the brain, emotional parts of the brain, come online, for they process emotions in that state. So that's one of the mechanisms of action of it. So, yeah, it's a little bit confusing, but, um, yeah, we're making progress and presumably you were delighted with the results.

Speaker 1:

I surely couldn't wish for much more. It was really amazing to see that effect on anxiety yeah, absolutely, um, very delighted with the actual results.

Speaker 2:

So simply, we showed that, uh, conscious connected breathing reduces anxiety of a large, with a large effect size, which is as good as you can can get. You can't get anything better than a large effect size, which is as good as you can get. You can't get anything better than a large effect size. I think there deserves to be an extremely large effect size category and ccb would be in it. But unfortunately we can just say large effect size and that was compared to a control group, a control group who had just treatment as usual. So that was phenomenal. So that's going to be. That's the headline. Is that, wow, breath work really does, or conscious connected breathing specifically really does, bring anxiety down to a big degree. And that's going to be the main publication I go for. First one is going to be publishing those results, hopefully in a, an important journal, and then also going to do a literature review. Or I have done a literature review as a part of my dissertation and then I'll try and submit that to another journal.

Speaker 2:

And then also there was that surprising thing that daily self-practice did not affect anxiety levels. So we gave people this 10 minute guided self-recording of me guiding them through 10 minutes of conscious connected breathing, and they were. It was suggested to them. They do it every day and at the end of the six-week program we said how often did you do the conscious connected breathing, self-practice? On average, it would be zero times per week. On average, two to three times per week, up to every day, and we found no differences between the people who said they did it every day and the people who did it zero times.

Speaker 2:

So there's a few different questions there. It's like why doesn't 10 minutes work? Is it that 10 minutes is too short? Is it that there's? You need a live facilitator, present or even online to get the effects, or is there like a saturation effect? Is it? You've already squeezed the maximum amount of anxiety reduction from the 90 minute workshops we did and therefore doing any more just is a waste of time, diminishing returns yeah, from my experience, I can't imagine even close to replicating the sessions I've had with you or alan dolan actually in the room guiding me through it.

Speaker 1:

I can't, yeah, just no way. I could get that in 10 minutes or even close. But um, was that realistically then? How far do you think you can take this in terms of these results? Show, yeah, exercise, what's next? Where do you then take that? Our other breath workers going to start facilitating your piggybacking off your research, as it were, starting new studies. You can do a new study. It sounds like something you really should pursue, but obviously yeah, absolutely so.

Speaker 2:

We need replication, we need other demographics. Like I said, that shadow culture people who volunteer for psychological research tend to be a part of the shadow culture and and that was certainly true of my study the population was, uh, majority women, majority white. Don't know about their class, but we know that well. For instance, we had more people with phds than who left left school at 18. So certainly we had an over-educated population. Not insulting my population, just saying over-educated, because having a phd is is probably in the over-educated, but maybe over sounds too judgmental.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well educated well then people who left at high school will be like oh, I'm not well educated enough. What am I then? Am I not worthy of your research? No, we, we want all of you. We need all of you. Just trying to describe the type of people, the people in my study. So we need other other people. We need more men. We need more other races. We need people from different countries as well, because majority of my participants were from england and the us.

Speaker 2:

So I am hoping to do more research. I'm looking at avenues there. I need to find another university, I need to find a lab. I'm looking for postdoctoral research positions. If anyone knows anyone who's hiring for a breathwork lab, please send them my way, send me their way, whichever.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, there's this thing called the replication crisis in science. Have you heard of that? I've not. No, no, okay. So the replication crisis, I think it tends to be more with the humanities. I could be wrong there, don't me. But I think it's like things like psychology and social sciences and things like that.

Speaker 2:

But what they're finding is so many of these studies are not replicable.

