#490 How to reset your body and mind in 3 breaths for better sleep and energy, with former special forces Tim Thomas.

Did you know that three simple breaths could completely transform your state of mind and body?

Discover how breathwork and quality sleep can unlock peak performance, resilience, and inner peace.

Many of us struggle with stress, anxiety, and poor sleep, impacting every area of our lives. Former special forces operator turned wellness advocate, Tim Thomas, shares his profound insights on how breathwork and sleep optimization can be the key to mental clarity, emotional balance, and lasting energy. 

If you've ever felt drained or overwhelmed, this episode will teach you how to tap into your body's natural power to heal and thrive.

1. Learn a powerful breathwork technique that brings instant relaxation and mental clarity.
2. Discover why quality sleep is the foundation of your well-being and how to improve it with simple, actionable steps
3. Understand how breathwork can regulate emotions, enhance performance, and even combat mental health struggles without the need for external aids.

Hit play now and experience firsthand how Tim Thomas’ expert guidance on breathwork and sleep can elevate your energy, focus, and overall well-being!

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KEY POINTS AND TIMESTAMPS:

02:05 - Pivotal Moments Leading to Mental Health Advocacy

09:43 - The Importance of Sleep and Restorative Practices

12:11 - Practical Tips for Improving Sleep Quality

17:27 - The Power of Breath Work

20:25 - The "Breath of Possibility" Technique

25:06 - The "Breath of Peace" Technique

31:38 - Breath Work and Mental Health

35:16 - Sharing the Benefits of Breathwork

40:46 - Practical Resources and Final Thoughts

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VALUABLE RESOURCES:

https://breathworkinbed.com.au/

Mastery Seekers Tribe: https://masteryseekerstribe.com

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Want to be a guest on Personal Development Mastery?

Send Agi Keramidas a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/personaldevelopmentmastery

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Personal development inspiration, insights, and actions to implement for living with purpose.

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Transcript

Agi Keramidas: 0:00

Did you know that three simple breaths could completely transform your state of mind and body? In this episode, you will discover how breath work and quality sleep can unlock peak performance, resilience and inner peace. Welcome to personal development mastery, the podcast that helps intelligent, busy professionals develop self mastery and discover their calling so you can thrive in a fulfilling, purposeful life. I'm your host, Agi Keramidas, and this is episode 490 by listening to today's episode, you are going to discover why quality sleep is the foundation of your well being and simple actionable steps to improve your sleep. You will also understand how breath work can regulate emotions, enhance performance, and even combat mental health struggles, and you will learn two really powerful breath work techniques that bring instant relaxation and mental clarity before we dive in. Remember, my fellow mastery seekers. If you want to go deeper into this episode, join us at our free community, the mastery seekers tribe, go to mastery seekers tribe.com. Now let's get started today. It is my real pleasure to speak with Tim. Thomas, Tim, you are a former Special Forces operator turned Wellness Advocate, mental health expert and motivational speaker, you are passionate about empowering people to unlock their full potential through the transformative power of rest, resilience and connection. And your mission is to transform lives and uplift the world one night of quality sleep at a time. Tim, welcome to the show. Such a pleasure to speak with you today.

Tim Thomas: 2:06

Efcaristo Agi, it is great to be here.

Agi Keramidas: 2:09

So thank you for the Greek reference you were telling me, and I will give it to you before I move on. You were talking about the elephant in the room. So,

Tim Thomas: 2:22

that's right, I'm, we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about all sorts, you know, I'm going to show you how to completely relax your body in three in three breaths. If everyone's sort of on YouTube looking at this shiner, I have this, this shiner was, it was actually quite a proud moment. I just want to, I just want to share something here that happened just two nights ago.

Agi Keramidas: 2:49

I will add here for those just listening that can't see what you're talking about, that you have your eye looks like you've been punched Exactly. Yeah. So that's exactly the description.

