How to Breathe Better for Health and Wellness w/ Mike Maher

In this episode of Pulse Beat, Mike Maher dives deep into the often-overlooked power of breath. In a world moving faster than ever, he breaks down why intentional breathing is essential for both physical and mental wellness. Mike explores practical breath work techniques, explains the science behind them, and reveals how simple changes in the way we breathe can improve energy, focus, stress levels, and overall health. This conversation is a guide to understanding—and mastering—the art of breath for a healthier, more balanced life.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello, and thank you for joining us for another episode of the Pulse Beat sponsored by Cardio Miracle. My name is Josh Hewlett. I'm your host, and excited, so excited to have on our show today our wonderful guest. Um his name is Mike, and Mike, I don't want to mispronounce your last name. Is it Mike Mayer?

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Okay. Nice. Sounds good. All right. So we got Mike with us today. He's going to talk to us about breathing and his techniques and what he has uh been teaching others how to how to do and and how to uh do some mindful um do you do mindful meditation and whatnot, Mike? We do stuff on YouTube, and so I really appreciate all that you do. And I've watched a couple of your interviews. Very excited to have you today and and um would love to welcome you to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Oh well thank you, Josh. It's it's a real pleasure to be talking with you and um love talking all things breath work, so keen to get stuck in and help your audience get some takeaways today they can go and use straight away.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yes, sir. That sounds amazing. Yeah. So I I was telling Matt earlier when he when we were uh before the show, um, I was talking about how I was so excited to talk to you about not only breath work, but like VO2 Max and Um and your you know breathing and how much oxygen your body gets. And I told him that I I've been through a weight loss journey. I've I was 480 pounds, almost 500, and I have actually dropped 200 pounds so far. And so, and so this morning I ran here and it's three miles, it's only three miles, and so um I but I told I was telling Matt that my VO2 Max, my personal VO2 Max, was at 32 when I was 480 pounds, and now this morning it registered at 46. And so I've been able to grow that over two years of walking and running and and whatnot. And I wondered if you kind of a big question to throw out to you know, first is do you work with that, the the VO2 max and the oxygen in all areas of your body?

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, no, it's it's it's an area we we don't go into. So we focus on what's called force vital capacity or what most people would call lung capacity. And so the stuff that I've been obsessed with is like how much air can you get into your lungs and how far can your diaphragm move? And a lot of the clients we work with, they don't have the accessibility to things like VO2 Max. So we've never really gone down that route. It's fascinating, but we're more into the practical like what can I measure at home and then how can I how can I change those things?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Oh, okay, cool, cool, cool. So with with measuring that at home, so you're you're talking to people about breath work, just um the kind of stress-relieving uh breath work with like yoga and whatnot, or is that off?

SPEAKER_01 3:16

No, so so what yeah, it'd probably be a good idea to give you like a an overview. So so we focus on um basically all that breath has to offer. So I like to think of it a bit like a spectrum, and you've got all the different colours in the spectrum. Um, and a lot of people they get very obsessed with like one of the frequencies, like for example, Wim Hof, and it's oh Wim Hof is amazing, or or Bateka, or you know, Praniyama. Um, and after about 150 episodes of our podcast now, I've interviewed so many different people. It's like, oh no, it's it is a spectrum and it all connects together, and it's really important that we look at all of it. So most of what we do is focusing on restoring people's correct breathing patterns because from about the age of five onwards, we start to lose our natural ability to breathe. And that that's not just a biological thing, that's because the modern world's like really working against us, you know, school and sit-in and stress and soft foods and copying poor role models. And so I got really obsessed with the fact that most people can't breathe properly, and that comes down to a whole host of things we can we can get stuck into today. So most of what we do here is we help people restore their natural breathing patterns and rhythms, and then once that bit's in place, then we get into all the sexy stuff of breath work, you know, the hyperventilation, the transformational work, the uh emotional release. But that comes much later for most people I work with. First, we're trying to fix their actual breathing patterns.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Wow, that's that's fascinating. So do you do I imagine like every every morning when you wake up personally, do you do like a certain regimen of breath work and and things of that nature?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Um, you know what? I don't actually do much in the morning. I've just come back from the gym. I just ran out of the sauna, so I'm still sweating. So like a lot of what I do is I do a lot of stretching. I'm stretching the rib cage, I've got little I've got little devices around the room that make my diaphragm stronger. So I'm for people that are listening, I'm blowing into devices, I'm making the diaphragm stronger. I'm um doing certain breathing patterns during the day. At night, I'm doing certain things to to wind down. What's really cool and a little bit of a head mess is that everybody needs something a little bit different. It's a bit like uh I I try to like myself a little bit like a personal trainer. And um if I was to work with one client versus another, well, they've both got very different starting positions and they've got different goals that they're trying to get to as well. And so my job as the breath coach is to figure out okay, we're starting here and we're trying to get here. And so your uh journey might be a little different to mine, to somebody else's. There are universal basic um principles that should exist, like nose breathing. Um, I'll just give you the 30-second version of that. So the when we breathe through the mouth, uh, and you'll know this from nitric oxide world, I'm sure, um, we we we don't get really any nitric oxide from from breathing through our mouth. There's a little bit, but not much. Um, it's a lot of airway trauma that happens when we breathe through the mouth. And um, we're teaching a course on this at the moment, actually. Just by breathing through the mouth a little bit at night, it can actually prevent you from getting into the deeper levels of sleep and stay in there. And so you don't get to recover properly in the morning. So a universal basic truth of breathing would be we should be breathing through the nose as much as possible, even during strenuous exercise, because that's just not good for us to be a mouth mouth breather. But once we get past some of those universal basic principles, a bit like eat vegetables, um, you know, get good sleep, then it starts to get into nuance, and that's where this job gets really cool because um everybody's looking for a different outcome and they're starting from a different position. And part of what we do here is we try and figure out like how do we get them there.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