Speaker 2:

So a study, let's say, people did in 1995, people try and repeat the study and they don't get the same results. So what that calls into question is, like the integrity of a lot of these studies, because there is, it is really easy to be biased, like it really is easy to find what you want to find with just the smallest amount of manipulation. So what scientists are now required to do is pre-register their studies. There's like a website, a government website, where before you actually do your study, you say, okay, right, I'm going to measure conscious, connected breathing. I need 78 people at least to get a proper p value, I'm going to test their anxiety symptoms before and after, and that's it. Because what happens is people will run a study but then they'll run like four different studies on the kind of the same thing and they'll bury the things that aren't in their favor and highlight the things that they're actually show what they want to show, and that is particularly the case when it's funded by a pharmaceutical company or a supplement company or things like that.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, we need more research okay, interesting and also presumably your big challenge is trying to get that large effect in so that you're not needed effectively. Well, not needed. You can't have a breath work, access to breath work sessions all the time and it's not a great example. But in the same way you might have, like, anti-anxiety meds, you don't need someone there to take those. So, with the breath work, surely the big challenge is getting it, that large effect size, into something that can be done daily without your help.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So this is a question really is. Some people have said well, this is great, but it's not scalable, and I think that's fine. This is not going to become headspace. I think people just think the end goal of everything in this sphere should be billion dollar valuation tech company headspace with everyone doing it daily. It's not that it's an improvement on one-to-one talk therapy. In many regards, talk therapy is great. I've had many benefits from it. My wife is studying to be a psychotherapist. I may go and finish my training to become a psychotherapist. I don't want to suggest that there's no value on it, but I do think that for certain people, ccb is going to be better than CCB being conscious, connected, breathing. I think it could be better for people then talk based on psychotherapy.

Speaker 2:

Reason number one is so CBT is what gets prescribed on the NHS. That only has a small to medium effect on anxiety, so breathwork has a much larger effect. Size Also only 48% of people 49% of people respond to CBT and that's a meta-analysis and like an umbrella review. So of all the studies done on CBT, people have gone okay on average. Yeah, in some studies, maybe a hundred percent people respond to CBT and their anxiety is reduced. In some maybe it's zero, but on average only 49% of people respond to CBT and their anxiety is reduced. In some maybe it's zero, but on average only 49% of people respond to it.

Speaker 2:

There's a big relapse rate with CBT as well. It doesn't necessarily get to the root of the problem. It's more of like a band-aid, whereas I feel like conscious, connected breathing gets to the root of people's problems, allows people to process trauma, potentially allows people to express things that are stuck in their body and, yeah, I think it's root cause healing. This is one of the limitations of my study. I did no longer longitudinal follow-up because I just want to get my phd done. Sorry, I will probably go back and do longitudinal follow-ups in future. So cbt has a high relapse rate. Maybe breathwork does as well. We don't know.

Speaker 1:

We need to find that out another reason we're talking sorry, we're talking about relapse being on anxiety.

Speaker 2:

Yeah yeah, okay, right, yeah. So people go in for eight sessions of cbt. They have anxiety at the start. Their anxiety is gone by the end of the eight weeks, but then I don't know the exact time frames, but I know within a certain amount of time maybe it's a year, maybe it's a few months their anxiety comes right back, which is a problem. The average amount of time needed for a breakthrough with one-to-one talk therapy is 20 sessions. Wow, a lot of people don't want to commit to 20 sessions. A lot of people can't afford 20 sessions. Often on the NHS they'll only give you five sessions. So, yeah, you may not resolve your issues. My study showed, yeah, big clinical reduction in anxiety in only six sessions, and how much another study showed how much money like one.

Speaker 1:

How much money would that? Be sorry to be like crass about it, but like, just to compare like with like so you're talking about 20 therapy sessions is maybe, I don't know what is that? Two thousand pounds, two grand, let's say I think it's about the same right.

Speaker 2:

So I would say a breath work six week workshop, maybe you're paying 40 pounds a session, um, so yeah, it's cheaper. That's another reason I think it's going to be better. Is it like if you're doing group breath work, I think? Let's say, in the UK the average is 50 pounds now with inflation and for a while it was 40, maybe some are more, but 50 times six, 300 pounds for six sessions of 90 minutes compared to 20 sessions of 50 minutes. And let's say the average London therapist is a is 100 pounds. They're certainly more expensive ones and ones that are slightly cheaper. So I think that's going to be great because people can get access to it for much cheaper. It's going to save taxpayers money if it's on the nhs. Another reason it's so much cheaper is because you can train people with much less time, money, commitment.