Tim Thomas: 3:02

So basically, yeah, so I actually used to be a professional fighter, and my 20 year old son has his first fight this weekend, so our training is ramped up. And for those people who can look at this on the video, you can see my son in the middle looking very proud of himself. He's given his dad his very first shiner, but I just wanted to speak to that now so people aren't distracted or not what happens in the eye, etc. I appreciate everyone understands it doesn't take away from our share. I

Agi Keramidas: 3:32

appreciate it, and thank you for sharing. So I will come back that some of the things, there are so many things that I could talk with you about, but the two things that I'm very much interested in discussing is the high quality sleep, which you have a lot of expertise on, and breath work, breathing exercises, and the power that breath has to change our state, as we were just talking about, before we press record, before we go there. Tell me you have a remarkable journey from the Special Forces to mental health advocacy. Was there a pivotal moment that made you shift your focus to helping others heal.

Tim Thomas: 4:23

Well, there was a few pivotal moments Agi The first one was being fatigued as heck in the dirt of Afghanistan. You know, in the Special Forces, we train to be tough, resilient people. But then, you know, when you're in a war zone, it goes to a whole new level. You know, you've lost mates. You've seen limbs blown off others. You don't, you really don't sleep. And what I found was, when we when we in the army, they train you. When you take a sight picture with your rifle, they tell you to take a deep breath in. Let it out, and then take up the first trigger pressure, right? And so when I would lay down, instead of just sleeping, I would take the little bit of energy I had and do deep breaths, picturing my left thumb, my non dominant hand, breathing light into my left thumb, breathing light into my pointer finger, my index finger. And then I just pull breathe, this light through my body, and then whatever sleep I got, it was deeper, more restorative, and the ground I slept on felt so much more comfortable, and I kept on just investing in myself, till I got to a point where I realised I'm feeling pretty good, but if my team's having a bad day, then I'm having a bad day, so I've got to invest in them and build them up. Because who did I want around me when good times turn bad? You know, tired fatigued people or switched on strong people. And so it was in that space I learned the power of servanthood. You know, being a servant to others, I'd mix that up with servitude. And so servanthood in that space looked like me. I didn't know about breath work. I couldn't offer it back then. It was just something I used for myself. But I'd make people coffee. And you could see these guys, you know, they'd be arguing in their team. You drop off some coffee, they'd take a few sips, and then everything would just stop. The arguing would stop, the fast, rapid movements would stop. They would stand up stretch. You could see them take a deep breath as they looked at the horizon, and for a second, they weren't in the war zone of Afghanistan. They were back home having a coffee in a coffee shop. And I'm like, there is something in that, when you give someone a space of peace, they can regenerate themselves. But if you don't ever drop the revs, you're always going to be revving high. So in our society, we all know about how to push hard, hit the accelerator, you know, hit the gas, but no one knows how to hit the brakes. And if we're always revving at a high rate, we don't know how to drop the revs, because once the revs drop below a certain point, our body naturally heals, naturally restores. We are energetic beings. There's no shortage of energy inside of us, but we will always be depleting ourselves if we never restore ourselves, and there's not enough press around restorative practices or activating what's called the PNS parasympathetic nervous system, which is the essentially the bodies break. So in the army, they told us how to accelerate, hit the gas, Push hard, push hard, push hard. But life just became a crap eating competition. Oh, look at that guy. He could do it for 18 hours straight, seven days a week. You know, give that guy a medal. We praised up these people. And it's not so different in the in the real world, right? But, and we can sort of kid ourselves with the imbalances in the daytime, but it's at night time all the imbalances show up. So I was very successful in creating veteran recovery programmes in Australia, because the success of my programmes was measured by how much it improved the quality of the people's sleep. Because I noticed that if you could improve someone's sleep, everything improved. So I invite everybody to think of everything they have in their life, their work, their relationships, the health of their body. Everything you have is relative to the the quality of everything you have is is relative to the quality of your sleep. You know, sleep is the soil from which everything grows. But you know, soil you don't see you see the tree, you see the fruit. And we're very visual, you know, and we get a lot of value from what other people say about us and how we look from the outside. But someone who really knows how to grow someone make someone flourish, they go into the unseen, into the soil or or, as I like to say, I mean, some people say that we're us humans, where we're flesh and we're spirit. Or you could say, you know, there's parts of you that are seen and there's parts of you that are unseen, yeah, and so, so balancing those unseen parts shows up powerfully in your sleep, or imbalance in those unseen parts of you show up in your sleep. And it's one thing to blah blah blah about it, and a lot of people do. But my promise to everyone here is, I'm going to show you a technique by the end of this at the right moment, where in three breaths, you're going to be able to attain total body relaxation. But the trick is, there are three proper breaths, not the shallow breaths most people have. I hope I didn't tangent too much there Agi, I hope I answered your question.