I bet. And uh as you've been through this journey with working with so many people, what would you say would be the biggest misconception or biggest myth out there that is out in the you know, interwebs or out on TV or whatnot? Like, what is there is there one common thing that that keeps coming up?

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Yeah, I mean, probably the big one you see in social media right now is is trauma release breathwork. Um and this is a very murky field, you know. So if you hyperventilate for long enough, there's a really good chance that you're gonna start to cry and you're going to get some sort of emotional shift. Um, and a lot of people call that a trauma release. Um, but the more that I dig into that, I'm not quite, I don't really know what that means. I don't know how you release a trauma. Like, what is it gone forever? How where does it go? So there's a lot of stuff on this. But if you if you were to type that into Google, you'd you you'd get a lot of um Instagrams of people screaming and crying and smacking and tapping. And it looks, you know, from an Instagram perspective, it looks fascinating. But we we've we've gone down more of a gentle route, which is let's let's just get your body breathing properly, let's get you to a place where you can sleep properly, um, let's get to the place where your nervous system calms down. We can do that sort of breath work. And I've done, and I can talk to you all day about that. I've done I've done breath work in hot water face down with a snorkel with the womb noise playing at me. So I've done all these sorts of hyperventilation, um, emotional release breathing exercises. But generally, I would say most people listening to this podcast probably just need to slow down. The nervous system probably needs a little bit of soothing, a little bit of balance, um, and we don't need to go through and relive trauma and experience big emotional outbursts to get there. We can actually do it a lot more gently.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Yeah, it's it's so interesting how how dramatic some people like think that they have to go through to break these barriers down, you know. Like it's it, you know, I I I can't help but go back to even last night, someone suggested to me that I start this show call or this uh series called Limitless with uh Chris Helmsworth, right? And he um a a big part of it is he's working on his stress levels um with balancing the movies, being an actor, um, all of his businesses, whatever. And it's like, whoa, he's worth $150 million. Like, how how much how much could he really be suffering, you know? But but the thing is he's got three little kids, you know, he wants to be here for them, and he wants to give them the best of himself. And a huge part of the one hour episode, I only watched one episode, was about breathing and making sure that he was getting all of his his breath under control, which was fascinating. Have you have you looked at that at all? Have you seen that or heard of it?