Speaker 2:

So psychotherapy training it's like a, just like a double masters. Like natalia has to do like double the amount of credits that I had to do for all you and I had to do for our real estate masters. She has to then also do like almost like a thousand hours, I think of clinical placements, of doing one-to-ones, and about 500 of those are unpaid. So it costs a huge amount to become a psychotherapist and that's why there's a big shortage of psychotherapists. That's why there's a huge wait list on the nhs for psychotherapy. I heard someone on this talk wrote in the chat that it was like 18 month wait list to get cbt on the nhs and in the us I know there's statistic that shows that there's a shortage of 8,000 psychotherapists. So we need more psychotherapists.

Speaker 2:

But one of my arguments is psychotherapists, let's let them go and treat the more severe cases of mental illness and for people with, like, mild to moderate anxiety, let's see if, like if conscious, connected breathing works for them because it takes much less time to train a breathwork facilitator and a breathwork facilitator can do a session with, let's say, seven people compared to just one on one. I also think that if we had that kind of tiered system where you know the more highly trained psychiatrists, psychotherapists, are dealing with more severe people, access to becoming a psychotherapist is also is much easier. So at the moment to become a psychotherapist very expensive. You have to be pretty financially well off or well supported to take the years it takes to train, to have the money it takes to train, and you know that I don't think that's good. And so if we want diversity of practitioners, then we need to make it available to more people. And, yeah, if we could have a more diverse population of breathwork practitioners as well, because the costs are less that diversity and optionality?

Speaker 1:

how, in your experience, how open are people to doing that though? So, for example, if you're a trained psychotherapist doing cognitive behavioral therapy I know it's anecdotal, but how open do you find those kind of people are to maybe considering other forms of treatment for people with mental illness or mental challenges, severe depressions one she credited, acupuncture, and one, electroconvulsive therapy, so ect, so effectively sending an electric current through your brain. You probably couldn't get two more different things, but seemingly solved the same problem. So how, yeah, how open are practitioners to considering other avenues to their specific skills?

Speaker 2:

yeah, well, I reckon there are some similarities there between the current, because one of the things about acupuncture there is there are currents meridians running through the body and that the body has this um meridian channel.

Speaker 1:

So maybe there is some some crossover there and granted, okay, but they're two different yeah, two different approaches to yeah to something, and definitely far removed from antidepressants and definitely far removed from cognitive behavioral therapy. So I'm just wondering how, yeah, how many holistic practitioners there are, or people you would say open to exploring different avenues, particularly with, perhaps, people who have been struggling for some time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I think that's what happens with a lot of people, is they feel let down by traditional medicine and then they seek alternative routes. So there's so many people you'll hear who said, yeah, I tried therapy and I didn't really connect with it and I left after four sessions because I just didn't really get on with my therapist, or something like that. That's the example of a friend I've just had. They just like therapy, just nah, they just listen to me, they look really bored. I just wanted them to tell me some stuff and they wouldn't do that. Or there's some examples of people who have tried antidepressants and it hasn't worked for them. It's worked for many people.

Speaker 2:

I certainly know many people who do benefit from psychopharmacology, but there is also many people who do not benefit from it. So we need more options, because at the moment in the NHS it's just drugs or talk-based therapy and there are a lot of people who want other options, and I do think men in particular will benefit more from CCB. I don't know this, but my kind of idea is men don't love talking about their problems. There is still that kind of like men need to have stiff upper lip and men shouldn't show weakness and vulnerability, whereas if you do a breathwork session, you don't really need to show weakness or vulnerability. You can just be in a group of people and just cry on your own in the corner without anyone really noticing. So I do have a hunch that men would prefer to do ccb.