Agi Keramidas: 9:43

Yes, sure, and now I have quite a few more as a result of what you were saying with sleep. I will the only thing I will add is, personally, I do consider it the cornerstone of. Health. So I do believe in its importance, perhaps over even factors as nutrition in her that's what I've read. That's what and I have seen it also with myself in my sleep. So

Tim Thomas: 10:15

I'm just going to jump in here for a second. We used to weaponize sleep in war, because we would, we would attack our enemy's sleep. We knew if we could take their sleep out for three nights, it would mess them up better than a bullet. Yeah. Okay. And then I come back to my home country that I love, and there's so many people not sleeping, and I'm like, There's no clear enemy here, but we're getting attacked. You know what I mean? So I Sorry to cut you off, but I'm just trying to emphasise the point of, if you don't think sleep is important, go without it for three nights and you and nothing works.

Agi Keramidas: 10:48

Is there? Let's stay with sleep for a little while. Is there something that you know most people are unaware of, or perhaps it's surprising or misunderstood on element of sleep that if someone knew about it, they could really change, probably the life

Tim Thomas: 11:10

well, our body has hundreds of internal clocks, yes, and if you've ever experienced you turn the light off at the end of the day, you try and get to sleep, and There's part of you still running around, still not wanting to sleep, there is a frequency of light that the sun produces as it just comes up over the horizon that goes through your retina and syncs up all your circadian rhythms, all your internal clocks. So if you want a really good night's sleep. It actually starts by getting up and seeing that first light over the horizon. We are built for it, and ideally doing some breath work too, presence of oxygen, absence of disease. So that's just a little free fun fact people can use for their, for their to improve their sleep. And it actually makes you feel pretty amazing as well that little morning routine.

Agi Keramidas: 12:11

So you say that, and that's interesting, you say that the good sleep starts from the morning of the day. So that's great. Tell me about let's stick with some practical we'll talk about the breathing on its own because it deserves a very special and lot more time. But as a matter of you know some perhaps quick, practical advice that one can take to improve, you know, the quality of sleep, and probably they do not consider them. You know, we know about the blue lights, for example. I don't know how many people, etc. So if, if you can give us some without too much detail, yes, some things

Tim Thomas: 12:59

we can very easy stuff. Okay, if anyone you know being Greek, you probably drink Greek coffee

