E16 - Breathwork & TRE: Where the Breath Meets the Tremor — with Mike Maher

What does it feel like when your body starts moving before your mind has any idea why?

For Mike Maher, the answer came in the basement of a hotel in Poland — lights off, a room full of strangers, thirty rhythmic breaths — and then tears, trembling, and a release he couldn't explain. That single session with Wim Hof lit a fire that eventually became the Take a Deep Breath YouTube channel, one of the largest breathwork communities on the planet, and a decade-long exploration into what breath can actually do for the human nervous system.

In this episode, Alex sits down with Mike for a wide-ranging conversation about breathwork as a complete system — not a single technique, but a full toolkit for nervous system regulation. Together they trace Mike's journey from stressed corporate professional to one of the field's most trusted educators, exploring his RESET framework, what he learned from training breath holds underwater with the world record holder, the 90-day CO2 documentary he's launching, and why the simplest ancestral practices — bare feet on soil, morning light, quiet air — might carry more physiological weight than any sophisticated technique. And along the way, they wander into the territory closest to home for the NI community: the intersection of breathwork and TRE (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises) — and what happens when the body starts tremoring during a breath session and you finally stop fighting it. If you've ever wondered how breathwork and TRE relate, or felt both practices pulling toward the same place in the body, this conversation is for you.

Mike Maher is a breathwork coach, educator, and content creator who spent 12 years in the corporate world before a sequence of transformational experiences — a Wim Hof retreat, Tony Robbins events, and walking the Camino de Santiago — set him on a different path. Drawing on a background in video production and storytelling, he built the Take A Deep Breath YouTube channel into one of the largest breathwork platforms in the world, with 300,000+ subscribers and 42 million views. His podcast has featured deep conversations with James Nestor, Patrick McKeown, Dr. Belisa Vranich, and many others at the frontier of breathing, trauma, and performance. He works with clients one-on-one, leads group programs, and teaches a full-spectrum approach that blends functional technique with nervous system science and genuine embodied practice. Mike is also currently a student in the Neurogenic Integration TRE Certification program, deepening his understanding of how neurogenic tremoring and breathwork can work together as complementary pathways to nervous system regulation.

⏱ KEY HIGHLIGHTS

00:00 — Welcome & Introductions
03:30 — Mike's Origin Story: Steve Jobs, Joe Rogan & the Road to Wim Hof
06:00 — The Poland Retreat: Tears, Trembling & an Unexplained Release
08:00 — When Wim Hof Was Making the Anxiety Worse
11:00 — The Podcast as Education: James Nestor, Patrick McKeown & Learning from the Best
13:00 — The RESET Framework: A Full Map of Breathwork in Five Categories
19:00 — Mike's Personal Learning Curve: From Oxygen Advantage to Rebirthing in a Hot Tub
22:00 — A Full Rebirthing Experience in Glastonbury
26:00 — Breath Holds, Willpower & Training with the World Record Holder
28:00 — The 90-Day CO2 Therapy Documentary: What Mike Is Testing & Why
33:00 — Ancestral Living: Earthing, Light Exposure & Things Too Simple to Ignore
40:00 — Discovering Neurogenic Tremoring
44:00 — Where Breathwork and TRE


🔗 RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED
Mike Maher / Take A Deep Breath — YouTube, podcast & coaching: https://www.youtube.com/@TAKEADEEPBREATH
http://www.takeadeepbreath.co.uk/ 
Wim Hof Method — Breathwork & cold exposure system: https://www.wimhofmethod.com
James Nestor — Author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art: https://www.mrjamesnestor.com
Patrick McKeown / Oxygen Advantage — Functional breathing & CO2 tolerance training: https://oxygenadvantage.com
Dr. Belisa Vranich / Breathing for Warriors — Biomechanical breathwork: https://thebreathingclass.com
Anders Olson / Relaxator — CO2 therapy & nasal breathing research: https://www.relaxator.com
Tom Sietas — World record breath holder; freediving & breath hold training
Dr. David Berceli — Creator of TRE®: https://treglobal.org
Leonard Orr — Pioneer of Rebirthing breathwork
Dr. Jack Kruse — Neurosurgeon; light biology & circadian health: https://jackkruse.com
The Earthing Movie — Documentary on grounding & inflammation (7M+ views on YouTube)
Civilized to Death — Book by Christopher Ryan
Ring of Fire — 1970s documentary featuring Qi master Kevin Chang

🔗 Join our live weekly classes → https://neurogenic-integration.com/webshop/#classes
🎓 Explore our Online TRE® Certification → https://neurogenic-integration.com/webshop/#cert

📍 FIND US ONLINE
Neurogenic Integration: https://neurogenic-integration.com/ Instagram: @neurogenicintegration

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Neurogenic Integration Podcast, where we explore the incredible potential of neurogenic tremoring beyond the basics. I'm Alex Green. And I am Celia Sunfields. Together, we'll be diving into how this natural innate process can be seen and applied across different professions, healing modalities, and in scientific research. Whether you're a practitioner, a coach, a therapist, a body worker, or a researcher, this podcast is for you. Join us as we uncover the science, share experiences, and explore how neurogenic integration is revolutionizing the way we approach stress, trauma, and well-being. So take a breath, get comfortable, and let's dive in. All right. Well, welcome everybody. Welcome to the Neurogenic Integration Podcast. And I'm Alex Green and excited to be sitting down today with Mike Meyer. And Mike is in Poland today, although normally based in the UK, and I'm here in Boulder, Colorado, as usual. And just briefly, I want to tell you a little bit about Mike and his background, how I came into contact, got to know Mike a little bit, and then some of the themes that I'm hoping to discuss in today's podcast. So just briefly about Mike specifically, he's a breathwork coach, educator, and content creator, best known for making functional breathing practical, grounded, and accessible for stressed, high-performing adults. And he's the founder of the Take a Deep Breath YouTube channel, which is one of the largest breathwork channels on YouTube. Kudos to you, Mike, for building an amazing channel there. And through that platform, he's helped hundreds of thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of people at this point improve their energy, sleep, focus, and resilience through breathwork practices and other evidence-based work. And uh he does, as far as I can tell, I don't know everything Mike is up to, but he he does uh one-on-one coaching work. He he does his regular work on the channel, providing content and podcasts, um, as well as runs other sort of special topical programs, a few of them that I've had a chance to uh participate with. Um I got introduced to Mike, I think maybe about nine months ago or so, um, because I was a guest on his podcast and I joined to speak about uh TRE and tension and trauma releasing exercises and neurogenic tremoring. And then recently we did a follow-up conversation that hasn't yet been released. Um, but in those couple of conversations with Mike, something that I found in common was somebody else who's interested in the in you know the contemporary world of physiological, evidence-based uh physiological practices, embodied practices, everything from breath work to movement