Speaker 1:

Some men would prefer to do ccb and coupled with that when we were speaking with ryan park, it sounds like the results were such that actually, when men do talk about it, it doesn't have as bigger impact as when women talk about it yeah, yeah, again, I agree with ryan on that point.

Speaker 2:

Again, it's a stereotype, because I've benefited a lot from talk therapy. I didn't benefit. I had a few sessions when I was a teenager and I didn't connect with the therapist then and I went on to to uni. I did some counseling sessions then and again I had that same feeling like this person's really bored, they really don't get me, they really don't want to be here. And then, maybe six years later, my ex girlfriend found me a amazing therapist who really got me and turned my life around. So, yeah, I would also say that lots of people benefit hugely. I benefited hugely once I found the right therapist for me.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, there is these.

Speaker 2:

There are these hypotheses that men don't benefit from talk therapy because when a man is stressed and their cortisol is high, talking about their problems doesn't reduce their cortisol, whereas for women, when they talk about their problems with high cortisol, that brings their cortisol down, whereas men need to get their testosterone up because there's an inverse correlation between testosterone and cortisol.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, men need to go drive a fast car, go lift some weights, go to boxing, punch a boxing bag, whatever it's called a punch bag, boxing bag and then, once they've got their testosterone up, are in a position to process, and maybe that's when talking can come in stereotypes again. But yeah, we need to do more research on this and this is a big problem with psychological research is the vast majority of volunteers for psychological research are women. Not enough men are volunteering um for properly societal pressures and things like that. There they have opinions about research, it being sorry about psychology, it's being just for girls or something. Maybe they judge it, so we need men-only studies as well, to be like okay, yeah, psychotherapy was really good. Well, cbt worked in 49 of women, but it only worked in 20 of men, and ayahuasca worked for 70 of men and 80 of women, or things like that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think we need to dive deeper okay, and how much of a role do you think psychedelics can play, because I know we've talked to quite a few people who are exploring that space and obviously it's progressing at various rates in different countries. I think who was talking joseph was talking about joseph and he was talking about how mdma will likely be used in therapy in the united states by the end of 2024. What's your sense on that and the role that can play, based on yeah, well, there's been quite a lot controversy around mdma recently.

Speaker 2:

So the it had just sailed through stage one, two and three trials in the us and they thought, wow, it's going through stage three trials and it's going to be legal ASAP. But there's been a real stumbling block. I think some people have called into question some of the research. I can't remember the exact name of the researcher I don't want to misname someone so I'm not going to say who it is but some people have called into question the integrity of this researcher and I can remember reading an article that they said this guy was like worshipping these drugs and his office in this university was like a little more like a church to psychedelic drugs than the office of an academic researcher, and they thought he'd become just too biased in favor of this stuff. So there's been a there's. I think it didn't make it through this, this last step, and I think they're going to have to do more trials on mdma. So we'll see what happens.

Speaker 2:

I think that psychedelics have great potential. They have great potential to harm as well sharp, cetera. This is why I'm focusing on breathwork. I became interested in psychedelics. I looked into it and I read a lot of books on the stuff and I was very excited about it, like other people. But I was just like I feel like breathwork is not necessarily better, but more for me, like it's better in that it's legal now, that's better for me, whereas psychedelics are still illegal and um, it is really, breathwork is super potent, but the risks are slightly smaller than with psychedelics. So for me, I'm just really excited about breathwork at the moment and great. I hope other people continue to do their research. I know they will, but it's yeah, we're still figuring things out with breathwork and with psychedelics fantabby tozy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sorry, I was on mute there.

Speaker 2:

Pretty village, I village are we allowed to see the village anymore? Is that offensive to people who live in?

Speaker 1:

villages. I'd like to live in a village, so hopefully, uh, it's not too offensive. I've got here on the running order. We need to talk about, uh, fiji and cleveland water. That stuck out to me as an interesting yeah, so fiji water being. You heard a few g's. Yeah, got that in the uk. What is cleveland water? Um, is it similar?