Agi Keramidas: 13:07

sometimes, not often, okay, a lot

Tim Thomas: 13:10

of people, the first thing they do in the morning is wake up and have a coffee. Yes. Now, coffee doesn't so much give you energy as it blocks your fatigue. So if you want to maximise the the energy that that coffee has for the first 90 minutes, hydrate and have some quality salt for the first 90 minutes. If you have coffee within the first 90 minutes of waking, all those sleep chemicals that are trying to leave your body will stay in there. So that's why, if you have it when you first wake up, you'll have this slump after it. Okay, so simply, and that, and this, this slump you'll be chasing for the rest of the day. I'm really tired. I need another coffee. Rah, rah, rah, so, so that's something really simple. Hydrate for the first 90 minutes, then have a coffee. The coffee will be so much better for you. Okay, in the evening, the most impact you can have on your body for sleep is keeping regular sleep and wait time. So I've got an alarm that wakes me up, but I've also got an alarm that tells me I need to go to sleep. Okay, so if you can set seven days, your body will love you. Your body will absolutely love you. When you can be really disciplined in your going to sleep and waking up, and it becomes so much easier when you've got that rhythm. And I could give you a bunch of scary facts, but I don't want to scare people. I want to encourage them to the ease of which you can actually create quality sleep. Another one is understanding that our eyes are under attack by artificial light. Our eyes are so sensitive to light, so looking at you know? So I've got an alarm that goes off to tell me when to go to sleep, but also when to tell my turn my electronics off. And, oh, look here, I've got one of my favourite things for sleep, candle. Alright? Yeah, you turn your lights off, light a candle. That's a natural spectrum of light. And I'll do, you know, stretching, breathing, and I'll just sit, sometimes I'll sit and talk to somebody, and this, this sort of, it's very almost tribal. You're around this glow, and the glow is only, only extends out maybe three or five metres, and your world becomes where the glow is so having having a single candle turning off all the lights is a really great way to connect with yourself and someone else at the end of the day, because the artificial substances that go through our eyes have an artificial rhythm, and it'll take you out of your natural rhythm, things like, things like natural light with its natural resonance is a very easy way. And if you wanted to really juice your evening routine up, I'm a big fan of breath work like that. That has been the the thing that has pretty much saved me on so many occasions, especially at 3am because a lot of people can get to sleep, okay, but then they wake up and can't get back to sleep. It's very handy to have a, have a a breath work modality that you can do that brings you into a statement. And I just want to speak to one of the reasons why breath work is so powerful. So if you think of us as living organisms, right before we were, you know, sentient, before we became aware, and we're putting paintings on rock walls, we were breathing before we were speaking as living organisms we were breathing. That deep, ancient wiring lives inside of us, and it outranks our thoughts and our breath. And I specialise in guiding people through particular breath work practices that afterwards they say words can't explain what I went through. And I'm like, That's right, because you experience something that harks back to the time before you could think, before you could breathe. And you know, if you're going to get biblical, to me, breath work is the Garden of Eden, and this is the the fruit of knowledge. Okay, we ate the fruit of knowledge. Thought we're killing it. But there's a price to pay, especially at night, when it's not letting you sleep. So getting back to breath, getting back to Eden, brings that peace. It overrides and kicks out those, those thoughts in your head.

Agi Keramidas: 17:27

It is, I liked how you described it as the Garden of Eden with me when you were when I heard your description, it came the word spiritual came to mind that you know the you are inner self hours. Yes, let's talk a bit more than about breath work. And you mentioned that it could be good to have some modalities for the different situation. So can you give me, like, two or three examples? One, obviously, is when we want to relax, as as you said. So are there different ones for when want to focus on what to be energised, or yep,

Tim Thomas: 18:11

yep? For every occasion there's a breath. Okay? So when I'm working with high school students, I'll show them how to breathe through their exam stress and apply themselves academically. When I'm working with athletes, I'll show them how to use their lungs to produce oxygen to dissolve lactic acid. When I'm working with corporates, I'll show them how to keep their energy through the day and stop blocking themselves up. So what people discover is it's not a set of lungs we have, it's a medicine cabinet with a lot of different shells, and you can self medicate. And this is what I love about breath work. It creates a sovereign state inside of you, because up until this point, if we wanted to do something for our bodies, we would need to get something from the outside to help us. If you can look at your own resources first and know how to access them. And you don't hear about this stuff, because no one's making money, and I'm quite passionate about this Agi, because when I said I couldn't sleep, I lost six years of my life to pills. You know, I can't get that time back. Yeah, there was a benefit to taking those pills, but there was a massive cost. And no one told me about the cost, all right, I didn't know. Breath work could shut off my overthinking mind. Breath work could heal my body. Breath work done, right? Is an anti inflammatory. I came out of the army with a lot of chronic injuries, so to be able to access your own resources. See the value inside of you. This is one of the things I love about breath work. But to speak to giving people a specific technique, I'm happy, happy, happy to share. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to just get you to breathe in. Firstly, that the caveat to this is, if you're going to do this breath work technique, be in a safe space. Don't be driving operating heavy machinery. Don't be cutting up carrots, sitting in a chair, ideally with with things on the side that you can, you can that that will support you, or even laying down. So because the first time we. Breathe correctly. The body might react a certain way. Some people get sweaty, some people get dizzy. You know, it's a bit like the first time you run around a block and you haven't ran in a while, you're like, oh my gosh, what's going on? Okay, so, so just be in a space where you can let your breath do its thing. So I'm just going to get everybody to to breathe in and then breathe out, and I invite you to do that.