work, uh neurogenic tremoring, uh, and related health and wellness things, uh, but somebody who, a little bit like me and Steve and others in our community who are trying to explore the intersections and the commonalities. What's the connection between breath work and neurogenic tremoring, for instance? So these are questions that Mike has given some thought and some uh practice to. And so uh uh beyond hearing Mike your personal story today and kind of what got you into this overall work, I want to kind of pick your brain around some of these intersections. So that's um so that's our guest, Mike White. Welcome to the show. Well, Alex, thank you for having me. Uh, I'm really excited to sit down. I always love talking with you. You have a very grounded calm presence. So already through the waves of the internet, you're helping me feel a little bit calmer and a little bit more um at peace. Oh, wonderful. Oh, cool. Good. Thanks for saying that. Um, okay, so Mike, so yeah, let's just start with you know, you know, I read through your full bio and this and that, and it sounded like kind of hard-charging corporate career. Maybe I don't know exactly what you're doing, marketing or this or that. But something led you to personal work. Uh, and I believe beginning with with breath work, maybe Wim Hof work, something like that. Can you just share a little bit about kind of what led you even into uh the field of breath work and embodiment practices? Yeah, I'll give you the short version, and if you want to dig in, you can, but it was actually Steve Jobs, the creator of uh um Apple. I was reading his book and I got really, I don't know why, I just picked that book up. And he was talking about Zen and the uh art of motorcycle repair or something in that, I can't remember. And he was into Buddhism and stuff, um, and veganism and many things. And I don't know, I just really loved that book. And I remember going online, this is 2014-ish, and I came across a clip of him talking. He'd already passed, I think, at this point. Um, he was talking on a YouTube video, and then the other voice that was blended in there was a guy called Joe Rogan, and I thought, oh, don't know this guy, and I ended up finding Joe Rogan, and then I found this podcast, and this podcast just opened up my world. They were talking to all these different people, all these different backgrounds, um, maybe even a little earlier, like 2011, maybe. But anyway, um, one of the guests you had on there was a guy called Wim Hof, who was this Dutch iceman uh that had set a load of world records and was in the cold, and I'd always been terrified of the cold. I remember going on holiday to uh the Canary Islands, which are really warm, they're really warm places, and I couldn't get in the salt pool, it was too cold for me. So I'd jump in and jump back out again, and all my family would go in and swim. And I thought, what's wrong with me? Why can't I handle the cold? So at an early age I picked that weird thought up and it stuck with me. So I thought, well, there's a guy here that trains you how to handle the cold. Um, and I'd recently gone through a divorce, and a couple of family members had passed away, and so there was just this kind of change happening around age 33, 34, where it just felt like there was a new epoch opening up. I wasn't very happy in my career, so I bought a ticket to Poland to go and spend a week with Wim. This is almost 10 years ago this year, and um the cold was incredible. And I remember, like, you know, you're outside in cold water, you're peeling the ice off the top of the bathtub. It's Poland, it's the mountains. But the thing that stuck with me was the breath work. We went into the basement of the hotel we were staying at, and they switched all the lights off, and we started breathing in this very heavy rhythmic pattern. Um and it wasn't long before I started to cry, and I had no preparation. Like today, I think you kind of know like what can happen with breath work. There's so much information online, but I started crying, I started trembling, I started tingling in my gums and lips, my hands tensed up, and had a big emotional release. And at the end of that session, I was like, What? I don't understand what happened. Like, there's been no drugs, there's been no alcohol. This huge thing had happened. Um, and then we did more and more of those sessions longer and longer, and I had visualizations, I had some sort of communication with something, uh, or being, I'm I'm not sure. Um, and so the the the ice stuff became secondary. I didn't really care about the cold, it was more about the the breath. Um, and then you know I'll skip through the next bits, but I did a couple of other things and eventually was able to quit my career and build this YouTube channel and the podcast. But really, that the start of it all was that basement with whim in Poland um huffing and puffing. Yeah, amazing. Well, so okay, cool. Super cool origin story, so to speak. Um and okay, so like what happened next? So, you know, you knew you knew breath work had been very powerful, you know, that that style, you know. I know from your bio, you know, you've gone on to study a diverse range of breath work, you know, sort of systems from you know, oxygen advantage, but uh what is it, uh breathing for warriors. So I know you kind of you you kind of sort of at some stage of your learning, you kind of started exploring more the breadths and depths of breath work. Can can you share about that? You know, you'd had this initial catalyst. Where did you go with it? Yeah, so all I really knew past Poland was the Wim Hof method, which was 30 big breaths and a big breath hold. And it's a bit uh the way I describe it these days, it's a bit for me anyway, it's everyone's got their own unique version of all of these um different modalities. But for me, it was a bit like having a party with tequila. So I'd do all these shots um and I'd feel great, but then I'd get a bit of a hangover, and the hangover for me was like anxiety, and I hadn't connected what was going on because I was doing the Wim Hof breathing to lower anxiety and stress, and so you would get the initial, hmm, but then it would come back sometimes worse. Um, and I didn't connect the dots for a couple of years. So there's a couple of years of me, I remember I'd drive to work, park the car in the car park, do my Wim Hof breathing, go into the office, smash a couple of coffees, go on with my day, and all the time my nervous system was just getting more and more overloaded. Um, and then it was really during the pandemic. Um, I'd come back from traveling, we'd been in Asia for about a year. I came back, I'd been doing more and more Wim Hof videos on YouTube, and um, I just remember thinking there must be something else out there. Like I knew box breathing, but I was like, is that it? Is it box breathing and Wim Hof? And I really really didn't know. And the Patrick McEwan, the Oxygen Vantage, was coming up a little bit on YouTube. Um, and so I decided I'm gonna do a certification because loads of people on the YouTube channel were asking me questions and I didn't really know. And all I'd done was spent some time with Wim and made those videos, and the channel had grown to about 15 or 20,000 followers just organically without doing anything from a couple of videos. So I thought I don't know the answer. And then I found Patrick McEwen, he studied under Dr. Boteco, um, and he had his own certification, it was very, very accessible and affordable. So I did that during the pandemic. Suddenly I was loaded with all this scientific knowledge, and then I thought, oh, I definitely know the answer now. It's not Wim Hof, it's this one. The rest can go. It's all about