Speaker 2:

cleveland water, except cleveland is a city in america. Cleveland is it ohio? Cleveland, ohio? I don't know, could be getting that wrong. Sorry, america, okay, good.

Speaker 2:

So fiji water, as you've rightly said, is this sort of artisanal water that has comes from the volcanic springs of fiji. Effectively, I think it's the fijian islands. I don't know if it just comes from fiji, but they put this advertising slogan out just being saying like fiji water because it's the Fijian Islands. I don't know if it just comes from Fiji, but they put this advertising slogan out just saying like Fiji water because it's not Cleveland Just being like Cleveland's just an average American town, whereas this is Fiji, it's tropical, it's glamorous, it's exotic and therefore you should pay us a top dollar for our excellent water. So Cleveland heard about this. The water department, the public municipal department of water in Cleveland, felt a bit annoyed by this. So they actually went and tested Cleveland's water versus Fiji water for contaminants and things like metals and things like that and they actually found that the Cleveland water was like cleaner, less toxic. Cleveland water was like cleaner, less toxic, less contaminated than the Fiji water. So Fiji water had been left with egg on their face.

Speaker 1:

Love, that that's really good. Erin Brockovich vibes from that one.

Speaker 2:

Do I remember? Go on. I want to say something about Cleveland water, I think there was a problem with.

Speaker 1:

Is it Dasani water, which is quite big in the States? I think it's Coca-Cola's water company. I might be pronouncing that wrong, but I think they had huge issues coming into the UK for various reasons related to chemicals and whatnot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think theirs is just filtered water. It's not spring water or anything like that. We did talk about this in the episode with Dorian Soans, the the nutritionist, a kind of hierarchy of what's the best water. We'll repeat that I think it's spring water that's local and is stored in glass, and then probably comes anything else in glass. I don't know what's worse whether, like excellent quality fiji water that's in a plastic bottle is going to be better than filtered water in a glass. I would like someone to tell me what they think about that. But, yeah, I would say filtered reverse osmosis water. I recommend the AquaTrue or the Berkey water filters and then spring water. So if I don't have access to a filter, I will buy spring water and hopefully local spring water. If it's in plastic, yeah, it's not great, but I would probably prefer that to tap water. So what?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the point I was going to make about cleveland is what a lot of these municipal water facilities do is they publish their results of like this is how clean our water is? Madrid say they have the cleanest water in the world, and then paris be like no, ours is actually cleaner. And then canada says no, look at ours, look at our test results. We're the best. What they are not testing is the water that comes out your tap. They are testing the water that is just being filtered in their plant but then it has to go through the pipes and pipes in like paris. Probably like 100 years old, they are probably rusted, they probably have rats living in them, they probably are of all sorts of things growing in them. So the water that ends up in your taps sorry, coming out of your tap is very different to the one that's coming out of the municipal water thing. So, yeah, I would say that, cleveland, maybe test someone's, test someone's tap versus fiji water and then I'll give you the. I'll give you the two thumbs up.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so what are we worried about in water then?

Speaker 2:

Because Legionella is some plastics, but you talk about the diseases.

Speaker 1:

So stagnant water is obviously bad news with Legionella, but what else are we looking for?

Speaker 2:

Can you test your own water? Well, good charted surveyor there. About Legionella, yes, well done. What are we worried about? Metals? Heavy metals can get in there. They can mess with your body. I think those are kind of the main things. Well, a lot of people worry about hormones and endocrine disruptors. So they test water and there's the contraceptive pill, because women are taking the pill and then urinating some of that byproduct into the water. The pill and then urinating that some of that byproduct into the water. It then gets into the water supply and people are drinking, yeah, hormones that are not necessarily good. Some people say this is the reason for the decline in testosterone and fertility. It's because everyone is drinking contraceptive. I think that could be a conspiracy theory, but I also feel like I have seen research to show that.