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Yeah, yeah, no, I I was desired. I waited ages for that show because it was promised and got delayed a year. Um, I really, really enjoyed it. Yeah, there was a lot of stuff there were monstering the respiratory rates. It's been oh a couple of years since I've seen that, but um, I think what that show highlighted really well is um, and this is we talk about this a lot, your brain is always listening to your your breath right now. And I'll and I can I can demonstrate that really quickly. If you imagine that you started to choke on your lunch, if you had a sandwich and you started to choke and it blocked your airway, um, it would be a matter of seconds before you started to panic. You would be clutching at your throat, your eye, your pupils would dilate, your heart would beat faster, you would start to sweat, your diaphragm would start to start contract, and you would be in a panic state really, really quick, because your brain is always listening to your lungs. It's the most important connection. That's why I love what I do because nothing else is there like we can go ages without food, we can go quite a while without water, we can go quite a long time without sleep, you know, all these things. But the air, we don't get very long. I know the guy that set the world record, he did 10 and a half minutes on a single breath of air. His name's Tom Zitas. Uh, he got to train me in in Corfer a couple of years ago. Um, but unless you're Tom Zitas, most of us are in big trouble after a couple of minutes. Um so the reason I say this, and the reason the Chris Hemsworth thing is so important, is the brain's always listening to the lungs. But with breath work, with what we can do, and breath work is the conscious art of changing your what you do with your lungs, you can send that signal the other way. So, what I mean by that is you can start to slow your breath down, you can make your breath deeper, you can make your breath quieter and softer. I'm gonna send a set of signals up to my brain that are very different than if I started to huff and puff. So huffing and puffing is gonna make my brain think one set of signals, sh a slow, gentle, deep, rhythmic breathing through the nose is gonna send another set of signals. Those signals get interpreted by the brain, go through the nervous system. And so what Chris was able to demonstrate really well in that show was when he got his breath under control, when I think he's walking on a really high building in VR and everything's going crazy and starts to control his breath, and you see his heart rate come back down again, you start to see him get a bit of balance. We have that gift all the time. So if you're going for an interview or you're about to ski down a mountain or you know, fill in the blank, we've got control of our lungs. It might not feel like it in the moment, but we can start to take slower, deeper, fuller breaths, and then we'll send those signals to the brain to say, everything's okay, I'm I'm calm. So that's that's the beauty. So yeah, I love I love that. I can't wait for the second season of uh Limitless to come out. But yeah, the neurons in the brain are always listening to the lungs, and that's why if anyone's listened to this and they're under stress, anxiety, depression, know that you can change your state in a couple of seconds. It is really fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Yeah, that is. And when I if I eat really fast, I do feel like something's stuck, you know. And I try not to freak out, and I I remember that I have this this airway as well in my nose. And so I just try to tell myself that I need to I need to swallow, I need to make sure that I can breathe, and I just there's kind of, you know, but but yeah, and whenever I do start my speeches when I get up and speak to people, I I will breathe through my nose first, and I'll be like, I just created some nitric oxide just by breathing through my nose and getting getting that full breath in. And what's so fascinating about uh Cardiom Miracle that our sponsor that I do just have to do a little plug is that we exactly uh we've actually proven that if um people drink Cardiom Miracle that it actually has proven that it improves your uh oxygen intake 30%. And um we've proven that through a s uh separate study that we've done on the products. And uh we have four different studies that we've done on the product, and if people go to Cardiomiracle.com forward slash studies, they can see those studies and and be able to read how well the vitamin D uh in you know production of this uh happens, as well as the um the oxygen intake and the recovery. And so it's been a lifesaver for a lot of people, and we only work with whole and organic fruits and vegetables, which sets us apart from the pack. And so um with with all the breath work and how you're how you teach people how to breathe and how to calm their nerves and how to make sure that they're uh present. Because really it's about being present. Is that would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 14:38

I think that's that's a big part of it. It's it's we, you know, when you think about the modern cell phone today, it's it's it's the enemy of presence, you know, it's distraction. Um so so we are fighting against that as well. So I think the the big thing for me is peace. I think that if I had to summarize what we do, it's like try and find a bit of peace. I think a lot of people are under tension. I've worked with a lot of burnout this year, um, anxiety, stress, um, low energy exhaustion. So so presence is a big part of it, and we all want to be more present. Um but but it's it's also the I think energy plays a huge part. A lot of people just exhausted, you know, and then when they do get energy, they're feeling tense and tight, and yeah, and then distractions are another part of it as well. So there's a there's a lot of things going on. The reason I mention all those things is they're all deeply influenced by how you breathe. So if you don't breathe properly, and you can take a simple test on our website and we'll take you, tell you exactly how you breathe in. But if you don't breathe properly, um, it's going to impact energy levels, sleep quality, mental clarity, um, stress resilience, and and your anxiety levels as well. They're the kind of big five that we work with.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yeah, that's amazing. Uh, can you tell us what your website is?