nose breathing. And then I Patrick had actually said to me in one of the trainings, I've just read this book called Breath by an author called James Nestor, and it's the best book I've ever read on breathing. I thought, well, that's weird. This guy's meant to be the top dog on breath work. So I don't know why I did this, even to today. I emailed the publisher and I said, I'm thinking of starting a breathing podcast. Would this guy be interested in coming on my show? Sure. I hadn't read his book, didn't know much about him, and they just said yes. And and before I knew it, within a couple of days, I joined a Zoom meeting similar to this. And James was waiting for me, and we did we did a podcast, and then a week later, he was then on Joe Rogan and it just exploded and the podcast exploded. And then I had a podcast at that point. It was like, okay, I've got one episode. Who else can I did Patrick McKew in him? So fast forward, we've done 150 of those now. Um, and each time I sit down with somebody, it's been the best education I've ever had because um I'm not I'm not really a reader, I'm a bit dyslexic and ADHD. And so I learned visually and through talking to people. That's why I loved the Joe Rogan podcast because suddenly I had access to all this material I would never read. Um, and so every person I got to interview gave me a new perspective. And so I then got to meet Dr. Belissa Varanich, who is Breathe In for Warriors, and she gave me a completely different story to not completely different, but she gave me a different element to what Patrick McEwen had told me. I was like, Oh, that's weird, because I've just learned this is the way to do it. So then there was this conflict I saw, and I was like, what is is there anybody else that's gonna say something different? And then somebody else said something else different. And so what I've eventually zoomed out now, and I I call it um I call it a reset, uh, a breath work reset method, is what we call it in in Take a Deep Breath. But there's a lot of elements that come together. You might call it full spectrum breathing, but you've got everything from functional to heart rate variability to biomechanical to um embodiment work and and everything in between. And it's a huge uh the best way of describing it's probably it's a bit like a Swiss Army knife. You've got all these little tools, um, and sometimes people will try and use the wrong tool to try and fix a certain issue, but actually you just need a little different part of the Swiss Army knife, and so yeah, it was really the podcast that got me access to people I have no business talking to in the real world, but suddenly we're giving me their time. Um, and and very open books, most of them as well. So you get to ask them questions, dig deeper. I'm naturally curious. Um, and so that's just been the the best education I could have ever wished for, and that's that's really where it's got me today to be this guy that studied under the best breath work and wellness practitioners on the planet, um, and then try my best to make that accessible for people on the channel through short form and long form content. Yeah. Very cool. Well, so it sounds like at this stage with the take a deep breath, you've you've now created, it's like you have um uh in a sense, you know, sort of taken from this breath that you've studied with and and and put together this Swiss Army knife as you as you call it, which sounds which sounds very cool. So for somebody who was a beginner, like I guess here's here's the best question. Can you just, you know, you've thrown a few words out here, you know, functional breathing versus transformational breathing, heart rate variability, you know. So if I was a beginner, introduce me a little bit to this the major pieces of the Swiss Army knife. Like if I say, hey Mike, I I um uh you know, I want I want to know what what's included in this field of breath work. Map it out for me a little bit. Could you could you do that a little bit? Yeah, so I'll I'll start large and zoom in a little bit. So really you've got two big categories of breathing. You've got people might call it transformational, sometimes it's called holotropic, conscious connected. Um, and that tends to be a bigger breath and a faster breath and for a longer period of time, and doesn't require any of the functional stuff we'll talk about in a second. And and this is often attributed online with emotional release, sometimes people will say trauma release, um, you know, you might make a lot of noise, so it's more cathar more cathartic, more of the Stanislav Groff kind of stuff. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So all of that, and that's a big chunk of breath work, and that's probably what most people have seen on Instagram when they see somebody crying or something with breath work. Um, but I actually prefer to start in the other camp, which is the functional uh breathing. And that and another way to look at it is you've got breath work and you've got breathing. And breathing's what you and I are doing right now. You know, the joke is we've done it our whole lives. Um but but most people, myself included, all of us, we've still got we've got some form of issue with our breathing because of the modern world, because I sit for a living, chronic stress, Western diet, poor role models, all these different things, they impact uh an element of our breath. And we're doing this about 25,000 times every single day. And if there's a little something off, it can have big effects over decades. Um, and so what I've been able to do then is is if we zoom down out of just those two camps, I've kind of categorized it into five areas, and I'll just give you a very, very high level. So it's the word is reset, and so the first R stands for release. So we're very tight in our rib cages, especially as we age. Diaphragms can become weaker as we age as well. And I like to describe the release a little bit like a car engine. So, you know, people really worry about the fuel they put in their sports car or the polish they're using, or you know, the diet, this the smelly uh air freshener. But really, if the engine's seized, then all of that's not really that important. And so a lot of us, our engine's a little bit seized, our rib cage is a little bit tight, a little bit restrictive, and we end up breathing taller, not wider. And this has big effects on the nervous system. Because to quote uh a Dr. Gerberg out of uh out of America, she says um your brain is always listening to your lungs. And we know that because if we start to choke, we start to panic quite quickly because the airway is disrupted. So release is really important because it's all about getting the engine to move again properly. So that's the letter R. The next letter E is about energy and energize. Um you've got qi and prawn and all these different wonderful, beautiful words. But for me, it's about are we breathing properly at night? Are we breathing properly at rest to exercise? There are energizing exercises that we teach, which can be quite invigorating, but some of it's not even that sexy, it's just like are we breathing through our nose when we're sleeping? So that's the E. Then the S is soothe, which is soothing our nervous system. So a lot of people think we need to just be in this rest and digest all the time, but for me it's more about balance and being able to switch when we need to. Okay. And we use very specific breathing exercises, touch techniques, tapping techniques, fascia release techniques to help bring that body into a more balanced soothe state. And then last two, the next D is embodiment, which is obviously very, very close to your world and your listeners, and we just help people get