Speaker 1:

But maybe this is something to fact check okay well, I yeah, I think we were talking about stem cells. Yeah, I was about to say I. You're in a period of recovery at the moment, um, because of stem cell treatments of various areas. Can you what? Can you tell us about that and learnings what you're hoping for, when I've said to people in the uk that rich is doing this? So many questions, none of which I can answer. So here is your platform. Please do that.

Speaker 2:

Help me out yeah, all right, listener. All right, andy. So I, about two months ago, went to tijuana in mexico to a clinic called CPI Stem Cells and I will recommend them because if I get five people to sign up, I get a free treatment. So CPI Stem Cells sign up now. They are legit, though. They deal with a lot of MMA fighters. The owner has been on Joe Rogan and lots of other big podcasts, so they're pretty well known. I heard about them from Chris Gethin, a friend of mine, who's a big podcaster and yeah, he had a great experience with them because they're really quite like biohacky as well. So they do lots of other treatments, like they give you NAD infusions and hyperbaric oxygen and pulse electromagnetic field therapy. So I went there.

Speaker 2:

You go for about a week. You fly into San Diego and then they pick you up in the morning and drive you across the border. You get a medical pass so you can go through the fast lane across the border and then they take your bloods and they do MRIs. So a lot of people there with injuries and some people are there just for anti-aging. There are a few people there who've been in car crashes so they had pretty severe like spinal injuries. So everyone who's going for like a particular injury goes for an MRI. I had like five MRIs done so they're really cheap in Mexico and I had them done on my elbows where I have tendonitis, and they also discovered I have a sprain in my elbow, in both my Achilles where I have tendonitis, and also my hip, where I have a variety of problems with my hip. Then they said we've got the MRI results back, we can see your different areas. It's not cheap. So they were like we'll probably do three injections for you and some IV as well as some cosmetic treatment. So I just elected to have an injection in my hip, in my elbow and into my Achilles tendon. It is painful. It is an injection, a fairly deep one, into an area for me that was extremely inflamed and painful as it was. So they did give me things like Valium to help with that. But yeah, the doctor said to me well done.

Speaker 2:

When I had my Achilles tendonitis injected I passed out with the pain. So that's the kind of level of pain you are dealing with. So you've got to have a pretty good motivation to go there. You've got to be in a fair amount of pain and I am in a fair amount of pain. There were people who were in a lot more pain than me, but you've got to be pretty motivated to go there. I'm in a lot of pain because I beat myself up with sports from a young age rugby, hockey, football, crossfit, um and I've tried everything. I've tried physical therapy, I've tried osteopathy, I've tried chiropractic, I've tried um, cortisone guided injections. I've tried the traditional medical route, I've tried the non-traditional route, I've tried stretching. I've tried everything. So that's where I was like right, okay, I'm gonna have to do something fairly drastic here.

Speaker 2:

Other things to note, apart from it being extremely painful, is well, the next day I could. I was walking with a zimiframe it was, it's swollen up so much in my hip. I could. I had to be like extremely slow and I'm not allowed to do pretty much anything for three months. I'm coming up to month two. I'm only allowed to do physical therapy. So I'm working with a physical therapist out here just doing really basic like strengthening exercises, but I can't do any like compressive loads. I can't do any weights. I can't do any ice baths, the I can't do any sauna. I can't really do anything like long hikes they gave example of like a guy who was an ultra hiker and he went out to do like a for him, like a short 10 mile hike, and had to be rescued because he got a flare up.

Speaker 2:

There was another guy who's a professional surfer who had injection on his shoulder. He'd done a couple of months of physical therapy and then went out and there was a big swell coming in. So he was like, right, well, it's been two months, my physical therapy's been going great, I'm going to paddle out to to this big swell. But because of that intense effort of paddling out, which he wasn't used to, his shoulder flared up and he had to be rescued from the ocean. There's another lady who was like oh yeah, I'm feeling pretty good, I'm going to do an ice bath.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people who go there are like biohackers. They like to do ice baths. It'd been a couple of months. She had shoulder injections. She had shoulder injections, she went in the ice bath and she got a flare up and got stuck in the ice bath. Thankfully she had a phone really nearby and was able to call a friend who was able to come over and like drag her out of the ice bath and then take her to hospital with hypothermia. So it is like a big sacrifice. No alcohol as well, for three months.