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Yeah, um, if you go to uh takeadeepbreath.co.uk.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

That's amazing. Taking a breath, I love it. You guys got that, that's great. So that's a that's a great uh thing. So you can go there, you can take a test. Um I'm I'm assuming that you have uh you have courses and things that people can tap into as well.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah, we're just we're just in the middle of one at the moment, actually. So we've got a method we call the reset method. Um and and it's so funny because I don't know if you've seen this, but there seems to be a whole host of things online about reset, reset your nervous system, reset your sleep. And then I I always make the joke we're not a computer, because you can't reset a human being. So so in in in my reset method, which we've developed over sort of nine years, that the letters actually mean something. So I'll just quickly walk your audience through it. So the R means release, and it's release of your um rib cage and diaphragm, because the first thing you've got to do is be able to actually breathe properly. If the Ferrari is got a beautiful paint job and great fuel, um, but the engine's all clumped up, it doesn't matter. So the first thing we do is we get your mechanics to move. Then we look at energy, so we improve your sleep and your actual uh qi or prana, as um it's been called in in in in you know different cultures. Then we look in to soothe that's the S, which is like balance your nervous system so that you actually feel peace. Then the E, the second E is embodiment. This is another way of saying mindfulness, but really what we're talking about here is I don't know like if you've heard this, but we have the worst roommate in the world living in our head, giving us the worst information every day. And so what we teach people to do is actually quiet the chimp chimp mind and get into the body because the body's the best gift will ever be given. And then the the final T stands for tolerate. This is about being able to slow down. We get, I'm gonna butcher the numbers here, we get three billion heartbeats in our life on average as a mammal, and we get 670 million breaths if we live 80 years. Now, your breath is deeply linked to your heart rate. I can slow your breath down, which means I can help you slow your heart rate down as well. So there is a lot of longevity benefits to what we do. Um, it's not all we we really try and make everything evidence-based, I'm sure, like what you guys do as well. So everything's deeply, deeply evidence-based. Like the number one um longevity metric, like that's almost universally agreed upon by all scientists, is uh lung capacity. It's not heart rate variability, it's not a whole host of other things, it's it's lung capacity. And it makes sense when you think about it. Like if you have to go for an operation tomorrow, you bloody need your lungs, you need your diaphragm, you need your rib cage to work properly because your body's under a lot of trauma. Your lymphatic system is deeply connected to how you breathe. If your diaphragm doesn't move properly, you put tons of stress on your heart. And so your lung capacity is so important. So that's that's our reset method. So they're they're the kind of five pillars that we we teach people. And after about 150-ish podcasts, we've really tried to make that as simple as possible. I can't seem to make it any simpler than those five pillars. Um but they they seem to be the main the main things.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

I don't know if you can. I mean, that's that's really that those are really clear, you know, and and that's uh that's really special. So tell me a little bit about um uh you know, you said off air that you just came from the gym. So um d what is your gym routine like? Like I I wouldn't imagine that you'd be in there just doing, you know, but uh is it more like concentrated like smoking, smoking a cigarette just before?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

And yeah. No, so so I I you know I I run hot. That's the best way of putting it. I suffered with stress and anxiety and insomnia most of my life. Um and so my whole thing's about down regulation. I do do some of the faster breath work. So just now at the gym, I had a nasal strip on, I breathed through my nose the entire session. Um, I I let my breathing dictate my pace. So what that means is um if I start to push myself so fast that my mouth wants to open, I'll back off. I'll back off a little bit. Um, there's no need to go to that level. I let my breathing um dictate the pace. So I, you know, I do I did some weights just now, did a little bit of work on the row machine, um, and then went into the sauna and had a good 20-minute sauna, which I'm still feeling the effects off right now. Um but yeah, so so so so you know, still get a good workout, lift heavy. Um, my big thing is steps. I I love walking, I try and get those 10,000 in every day. That's been probably one of the biggest shifts in my life. If I wasn't teaching breath work, I would be teaching uh light exposure. Um, this has been the biggest passion over the last couple of years. Like we're not fl we're not um robots with flowers, and so we need to be outside as much as possible. In fact, for every extra hour you spend outside, happiness levels go up, depression levels come down. We need to be outside a minimum of two hours a day, every day. And like what we've done is we've done this really weird thing where we've we've flipped it. So we're inside a dark room most of the day with artificial light around us, which is really weird. And then at night time when it should be pitch black, we lit everything up, and so we've completely messed up our circadian rhythms. So I'm into all of the you know, light glasses and I'm blocking off my light at night and all that sort of stuff. Oh, I know, that's awesome. Um so so yeah, so so I'm very keen to be walking outside as much as possible because it's very gentle, it's great for your nervous system. You can breathe through your nose, you can do little breath holds while you're walking, you can breathe at certain rhythms if you want to, you're getting all the benefits of the daylight, you're getting all the benefits of nature as well. Um, so that's that really is more my gym. But yeah, a couple of times a week I'll go and lift something and jump into the song.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