out of their head and back into their body. Um and we use a little bit of a faster breath there. So transformational, breath work, but I go very gentle with it because I often think, and this is not always the case, we've got to be careful with those faster breathing techniques because it's sometimes a bit like turning a tap on, and you can let too much emotion and stuff pass through us too quickly, and sometimes we're not ready for it. So we like to turn the tap on a little bit at a time for people. And then the last letter, the T stands for tolerate, and that's about slowing the breath down, breath hold work. A slower breath is connected to a slower heartbeat, it's connected to heart rate variability, which is uh a marker of our health. Um, and so we look at how we can help people get comfortable with breathing less, breathing slower, and that's the that's the reset. So, and in there you've got the transformational, you've got the functional, and I've really tried to um critique this because after about 150 podcasts and all the all the stuff we've looked into, it's like I try to make it as simple as possible for people. If they go, well, what is breath work? Well, I think it comes into these five categories. And I've been really trying to go, can I make it less? Can I make it four? And uh that's about as as concise as I can make it. And that and that's what we teach um in our community, and that's what we teach clients is how to master those. And depending on the client, it's not a one size fits all. This will be the last thing I'll say on the breath before I pass back, which is um I found that everybody's body is unique and we all need something a little bit different. And there's universal basic truths like we should eat more vegetables and you know, we should exercise. And then I find that once we get past that surface level with the breath, it becomes quite nuanced and it's a lot of fun for me because trying to find the right thing for you and your body and your goals versus another client. So it takes a little bit of time to play with it all. But yeah, that that in a nutshell is is how I would kind of categorize the breath. Yeah, no, that's a really nice, you know, putting into those sort of five five buckets makes a lot of sense. Well, I wonder if you could share a little bit, you know, you may not cover each bucket, but like, you know, clearly you were on a you know, you went from uh breath newbie, and then you had, you know, a first exposure through a more transformational style, you know, pretty a fairly dynamic Wim Hof breathing, and then you uh expanded your horizons and explored lots of different angles. Could you share a little bit about just your personal growth curve, learning curve? You you know, you know, what it was like for you to expand your end, you know, reset your engine and and and tell per tell us a little bit in and which pieces of that were more challenging for you, perhaps. Yeah, wow. Okay. So it's it's it's happened almost on camera. So you can you can pretty much track everything I've done through the YouTube channel. So the first there was Wim Hof, and I went through that. Then there was the Oxygen Vantage and Potaco, and I'm interviewing and talking about that, and I realized like my breath was terrible. Like I uh I couldn't hold my breath for very long. Um, I would feel pure panic after just a few seconds of holding my breath too long. I was like, it's impossible. How can anybody hold their breath for longer? It's no, I remember thinking it's impossible for me to go past this point. Um so I went down that route. Then I met Dr. Belissa Varanich and I certified under her, and we were doing the ribcage work. She actually said to me after the podcast, don't you go anywhere, we need to talk about your breathing. I was like, I thought I'd figured it out, but my shoulders were moving and my ribcage was tight. So I've gone through those those versions. I was invited to speak at the Breath Festival in London a couple of in uh Glastonbury a couple of years ago. And as part of that invitation to talk, I was invited to do rebirthing, which for those that don't know, the version I did was in hot water. Um I think Leonard Or actually used the same hot tub, he was like the father of or grandfather of rebirth, and so it was in Glastonbury, it's hot water, and you you do this under safety protocols with the right people. So anybody listen, don't do this by yourself. Your face goes in the water, you wear a snorkel, the play in the womb noise, and um you you're doing a conscious, connected circular breath. And I I remember going into this going, This is BS, nothing's gonna happen here. I'm very left brain science, this is silly, but I'll do it because it's it, I'm I don't want to be rude. Um and I remember just uh just a few breaths in, not not many, a few breaths in, I could hear like a young girl screaming. And I remember thinking and then and the womb noises playing on the speakers, and I thought, oh, that's weird, is somebody else doing the rebirth? And while I'm doing it, because I thought this was like kind of my turn, maybe they brought somebody else in the water, and it was me, it was me. At the end of each exhale, I could hear this like really high pitched scream happening. Uh and before I knew it, I'd gone into what she called what the rebirth and teacher called a full rebirthing experience. My hands had locked up into little what I would class as baby hands, and I was in this process, I was in the water for not very long. The entire process took about four hours and I was just crying. And the the first thing they say to you as well, I think they they're feeling you. She said, She put me on her shoulder and she's playing the part of the mother in this. And she put me on the shoulder and she said, Um I'm so glad you're here. You're so welcome. And I was just roaring my eyes out. And so this was this was a process that um that I went through. That was my first true experience of this big transformational breathing. But it took me about three to four weeks to come back. I remember just being in my home and bursting into tears like a week later. Like it really did something. So I was like, this is really powerful. You've got to be really, really careful with this. So that was that was one of my big processes that I went through. Sure. Um, and I've I've just tried to sample all these different things. So I'll go off and I'll do different breathing exercises, and I kind of whittled it down. In the end, with the conscious stuff, I went for something called Vivation, which we've spoken about before in Wyoming, and I like that one because it was body-led, not as not as powerful as the as the uh conscious uh rebirthing, but enough, like more than enough to connect with the body. Um, but yeah, I've just tried to sample. I I got to spend some time in Corfu with a guy called Tom Zitas, and he has the longest breath hold in the world. He set the record, he did 10 and a half minutes without supplemental uh oxygen, he just held his breath under water. So I got to train under him, and he tripled my breath hold in three days. So I was a minute, and by the end of those three days, it was over three minutes. Again, faces in water, you've got to do it under super supervision. But he taught me techniques to relax the nervous system to do that. So I've tried to play with all these different character types out there, you know, the fast, the slow. Uh I've interviewed the cardiologists, I've spoken to the biohackers, and so really I don't know where this thirst comes from, but I'm just trying to figure this out because I feel like no one's quite figured it all out yet. It's so diverse and ancient. Um, and I still think we don't