Speaker 1:

So I hadn't drunk, since I was going to say that's not bad for months. So I hadn't drunk, since I had that bad thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, but still I really did want to drink. Literally, that was an anomaly, though I can normally have more than one, one and a half. So, no alcohol for three months, which is also, yeah, not that fun, especially when I wanted to celebrate my phd. So, yeah, it's a big sacrifice in some regards. You've got to say no to a lot of things, but I am hoping that I will get some benefit from it. The reason I go to Mexico is because it's not FDA approved, so that's a federal drug agency in the US.

Speaker 1:

They haven't done enough trials, Right?

Speaker 2:

No, not really, Cause I know a lot of people have had it. I have, yeah, I have good friends who have done it. They this place, CPI invite you back at six months and a year for a free top up if you get an MRI, because they're so certain this stuff works. They want to see my hip. So my hip MRI showed that I had like a worn labrum so I'd lost labrum, which is like cartilage in the hip. They want to see in six months have I grown back my labrum and in a year's time have I grown back my labrum. So they'll incentivize you to travel back, get a little top-up of stem cells for free, effectively, apart from the travel, and you'll be a part of their study as they're trying to get this FDA approval.

Speaker 1:

Well, okay, well, I wish you a very safe and chilled recovery. Don't try and do anything too soon and I hope it doesn't affect your mood too much. Stay active and, yeah, just stick with it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Question here. Yeah Well, what people probably want to know about is the cosmetic treatments I had. They're quite interesting. Did I tell you that?

Speaker 1:

I wasn't going to push you. Okay, as you've brought it up, I have more out.

Speaker 2:

So as well as those injections into my uh joints, I had a stem cell facial. So that is a bit like a prp. A lot of people get prp facials. Where they do like um, I think it's the thing I use is called like dr pen's, like micro injections, so they penetrate the skin and kind of inject the stem cells into your skin and that's for anti-aging, so you can grow back collagen and elastin. The other thing I had was in my hair to help with thinning hair and receding hairline. They injected my hair a few times with stem cells, extremely painful. And the third one, the sort of most headline grabbing and some people will be, they'll say, weird was yeah, they injected my penis. They injected my penis. Yeah, yeah, that was painful, surprisingly, um, yeah, so two injections of stem cells into my penis and then they do advise you to use a penis pump, a swedish penis enlarger, for three months.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yes, all right. Indeed, I haven't really been keeping up with the penis pumps. I've done it a few times, quite painful, to be honest. Supposedly the porn stars go for this treatment, but they've had a lot of porn stars go down there for exactly this reason to help them with their careers ah, say no more.

Speaker 1:

Okay, well, maybe swiftly on and changing the subject. Well, you know. On a serious note, I do hope all your recovery goes very well and keep us posted when you get the full results, because it is really interesting that you're doing this kind of stuff that is, yeah, as you say, not fda approved and pretty cutting edge, it's fair to say. Um, the question is very generic. I had it on instagram, which is basically what's? How do you think the podcast is going? What's your biggest learning? We've now done 20 episodes, I believe, which, according to webbycastercom, puts us in the top one percent of podcasts. Apparently, there are two million podcasts and 1.8 million of them don't make 20 episodes. So we are on the top one percent of the world's podcasts. Congratulations us.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, in terms of like, what we set out to do, what we've learned, I personally have felt it's been really successful from my point of view because, on the back of some frustrations with, let's say, uh, yeah, I feel a bit let down by some of the things going on in the medical world and I feel like there's a lot of things that are not being talked about. They're actually putting in some incredible strides out there and would be really good for mental and physical health that aren't being highlighted. So I wanted to highlight people who were doing that kind of stuff so that people knew that there were alternatives out there, and I think to that extent we've succeeded massively. And obviously I've learned so much every week and getting lots of lovely messages on instagram and whatsapp saying I didn't know x, y and z, but yeah, what do you think you've learned is it? Are you finding it? You're just nodding your head all this stuff, or are you finding it pretty interesting yourself?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's going decent. It's been six months since we started and we did say we definitely wanted to get past those 20 episodes. There's definitely been challenges people letting us down, our internet's letting us down, technology letting us down so there's been a lot of frustrations. There's been a big learning curve for me in terms of exciting all the production and the editing um, you know, finding what's better riverside fm or descript, or should I put opus clip to do my ai, uh, instagram stuff. So it's been a lot of work for sure.