I love it. I love this because, and also I've been told because I'm a big walker too, so that's literally how I started my journey at almost 500 pounds. I was like, I need to just go for a walk, you know. And my brother told me, um, my brother Jason, he's the president of Cardi Miracle, he actually said, I want you when you get up to go to the bathroom, because I would get up every day at like three in the morning and go to the bathroom. And he said, When you get up, put on your shoes and before you go to the bathroom. And so I'd literally get up, I'd get dressed, I'd put on my shoes, go to the bathroom. And then I was like, I'm up. I might as well go for a walk. And I started going for a walk. Oh wow. It was it was amazing. And so I started my first day. I started with one mile. And now, you know, this morning, like I had to I just got up earlier and I ran here three miles and then I'll run home three miles. And and um I, you know, I did uh eight eight point six million steps last year. So it was a good year, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

What what does that my maths is terrible? What would that be a day? What's what's the average? Beautiful, man. Uh Josh, that's that's awesome, dude. Well done, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Well, it's just I mean, you know, that's how I've melted, I've literally melted away 200 pounds. It's been amazing, and and I am. I'm outside as much as possible. I go through shoes like you wouldn't believe, but it's worth it. It's worth it. And I I feel like, you know, if I'm gonna be part of this mission, our mission is to save the hearts of mankind. I mean, we want to save a hundred million hearts, and and that's the thing, is is with nitric oxide, you know, it it won the Nobel Prize of Medicine in 1998, and we're trying to bring that research to light and make sure everybody knows how important nitric oxide therapy is for them. And so that was gonna be a big question of mine. I don't want to like, I don't want to disparage any of these companies with the nose strips or the mouth tape or anything, but is there a good is there a good um consistent thing that you do with like a nose strip or whatnot?

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, I mean I I will wear them in the gym. I will wear them if I'm stuffy at night, but generally I won't wear them unless I need to. Um I've never really had a mouth breathing problem, so I've I've tested the mouth tape. Um but most of my clients, that's the first thing we'll do is we'll get them to do that. Because uh as you as you'll know, if they're mouth breathing during the night, they're not getting those nitric oxide benefits, they're losing out on all that beautiful stuff, you know, and they're dehydrating and they're not getting a deep sleep. And I'm sure I've not checked this, maybe you can tell me this. If you if you reduce somebody's sleep quality, I imagine that's gonna have a big impact on nitric oxide production as well. So they're in a vicious circle of of misery there. So we get them to um darken the house at night, we get them to put the light blockers on, we get them to get their phone so we can three-click it and make it go red, we get them to um tape up and we get them to put the nasal strips on, uh, and we get them breathing through the nose, we restore nasal breathing. But that's that really, I mean, I'm jumping ahead a little bit. It's so important. But the most important thing is the Ferrari analogy. You know, you if your rib cage doesn't move properly and your diaphragm is weak, you're not taking enough breaths. You end up having to take more breaths, your energy oxygen uh uptake drops dramatically. So you end up taking, say, you know, 12 breaths instead of six, you get way less um efficiency of oxygen absorption if you start to speed up the rate of breathing. Um, yeah, so the nasal strips are really important, but I would say that they're not there's a lot of companies out there that would say that you need them for the rest of your life. Um, and so that's true for a very, very small percentage of people. Most people, they just need to train, they just need to get themselves back to the position where the body can move properly and they can tolerate, and that's the word tolerate carbon dioxide. So if I was to get somebody now to hold their breath and walk on the spot, um, one person might do 30 steps before they need to breathe. And then if I work with somebody that I've just been trained, there might be still 100 steps. And what that shows you is we have a different ability to handle carbon dioxide, um, and we need to train that because we're being trained in the wrong way at the minute. Chronic stress, poor posture, copy and roll models, mouth breathing, um, it's it's mesnoposteo2 tolerance. But I would still go back to the reset framework. R is still probably the most important, which is you've got to release, you've got to be able to get that Ferraris engine to move first. Um, just a slight detour back to something you said. This is me kicking into podcast mode here. You know, you've lost, I mean, fantastic the amount of weight that you've lost, man. Do you know how the fat escapes your body when you lose the fat?