Agi Keramidas: 20:25

Agi, is that through the nose, through the mouth? Does it matter at this at

Tim Thomas: 20:29

this stage, it doesn't really matter. Okay, just just you're breathing in, you're breathing out, and you're aware of your breath. So the first step to happiness is being aware of your breath. Okay? Because what happens is, if we are so focused on things that we want to get, things that we want to achieve, all the things outside of us, we disconnect from our own bodies. And if you've ever seen somebody go you know that's that's them being about to hit a panic attack, because they're so focused somewhere else that their body's like, no, come back to me. Start breathing. So being aware of your breath is the first step. Now all we're going to do is, when we breathe in, I'm going to invite you to breathe in again and again and again and again. Give that a try. Just breathe in, then breathe in again and again and again and again. You got that, just let it go, and that big smile on your face, I could

Agi Keramidas: 21:29

go a bit more. I was surprised how much more I could go than what I most

Tim Thomas: 21:34

people are surprised. Okay, and so we're going to call that your first in and out. That's your primary inhale, and that when you breathe in again and again, for the sake of giving it a name, we're going to call it your secondary inhale. So all I'm going to get you to do is breathe in primary and breathe in secondary, nice and smooth. So blow it all the way out. Blow out. Now breathe in, feel it going past your primary into your secondary, and then just let it go. All right, okay, so what I love about what I do, Agi, is I show people just how amazing their body is, because what you didn't know, and what a lot of people listening don't know is in our thumb and two fingers are turbo buttons. Okay, so we're going to pinch our thumb and our two fingers together as hard as we can when it comes to our secondary inhale. So we're going to breathe in to our primary and when it comes to that secondary inhale, we're going to hit those turbo buttons. Okay, it's going to be a little timing thing. So ever just exhale, blow it all the way out, start breathing in, then hit the turbo buttons and just let it out. Right now. Did you notice a little bit of a turbo boost when you hit those fingers,

Agi Keramidas: 23:05

something like that. Yes, look,

Tim Thomas: 23:07

let's, let's try and smooth it out now so we're going to blow it all the way out. Then as we breathe in, we're going to pinch those fingers together as hard as we can. When it comes to the, excuse me, when it comes to the secondary in half, thank you. Gotta stop so blowing it all the way out, breathing in and then hit those turbo buttons atta boy, and then just let that guy all right now it looked like it that one actually really landed. Did that that give you a good boost?

Agi Keramidas: 23:47

Is Yes, it's all right. I felt it at the top of my head. Great,

Tim Thomas: 23:54

great. Now we're going to juice that up even more. And this is the point where we're going to be breathing through our nose. And we're not just going to be breathing through our nose. We're going to be snorting, rather, I don't say aggressively, but really flaring your nostril and trying to snort it in and as we raise our chin, okay, so we're going to have our power buttons, right, and we're going to breathe in as we raise our chin and snort through our nose and look at the ceiling. So it's gonna we're gonna go from this position and looking to the ceiling, raising your chest and opening. Okay, so blowing it all the way out. Let it all out. Let it all out. Let it all out. Breathing in. Hit your turbo buttons. Raise your chin, snort your nose, hold it, wriggle it and let it out with a big sigh. Now just steady. Don't rush to go anywhere that could be your first breath in your life. All right, you. How you feeling? Agi,

Agi Keramidas: 25:06

I certainly feel very relaxed, but also in a not in a sleepy way, I mean in a calm, centred way. Yeah. So what happened