hardly know any of the stuff that's out there with Breathwork. I feel like most of it's been hidden in caves for centuries, and we'll never know most of it. I um interviewed, I'm going on a bit of a detour here. There was a documentary called Ring of Fire from the 1970s, and it was about two brothers, and they went to Indonesia, and the documentary is incredible. They're living on a ship made completely out of wood with no uh electrics or anything, and they're on that ship for months, eating just this gruel, and the whole thing's been filmed in the 70s, they had cameras and tapes, and they go to Indonesia because one of them's got a problem with his eye, and the doctor for fun starts electrocuting people with his hand, he's zapping them, and they're like, What the hell? And like they don't believe him, so he all get zapped, and then later on he shows them how he can set some paper on fire. Again, it's the 1970s, I'm sure you could fake it. But I got to in I went and found that director and I interviewed him. I was like, Tell me the truth. Come on, tell me what's going on. He's like 90 now. I was like, Is this real? He goes, as real as it could be. He goes, he showed us loads of stuff. He's he passed away now, but this guy was able to harness his qi in such a way that he was able to deliver energy through his fingertips and he used that as part of his practice. So I don't know. I think I I love it. Yeah, well, wait, so there I I've I have never seen that film, but there's a book about there's a there's a I've read the book that it's somebody Chang, that guy you're talking about. Yeah, K Kevin Chang may I'll come over so something Ching. Yes, and I read the book and my mind was similarly blown with it. And and then later, yeah, when I was living in Honolulu, I met somebody who had had lived in Indonesia, had met with him, trained with him a little bit, and attested, you know, the same the same uh paper setting things on fire, etc. So um sounds pretty legit. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I know you can fake it, I'm sure there's chemicals and things, but they they're all getting these electric shocks. I I choose to believe that that's possible. And and he was saying it's like 20 years of meditation to to do that, and and nobody here is doing that right now, you know, at least that I know of. Everyone's on social media doing you know short things, and so um, yeah, I I don't know, I get really excited when I think there's magic out there still, like with the Wim Hof um situation when I did a deep hour and a half session and I had this conversation with this this being, I don't have a proper word for it, and all it said back to me was, I'm so glad you're here. And then it went, see ya, and it left. And I was like, it was it was as real as anything. It was visual, I could see the colours, it was like an eye. Maybe it was the brain doing something, it was DMT being released, I don't know, but it felt very real. And so again, it these things excite me. So I've got this left brain, I need to understand all the science of breathing, but then I've also got this this right side, which is like, oh, I love all the magic and I want to learn about all these ancient techniques, and we'll probably never figure it out, and that's okay. So, yeah. So cool to hear the the the the the pieces. Well, you know, using the example of you know, you trained with the guy in Corfu and and tripled your breath hold. Um, is that the kind of like like like could you do a three-minute breath hold right now, or do you have to be sort of like training daily at like to to maintain that, or how does that how does that work? I wouldn't do it now, no. You know, it's so funny. Um I'm about to start a documentary on Sunday, and for three months I'm gonna go through CO2 therapy. So I've got all the kit been sent to me. I'm gonna be taking the CO2 every day with the hope to see what that's gonna do to things like breath hold and all the rest of it. So, no, I wouldn't be anywhere near that right now. Um, oddly enough though, there's a placebo effect when you've got the world record holder standing next to you telling you you can do it. You can do it, right? You get more. Yeah, because um with with with breath holds, this is a great thing, actually. Um, part of it is chemical, chemistry, biological. You hold your breath, you feel uncomfortable, that's the carbon dioxide rising in your blood, and you're getting warning signals to the brain, you should breathe now. Yeah, that's the first thing that happens, but then you have a mental override. And so if you've got strong willpower, you can you can go over that point. So, like Tom, who set the world record, he got to the point where he just saw the world going black, he was blacking out, and he was like, Okay, it's time for me to come out and breathe now, because he had such strong willpower, he'd gone past the point of biology. So, yeah, it's like I, you know, the the the the thing I'll say to a client is when we're testing this, I'll say, look, if you had to go and save a kitten right now that was trapped under a swimming pool, you could hold your breath for longer than this. You know, we all can. So it's like different situations allow for this as well. But but no, I think you you can train your breath really, really quickly. Um, I always say that if you were in the mountains right now and you had your mouth taped and you were running every day in the mountains, you would get a uh uh you would improve your tolerance quite quickly. If you had nasal surgery or long COVID or asthma or some sort of injury, it would drop. So it's it's dynamic, this this breath holding it. It does require maintenance to keep it. And one of those maintenances, maintenance eyes, is to uh breathe through your nose at night. Another one would be to breathe through your nose when you're exercising, another one would be when you're working, to breathe through your nose. So the nose is the gateway to the respiratory system, and this is an easy way to train tolerance in CO2, so yeah. Um, and that you're you you briefly touched on this documentary. I feel like I want to hear more. Like what I mean, maybe you're not allowed to share what the experiment, but but tell you're gonna be taking CO2. Tell tell it tell us more what's that. I'm doing it with a guy called Anders Olsen, he's from Sweden. If anyone's read the breath book by James Nestor, there was another guy in the book, that's him. They did a test together where they breathed through their mouth for 10 days in Stanford and measured everything, and then they breathe through the nose. And in those 10 days of mouth breathing, blood pressure shot up, snoring went crazy, mood dropped, blood work became pre-diabetic. So they have this incredible mini study. I always wanted to do something like that. So I'm always talking to Anders, I've interviewed him a bunch of times. He's got these big CO2 suits that people can go in, look like you're in a big balloon. He does CO2 therapy, his skin looks fantastic because he has CO2 bubbles on his face. And he's convinced CO2 is the primary regulator of most of our health. Um, nitric oxide, many, many other things are linked to this. And so he's created something um which basically you connect a CO2 bottle and you can regulate how much CO2 you're gonna breathe in. So you start off quite low and you can build it, you can you know, it cuts off, it's very safe. Um, and so the plan is I'm gonna be spending 90 days documenting my entire journey. I've measured everything, so I've just had my biological ages about to be done, VO2 max, I had all my blood panels done, seen a cardiologist, I've just done all this stuff. So we've got like baseline data, and then