Speaker 2:

I, yeah, loved how it opened doors to, to people like. I was just at the biohacking conference in dallas and I've met loads of really interesting people. We've got scheduled guests up until like august. People are, you know, banging on our doors to get on, literally, and I just had a message today from someone who's got like 500 000 instagram followers saying like can we come on your podcast? We had nathan last week who was awesome. His team reached out to us and he's got a thousand followers. So it's really nice that people are going. Oh, we like what these people are doing. Can we be a part of it? And, yeah, it's opened up. As I say, opened up doors to people who probably wouldn't want to speak to me? Definitely not to you. What are you doing?

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry, um, certainly the smartest person you know yeah well, I think actually, like, I feel like we've done it and hopefully done it in a balanced way and obviously we all we're welcoming feedback and any anything and I think if we do make mistakes, obviously genuine mistakes, not just if you think we've been misogynistic when we haven't, but like if there's a genuine thing we'd love to hear about it. We've had some feedback not so good on some of the episodes and we're always trying to learn, but we're always trying to do things in a balanced way and, yeah, just really highlight the good in the wellness space and obviously it's difficult to do that sometimes, so if we get it wrong, then let us know. But thank you very much to all the listeners who's helped, who've helped us get to over 28 episodes.

Speaker 2:

We're 21, 21, yeah, absolutely, I think this is 23 actually. So, yeah, well, on our way. Yeah, we're going to keep going. We're going to keep trying to grow. If you would like to help us grow, listener, you can do that. You can do it by sharing it with other people, you can do it by subscribing. And you can do it by what else? Can they be following us and giving us a review as well?

Speaker 1:

where are our socials mega helpful?

Speaker 2:

let's remind them where our socials are so you're still andy, sam, I'm still the breath geek as of right now could become something I'm going to nick all the names on instagram around dr richard l blake. So you have to pay me for one of them I'm gonna post.

Speaker 1:

I'm gonna shit post. I'm gonna be like conscious connected. Breathing is a scam and I'm making loads of money out of it. From dr richard l blake I'm gonna use your picture, yeah that would. Yeah, don't do that it is funny, but it is a joke, right, I won't be doing that.

Speaker 1:

I don't use Instagram enough to bother with that, but no thanks so much for everyone for listening to us. It means a lot, and I'm getting messages from people I used to go to school with and people who I haven't spoken to for years, saying like really enjoyed this episode or learned something here, and that's what we're trying to do, so I suppose the basic point is it's all with good intention and all with love in our hearts.

Speaker 2:

So, thank you, nothing vicious, nothing vicious, nothing vicious. Well, and also, if people do have feedback, we are open to it. We are still a growing podcast. We still read all our messages. You can, I think, directly message us on on buzzsprout now, and we do have a fan mail box with our buzzsprout subscription. So there are things you like, tell us, because we'll meet. We may do more of them if you tell us you like them. And if there are things you don't like, tell us those as well. Don't make up stuff. Don't make up stuff. Don't make up stuff and try and get us to cancel it. Misogynistic, misogynistic, richard Criticism. I can't take any more cancellation attempts.

Speaker 1:

No, I've had one criticism which was pretty tough, but I'm so fragile I just can't. I can't be doing any insults, it's just, it cuts to the core of me. But anyway, thanks for listening.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for listening and until next time. Yeah, all right. Cheers Andy, cheers listener. Bye-bye, bye-bye.