Tim Thomas: 25:17

right there? Tim, okay, so I call this the breath of possibility, okay? Because when I've got stuff in my head that's making me feel impossible, look what happens to my structure. When people have the weight of their world on their shoulders, they hunch forward. So when we breathe correctly, we create proper structure. And so it's not just extra oxygen we're bringing in. Think of your your your, we're electrical, an electrical system, right? And our nerves are like hose pipes. And, you know, you think of a garden hose, you pinch it, you step on it, and you won't get much water coming out the other end. So when we're hunched over, we're compressing our own energy system. So when we breathe in and open that chest up, we're actually allowing that abundant energy that we all have to flow. We're no longer blocking ourselves. So when I'm kicking around in public, I'll use this as a circuit breaker, because I might get, you know, I'm still human. I get stressed, like I might get annoyed because I'm waiting in a cue too long, right? So I will physically pinch my fingers discreetly, and I'll really suck it in, okay? And the other thing that we're doing is one thing my coach taught me when I was a fighter was that before you do a combination, do a big snort through your nose, because we've got these big sinus cavities behind our nose, and a rapid snort, according to him, brought the air through the sinus cavities straight into your brain. Now, whether that is true or not, it worked in combat. So there's something going on there. There's some sort of accelerated gas exchange. So when we're opening up and really snorting that air through that through that nose that has an impact on the system. So I encourage people, this is your, this has, is now your, your medication button, you know, like, you know when you're in the hospital and you got the methadone button or something like that, this is, this is your getting, you know, your recalibrating button. People ask me, how often you know you should breathe well. When I was on pills, I had pills not just in my medicine cabinet, but by my bed, in my cupboard, in the fruit bowl, in my car. I had pills everywhere, because I was always trying to self regulate, so something like that, you know. And we're not even halfway through the the technique. But I just want to show you a little something to allow people to have that opening of themselves. Because what often happens is we close down when there's when, when we think stuff is impossible, we close down so breath of possibility. Change is a game changer, and it's and it's it costs you nothing. And again, you don't hear about this stuff, because no one's making money. And I just encourage everybody. Now, if you're getting something from this, ask the question, how many other people do you know could benefit from this? You could be the person that brings that possibility to their life.

Agi Keramidas: 28:16

Absolutely, it is so powerful. And the thing with breath, we always have it with us. Always it's it's there. All we need to do is bring our awareness, really, to the breath, and do that breath of possibility. I like very much how you you said it. I will ask you one thing about the technique that you described, just to clarify, because the secondary breath, is it one, or is there, you know, a third force you keep on taking in, I think that's what I did the very first time. So is it only one? What's

Tim Thomas: 28:58

going to happen is you're going to this is a muscle group you haven't developed yet. So when I set tell people to breathe in again and again and again and again, it's like, oh, you know, it's like, it's like, they've been to the gym and they think, like a a bicep curl is, is just like, just doing those ones, right? So blow their mind that they could lift that far. Yeah. Okay, so, so we have to breath work isn't hard, and like you said, it's free, but what makes it hard is, is it's our oldest habit, and it's our oldest, badly trained habit, so we have to allow ourselves to retrain our own lungs. You know the and, and I'm one of those guys. I'm pretty thick skinned. I've been doing this my whole life. You can't tell me you know how to do it, but, but trust me when I say right now, everyone's limping and everyone thinks it's normal. So if you can be the one that walks and runs, you're going to be miles ahead with ease and grace. So breath work and act. Assessing your lungs and breathing fully. Let me just say this in the negative. There's a lot of data around how we can kill ourselves early by destroying every system in our body by shallow breathing. Every system our body gets dies early when we don't breathe properly, because when there's no oxygen, there's disease. Presence of oxygen, absence of disease. So when we Okay, we are doing a lot of things to nourish our systems and and the unseen parts of us. You know, I can be telling everyone I'm killing it off from the outside, but then on the inside, there's something out of alignment. Breath work nourishes the unseen parts of me. So I can, I can be in that all of me can be in that moment, and I and usually you get the outcome you want when you're in that energetic state, you're far less reactive. When you've got energy, more energy, more options.