over these next three months, we're gonna be using the CO2 therapy. I'm also off to a um altitude adjusting hotel where you can go in and they can set the altitude. So you could sleep at you know high mountain range numbers. So we're just gonna do it and see what happens. My hope is, and it'll be interesting to watch this back after, blood pressure levels are in a better space, um, biomarkers in the blood look better, heart rate variability has gone up. I don't know, so that's what we're gonna test because no one's done this, I don't think, before for this long. Um, and we may go longer, but 90 days is the initial thing. Uh and we're trying to show like what can be done because um emergency services actually used to use CO2 before they used oxygen. If someone was um having a panic attack, or they uh even I think women in labor, they even used it to treat breast cancer like many years ago, and then there kind of was a switch in the world where CO2 was bad, oxygen was good, and so now you have hyperbaric oxygen chambers. Right. But if you speak to Anders about this, he'll say that's the opposite of what we need because there's a lot of um free radicals and oxidative stress. We actually we need more CO2 in our body, which is very against the narrative right now. Um so yeah, that's what we're we're testing. We're gonna interview a lot of experts on CO2 and so so in general, like you know, through these methods, sleeping at the altitude adjusted and taking an octet, you're essentially you're doing sort of a system by a systematized way to kind of raise your CO2 tolerance as much as possible in these 90 days, and then finding out what the what the how what how it changed your biomarkers. Yes. And one of the things that should happen is respiratory rate should start to drop because that's being driven by this. And so a slower respiratory rate will mean a slower heart rate. That should hopefully show more variability in heartbeats, um, you know, less blood pressure, all those things. So I don't know, I'm curious. Um, and I'm I'm I'm gonna start off very gentle in the first month, but my my my plan is to be exercising with this mask on at a certain point once I've built my tolerance up a little bit. Because um, you know, we we spoke before the podcast is on. I am a breath coach and I teach breath work, but I'm also a business owner and a dad of a very young child, and those worlds don't really smush together very well. So, on one point I'm helping people regulate, but then it's like trying to take care of ourselves is sometimes a little bit of a dirty little secret in the wellness world because we're so busy helping everybody else. And so when the opportunity came up to have this not shortcut, but to have this opportunity to have Anders describes it a bit like a treadmill because everyone's like well, why do you need a treadmill? You can bring it why do you need CO2 therapy? You can just hold your breath, or why do you need a treadmill? So I'm hoping that having this regulated dose is gonna um help me because I can feel my body aging. I these last three years, not only turning 40, but having a three-year-old that's very heavy, it's like 17 kilograms. Um, I can feel my back, I can my my beard's gone grey. So so the these last three years have been an accelerated aging process, and I and I I feel like I'm at a crossroads now. And being a business owner as well is very stressful or can be. And so it's like this is a crossroads for me personally. It like I've got some choices to make about my health. And so this just is coming at the right time to go. Let's just give this a go and see what this does. Oh my gosh, very cool. Well, I'm excited to hear the the results. Well, so let's broaden the conversation slightly from from breath work, which obviously you've done um uh a very, very deep dive. Um, but well, what else are you interested in? I mean, you and I connected through neurogenic tremoring and TRE. You know, you you told me you like you know you're into into grounding grounding things, you know. Uh what what else are you curious about when it comes to human physiology and the body? So much. So I'll try and keep it as as narrow um as we go. So so I there's a lovely quote I got from a mentor years ago, which was um sell people what they want and give them what they need. And so I sell breath work, but within that program, we we we biohacking is not the good term, but it's but we do a lot of the biohacking, which is for me, it's just ancestral living, getting back to where we were. You know, we've got so many wonderful things. There's one of my favorite books is called Civilized to Death, and it's all about the fact that we um are in this modern world and we've got all these antibiotics and you know, all these different things, and yet we've lost so much. And so for me, it it just it's just looking back at the past. So, earthing or grounding is a big one we can talk about. Um, daylight is my favorite thing right now to talk about with with clients as well, and just and um it's it's so frustratingly simple, like walking. And so, right now, when I do my client assessments, like how long are you outside? And most people on average it's less than 30 minutes a day. And then the other thing, I'm like big into like all the all the sleep stuff. So anybody listening, watching this, like I wear all the all the glasses and and all this sort of stuff to protect my eyes from the the harsh lights. So if we just talk about light for a second, because that's probably my favorite subject. If I wasn't a breath coach, I would definitely become a sleep coach. I I struggled with insomnia my entire life, don't know why. Nervous system's heightened, I think. So I remember being the only one. I'm a family of seven. Um, I was the oldest of five kids, and I would always be the one that was always awake. Like here, I'd have to go and wait, Dad. I just had to creak downstairs. Can you go and check if there's a burglar? So always always alert. And over the years I wanted to fix that. So I, for example, right now I sleep with earplugs, which makes me sleep beautifully. Or you know, take magnesium and all these all these different things. We do the light blockers. Um, but what I learned through the podcast, I had this really um very divisive neurosurgeon called Dr. Jack Cruz on. I didn't realise he had such a big following, and the podcast just went insane. Um and he talks a lot about light, and he's basically saying we've got it the wrong way around. So right now I'm indoors, I've got all this artificial light hitting my skin. We don't really know what the LEDs are doing to our our skin. We we think we know, but we don't. It's very new technology. And if you go back not many years ago, our entire existence was no LEDs, probably some candlelight or fire during the night, which is very, very low looks, helps you sleep. And during the day we were outside all day, and now we sit in gloomy rooms all day with screens in front of us, with blue light coming at us, uh it disrupts our melatonin levels, um, it may be doing other things to our immune and endocrine systems, we don't know. Um, and it's it's problematic. So we've completely flipped it, we've lit up our nights and darkened our days, and our circadian rhythms are so confused. And then when you'll know when your sleep is off, everything is off. And so the big thing we talk about now in the programs is you've got to get outside, even if you're just sitting there with your coat and you've got your and we'll talk about grounding if you want as well. Get your shoes and socks off, just go and wrap yourself up and have a cup of tea in the morning or a cup of hot water and just get some daylight on your skin. Um, you know, and