Agi Keramidas: 31:05

One thing that comes to mind, another aspect that this technique, or breath work can really make a difference, and I would like to a quick comment on that is the the influence that breath work or breathing techniques have on mental health. So what would you say to someone listening right now that perhaps they're navigating a mental health Yeah, sure. What's, you know, the connection? What's the practical thing? Okay,

Tim Thomas: 31:38

so let me say this, if you're sleeping poorly, there's a two to 300% chance, two to 300% increase in mental health problems. Okay, so, so, so pause, so on, on my hand, right now, there's probably bacteria on there that if I, if I created the right conditions, that it could grow, something that would kill me. Okay, now, we've all got stuff in our head that it's fine to have there, but if we don't sleep properly, that grows to a problem where we have this mental health problem. So sleep, and the easiest way in my experience, has been accessing quality sleep through breath. So what? And this is so you got to understand, I come at this from a very practical perspective. I had a lifetime goal of saving 40 veteran lives from suicide, because that's how many men would lost to bombs and bullets in Afghanistan, but we'd lost 20 to 30 times that amount to suicide. So my lifetime goal was saving 40 veteran lives from suicide. I didn't care if I worked the rest of my life to achieve that, I would die happy. That was achieved within 12 months, because I could improve people's sleep, and the easiest way to do it was through breath. And I'm like, if this works in the in the in the worst scenarios, it's got to work everywhere else. So I don't I can't do what you do. Those people listening. I can't do what you do. But if I can improve your sleep, you're going to be able to do what you do even better. And so my saying is, if you care about somebody, you care about how they sleep. And this ties in nicely because the breath that you just had, the breath of possibility. I'm going to show you how to turn that into the breath of peace. You ready for that? Absolutely okay. So we're going to do exactly what we did. So we're going to, you know, I'll give the demonstration. We're going to breathe in, open everything up, we're going to hold it, and we're going to wriggle it. We're going to wriggle everything like we're stretching in bed. And then we're going to holding our breath. We're going to move that air from our upper chest, middle chest, lower, and we're going to hunch forward, our head is going to be forward, and our hands are going to be on our bellies, and it's like, it's going to be a balloon in there, and we're going to pressurise that, because down here, down low, that's where the best gas exchange is for your lungs. So down there, your little airbags called Avi only. They're the most vascular in the bottom third of your lung, of your lungs. And what we're going to do, we're going to breathe in, we're going to push it down low. We're going to make a little balloon. We're going to squeeze it, and then we're going to let it out like we're going to try and push the air out of our mouths, but our mouths will stop it, and we'll let out and try and make that sound as long as possible, bit like a cat, sort of hissing. And we will allow that oxygen through the system. Okay, yeah. So do you have your your turbo buttons ready? Agi, Carly Gary. Agi, so, so we're gonna blow it all the way out, out, out. And we're gonna do this three times, because it takes a little bit to get this so, so there's no wrong way to do this. We're just doing it. Start breathing in. Open up. Hit your turbo buttons. Raise your chin. Look to the ceiling. Look to the ceiling. Hold it. Stretch your shoulders. Stretch, stretch, stretch. Open. Up your chest, open up your chest, and now holding your breath. Let your head fall forward. Let your head fall forward, have your hands on your belly, hands on your belly, and let it out with a and treat your body like it's a deflating toy. Agi you seated or standing?

Agi Keramidas: 35:24

I'm standing, actually, yes, I always have my interview standing. No, yes, no

Tim Thomas: 35:28

problem at all. My only request is keep one hand on the bench, on the desk, afraid enough I have one one hand on your belly, one hand on your belly, one hand on the desk, and squeeze that desk with one hand, because that'll take you. Okay, okay, so we're going to do this two more times, everybody. So breathing in, open up. Really. Breathe in long hit those power buttons. Open up that chest. Look to the ceiling. Feel like that chest is opening up like a flower. Opening up. Wriggle your shoulders, holding your breath, leaning forward, now, leaning forward Agi hold on to the bench. Hands on your belly. Hands on your belly. Squeeze it out, really with that. And this last one, we're going to do, twice as relaxed, twice as long, with your turbo buttons, ready, breathing in, raise your chest, raise your chin like you're opening up your chest. Super proud. Open, open, holding your breath, letting your head relax down, letting your head relax down, hands on your belly, one hand on the bench for you. Agi pressurise it down low, down low, and let it out slow. And as you let it out, just let your body relax. It's like your whole body's a deflating toy, and the tension is leaving your body as the air leaves your mouth, and just steady there. If you just need to check in with your body. Need to keep your eyes closed. Whatever that is for you, you've just been introduced to the breath of peace, and that is now yours, and that is now your tool with which you can serve yourself and serve others. How you feeling Agi,