and even with me knowing all of this, my blood work's just come back, and my vitamin D's in the in the toilet is so low. So I'm going back on the vitamin D and I've I spent I I really made a conscious choice last year to have my shirt off in the garden as much as possible. I even bought a little standing desk and I had it in the garden so I could work, and I was like, I'll bet my vitamin D is through the roof now. It's still really low, you know. So so yeah, so that's a big one we can dig into, we can dig into earthing, but that daylight, grounding, ancestral living, earthing's the big one. We've got an earthed bed, so I've got a cable that goes out the window into the soil. Um, the short version is it's taking any static out of your body, is probably the easiest way of describing them. But when you look at a documentary called the earthing movie, I think it's like seven million views on YouTube. They talk about this uh reduction in inflammation in the system and how all mammals are earthed all the time, and so were we up until a couple of generations ago, where we decided to disconnect, put rubber under our feet. Rubber shoes, yeah. Yeah, rubber shoes. And then the worst bit then is when you disconnect it, you're touching your phone that's on charge, and so you just you know, you're full, you're full of all this extra energy, ampage, whatever you want to call them. Um, and and some believe that that's just driving havoc in our nervous systems, maybe related to certain diseases. Um, and so again, it's just it's nothing, it's nothing um groundbreaking here. It's like breathe through your nose, touch the earth with your bare feet, um, get some daylight on your skin. You know, it's nothing, it's not a billion-dollar treatment you need, it's just getting back out. And so the idea of just going for a walk, I think years ago was considered more of a thing. But now it seems like it's hard work to get people out. Like you need to get outside. Well, I haven't really got time to get outside. And you think about that, you think, well, that's great, you haven't got time to go outside. You know, what have we what are we doing to ourselves? So it's it's um it's very upsetting to to be on the other side of that. But in these times, we've always got this lovely thing, which is we've got this information, sometimes too much. But I think if we if we can tune into the right kind of frequency and we can listen to some of this, you you kind of know intuitively it feels right. Like if I said to you you just need to eat cow's liver all the time and be uh you know on the the carnival diet, I don't know, some part of me is like, I'm not sure that that sounds that good because I kind of feel like vegetables are good for me, but I don't know. I know some people thrive now, I don't mean to trigger anybody. But like if I say to you, like, you need to go outside more, like instinctively think there's probably nothing wrong with that, as long as I'm not being silly and getting burnt in the sun, right? Or go for a walk. I don't think many people can criticize that. Train really hard every day. That's you know, you can go too far, but I think going for a walk, I don't think people can really criticize that too much. So I'm very much into that stuff, and I think that's born out of me just wanting to be healthier. Um, and then the more I speak to these experts, and there's like tons of science on it, you're like, oh my god, there's actually loads of benefits to being outside, and there's loads of disadvantages of having blue light on your skin. So, so yeah, so I'll just close off on that. But yeah, I think that's the the basis is the ancestral stuff. Yeah, yeah. Super cool. Well, tell chell, so let's talk about tremoring a little bit. You know, you had Dr. Brusselli on your show, um, which but how did how did it get on your radar? How did TRE get on your radar? What what's what what what have you learned so far? Has it been interesting for your your journey at all? Yeah, so I my best friend who I met on the Wim Hof retreat, um, he said to me a couple of years ago, my body's doing this weird thing. And I was like, hmm, he said things like this before, and he's often right. I was like, hmm, I was a bit skeptical. I was like, what do you mean? He goes, well, it's kind of doing this, like kind of shaking and and and and it's like and I'm making all these noises and these grunts, and afterwards I'm just loose and released. And I was like, I don't know. And then I I can't I can't remember when it happened for me, but maybe that unlocks something in my brain. And I remember, you know, when you're lying in bed and you just kind of sit up, you maybe you need to grab something and you just kind of tense your stomach a little bit. My stomach started to tremor from that like um kind of crunch position. And and then, and and maybe listening to what my friend had said to me, I was like, Oh, that's weird. And as I laid back down, it wanted to do it again and again. I was like, Oh, that's really weird. And I kept getting into these like little crunches, and I said, Is this what's happening to you? He's like, Yeah, that that's how it started. So we were at an event, we were sharing a hotel room. He's like, just show me what you're doing. And I started doing it, and he's had no training. And we and he's like, All right, show me, and like, because oh, just relax and let that happen. And my body started to I think you I think you called it pendiculation, I might have got that wrong. It started doing all these these things, and so we were just exploring that for for a while, me and him. And then I was doing an event with my other business partner, and Dr. Baseli was invited because of my other business partner, um, when we did this big breathwork event, and um he wanted to try his work on something, and he already done it with Tom. So he says, Why don't you lay down and we'll do it with you in front of this big audience? And so he started to guide me, and my body within seconds just started, you know, vibrating, shaking, pendiculation, um, to the point where Dr. Bassetti Bless and said, Mike, we're gonna have to have to go back to Tom because we haven't got time for this. We've you know, I've got like 15 minutes, and he said he said it in a more beautiful way, but he's like, We're we're trying to show the audience something. So you you come up and then we'll we'll do Tom. And then Tom went through a very gentle version. And I remember saying to him afterwards, in front, I was like, What do I do now? Because I'm just tremoring and shaking. He goes, Well, you can go and have a beer and relax, or you can go and lay down and you can go through the process and see what happens. And I reached out and said, Can we do we do a podcast? And he obviously said yes very graciously. And then he and then part of that podcast was me just going through the process. And I remember him saying to me, I wish I had the energy you've got right now. My body's just doing all of these things. Um, I wish I'd practice I practice it more, and that's part of the reason I'm excited to go through your your um teacher training. Um, I attended a couple of sessions, a session this week, and um I'm excited to learn more. But the weirdest part I've had with these tremors was I was doing some some training in Wyoming, I mentioned, I think, before to you, and we were doing the conscious connected breathing. And every time we would do the conscious connected breathing, my diaphragm and stomach would do that thing, just going crazy. Yeah, and there was a kind of spiritual masseuse there. She thought of maybe having some sort of kundalini awakening, she called it. Um, but what it turned out to be, I was able to solve it myself, it was really interesting. My body was doing these spasms, and I was fighting it. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, because I can't I can't mix two modalities. Um, this is about vibration, it's not about battery. And I'd already asked loads of questions. I think I was annoying the instructions. A little bit because it's like my body wants the tremor. What should I do? It's like, well, that's not what this is for, you know. So they weren't TRE um certified. Sure. They just didn't know. And so in the end, I just allowed the tremor to dictate my breathing. So every time my stomach tensed, I allowed that to be my breath. So it was like and it wasn't long, it was a minute of that. And my area kind of went, we're done now. And it stopped. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's really interesting. So my body was trying to do something, breathing away, pump the diaphragm in a certain way to allow something to happen. And I've been resisting it for so long. And when I finally gave in, it was like it was happy in the end. So that's that's the TRE in a nutshell. I I find it fascinating. And I cannot wait to do more on me. And I cannot wait to use it with clients as well because I know it just fits in so beautifully with the work that I already do. Yeah, that's the I I would say when you when you're when you're facilitating, I mean the cool the cool thing is that you're I mean your work is not certainly not boring with breath work and other things, but um when it when you add some you know spontaneous movement, neurogenic tremoring into the mix, yeah, it's it's uh it's uh you'll see some exciting things. And I don't even mean necessarily dramatic, it's but it's just it is amazing to see people's, you know, what arises organically and what happens as a result. So I I'm looking forward to you having more of those times with with with your community. Yeah. I I just feel like there's so much more that my body wants to go through. And again, not even in a dramatic way. I just know that there's stuff that has to happen, and I think I'm in my head a little bit. So it'll be lovely to go through the sessions, learn more, give my body more permission to to release and relax. Um, and that'll be interesting as well because you know the my fascia's very tight, my shoulders are very tight, and just the little bit of work I've done with this has been has been very interesting. So yeah, I I cannot wait to go down the rabbit hole. Very cool. Um, well, Mike, no, this has been a cool, uh, a cool journey through your world, you know, kind of how you're navigating and exploring it. Is there anything I I always like to ask the question, like sort of like where are you headed? Like, is there anything? I mean, you told us about this awesome documentary and experiment you're doing, so that's that's kind of a a near-term future, but yeah, is there anything else that you're you know, sort of you're you're you're uh directing yourself towards or a vision of something else you want to bring into your work or your personal exploration? Like what what what's coming down the line? I think the the big message I'm getting at the moment is everything's been on online, which has been the best gift. You know, I I worked in the offices for many years, and and this business is an online business. And so I work with people all over the world, which is incredible. Um, but it's actually a bit lonely as well because I'm in here or in my other office, and so I think where we're where we I am heading is more in-person stuff. I just have that calling now because it's been years of me just being on a computer talking to people, and so I'm hoping with the TRE and the other work, um, just just to get around humans again and being in the room with people. That's what like I didn't realize I never really thought I needed it, and then you have a gap from it, and you're like, oh my god, I need to be around other people, and then having a little child as well, that obviously becomes your main world. And I've gone from being a corporate guy in hundreds of meetings throughout the year, traveling, used to go to South Africa and uh up in Edinburgh and you know, business expenses, and all that, all that, all that, all the good stuff of the corporate job, not the bad stuff, but the good stuff, and to go from that to being in one location with a screen, with a child, it's been it's been um it's been very, very challenging like internally to deal with that change and that change of identity. And so the thing that I'm looking forward to, I think hopefully this year is to is to get into groups again and do some group work. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna ask, are you waiting for that in-person work? Are are you talking about, you know, are you a one-on-one guy? Are you a group guy? Both, it sounds like sounds like maybe both. Both. Yeah, both. Yeah. Yeah. I like teaching, I like leading groups, but I also like working individually. You know, when you've got a real when you've got a connection with a client and you, you know, you that bespoke nature, it's really hard to get that with multiple people. So about a third of our business is is one-on-one work. And it's I don't want to use the word intense, but it's very time consuming for me because I'm doing a lot of prep beforehand and um you know, we're we're checking in with them and we're measuring everything. Um it's very bespoke. I was working with a client the other day and it took a few sessions to get there. We've been trying to figure out what his body really wanted with the breath, and it and now we've got there, it's like, okay, we've figured out a little bit of the puzzle. So so yeah, I I like all I like all of it. I like, I like um doing all I like a variety of different ways of working with people. Yeah, yeah, super cool. Awesome. Do you want to close with a I don't know, a parting uh parting words words of wisdom or or anything like that? There's just something I've been playing with a lot recently. It was in the um New England Medical Journal in 1988, um, and they said the number one predictor of death, this is positive, I promise, was lung capacity. And it was actually the best predictor more than smoking and your age and a host of other risk factors. And so that's just been something I've been fascinated with recently. And so when we think of lungs, we think of the bags that are hanging, but lung capacity is really about your rib cage and your diaphragm. And so stretching is so important. We don't think about stretching and breath work, but we need to stretch our rib cage, we need to strengthen our diaphragms. And so I think for most people that are interested in breath work, not from a transformative point of view, but from a longevity point of view, um, anything you can do to stretch that rib cage, anything you can do to strengthen the diaphragm. Um, by the age of 80, we have the same lung capacity as a 10-year-old if we don't stretch it out. And so, um, yeah, that that'd be my my my gift to people is go out there and find ways to stretch your ribcage out, and you know, it'll help you with whatever else it is you're trying to do. Wonderful. Mike, thank you. Appreciate your your time. Thank you, thank you, Alex. Thanks for for watching everybody. Cheers. That's it for today's episode. We hope you found inspiration and new insights into the power of neurogenic genre. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe, share, and leave a review. It really helps us reach more people interested in this transformative work. And if you want to dive deeper, connect with us or to learn more about our sessions, courses, and upcoming trainings, head over to neurogenicintegration.com.