Agi Keramidas: 37:22

the word comes to mind is wonderful. I love it. Wonderful for me. Tim will say that that peace, the word that you said Peace, is something that I suppose is for many people, but for me, it is one of the the the best things that I can or state that I can be in I cherish the times or the moments or whenever I do feel that inner peace. So that's thank you so much. This was very powerful, very practical, and I like also your recommendation of sharing this knowledge, because it is, it is transformational. Where do you want to direct our listeners seeking? So

Tim Thomas: 38:17

that was just, that was just three breaths. And that's sort of my, my, you know the sample at the front of someone's shop. That's my, my little sample. So if you want to come into the shop, there is a whole, a whole host of fun experiences to be had, and they're all yours. They're your birthright. And I love introducing people to their to their wondrous resources inside their own skin, an easy way wherever you are on the planet, if you pick up your phone, go to the app store and look up three words, breath work in bed, kind of like breakfast in bed, but breath work in bed. It's a super simple app because it's going to ask you two questions, when do you want to sleep? When do you want to wake up? And it'll fall out of your phone with notifications. So you know how we spoke about the importance of regular patterns when you come you know routine, going to sleep, waking up, yes, when you can set that and you've got that little notification, believe you me, when you hit that button, and then you press play, and it'll get you to breathe a certain way. It works. It works. It works. And when you wake up at 3am it's really good to have a friend there that you can just hit that button be guided back to sleep. I can't say how many times I've just been saved by my breath work in those times, and you will learn that your if you can control your breath, you can control everything. So breath, work in bed, on your phone, I've I've worked for the last two years because I'm not the one. I'm not the powerful person in this equation. I'm the person that can connect you. I see myself as someone who connects you to the love of your life. You know this relationship? You're going to have with your lungs is going to be the most loving, nourishing, powerful, peaceful, wonderful, as you say, experience you're going to have. I mean, imagine, before you even leave the house, you've given yourself everything you need. I've nourished myself in all those seen and unseen places. My day is just a victory lap. Everything I get from this point forward is just a bonus, like that's the day I want for people. And going to sleep with breath, getting out of bed with breath. Now that's a real game changer, too. So in the morning, when your alarm goes off, you'll see the notification press play on that and doing breath work before you leave your bed, your feet hit the floor in a very different state.

Agi Keramidas: 40:46

So many things that one can pick and implement. So I appreciate very much with the all the insights you shared with us today, team, I have two final, very quick, quick fire questions that I ask, and the first one is, what does personal development mean to you?

Tim Thomas: 41:14

Good Energy Levels isn't about being up all the time. Good Energy is represents itself in two things. One, if you've got a thought, you know you can bring it into reality. That's what a good energy level. You can call it confidence, call it what you want. But also, we all have our bad days, but good energy means that those bad days aren't for as long or they're not as destructive. So give yourself grace when you're feeling low, but notice if you're maintaining your breath, your sleep, you bounce back in far less time than what has potentially happened in the past. So, yeah, personal development, good energy levels, the ability to have a thought and bring it into reality, to be the ability to create something out of nothing. Us humans are good at making something out of nothing, and and, and know that when you do have your bad days, they they're just not as low for as long, and they're not as destructive.

Agi Keramidas: 42:28

That's great. Tim, thank you so much for this conversation. I have gotten a lot of insights, and I'm sure that our mastery, seeker, listener, listening also has I want to wish you all the very best with carrying on your mission and empowering others through Breath, breath work your last part. In words,

Tim Thomas: 42:56

if you can control your breath, you can control everything.

Agi Keramidas: 43:09

I hope you have found this episode enlightening, and I will ask for one simple, quick favour, if you like this podcast, think of someone else you know who might find it useful and share it with them. By doing so, you'll not only help the podcast grow, but also add value to people you care about. Thank you, and until next time. Stand out. Don't fit in .