SPEAKER_00 26:09

No, I I I tell myself when I'm sweating, it's my sweat crying.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

So that's that's well this is gonna this will blow your mind then. So I used to think we pooped it out. Um and being a breath coach, I got to interview uh Ruben Meerman, who's one of Australia's like greatest teachers, um, and he did a whole TED talk on it. When you are working out and you are burning off fat, it comes out of your breath. So that it turns it turns to CO2. So you're literally breathing out the fat that you've just burnt off. It doesn't come out and poo, it doesn't come out in sweat, it comes out as as as uh as carbon dioxide. So that's why when you're going harder, there's no breathing technique, sadly, to help you burn more fat. But when you start to move your body and warm up, you are you are literally breathing out the fat that was stored in your cells before, which I think is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

That's an awesome I love that. That's so true. And it's you know, I that then that actually explains some things because when my VO2 max was increasing, so it went up to like 46 and then it dipped back down to 42 because I stopped last year. I transitioned from walking outside every day to going in on the Peloton, and I was just riding the bike every day, and it it dropped from 46 down to 42, and I was like, what the heck? I'm still working out, I'm I'm still going hard. And I was actually gonna ask you if there's a if if you know of like the reason why for something like that to happen, but I I don't know if if that it but then you said you really don't deal with VO2 max that all that much, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:50

And you're no, I'm trying so so so you were doing everything exactly the same. The only thing you switched was walk into cycling?

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Interesting. And and are you are you when you work out, uh would you say that you're mostly nasal breathing, mostly mouth breathing, 50-50, or you've never really thought about it?

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Oh yeah, it's 50-50. I'm really I'm really conscious about the nails nasal breathing for sure, because because it creates nitric oxide, that's the only reason why I did it. So but it's you know, now that I have I used to rent two additional oxygen tanks and hook my CPAP into the oxygen tanks, so I had all of that helping me with my breathing at night. And now I'm I don't use anything. I I just have like a mouth, I have a mouthpiece now for my for for you know sleep apnea. But um the fact that I've lost so much weight, um I'm I'm not afraid I'm gonna die when I'm sleeping and I which has been a huge blessing. So yeah, but I do a lot of nasal breathing, yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Yeah. Yeah, not sure, not sure what would cause that, because what you're describing is you've switched to a higher intensity exercise, which should make uh make you more efficient at using oxygen. Um I I would be really curious for you to take some of the breathing assessments because I feel like if we got you some more rib cage mobility, made your diaphragm stronger, I think you'd see that VO2 max shoot up a lot more as well.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Yeah, and I want to, I definitely want to. I'm gonna head to your website after this, obviously. I've got it pulled up, but um I the thing is, is like I because I am going to transition this morning. It was, you know, 30 degrees, and I I don't mind running, you know, when it's cold. Like it really actually helps me, helps my lungs. I can feel it. And yeah, so I I enjoy it, but I I don't want to run when it's snowing because I I'm always afraid I'm gonna slip and then I'm you know, it's about getting results, not getting hurt, right? So that but that so I'll transition into cycling again, but I wanted to keep up that VO2 max because it's it's hard to to keep that. But I have this Garmin watch that tests all my stuff and and that that's why I have it at my disposal. And and even last night it showed that my um my resting heart rate was down to 39 while I was sleeping. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

So you're crushing it, man. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I'm trying this isn't this isn't the Josh podcast, but this is I'm just I'm trying, you know, I'm trying to be uh uh live my message, you know, and the message is that you know we we want to save the hearts of mankind and we want to help people choose to take their health into their own hands. And and with the breathing work, I'm sure that that's you know, that's a huge part of it, obviously, because it takes discipline, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Yeah, I mean that that that's it. At the end of the day, I think a big percentage of what people purchase when they they come to work with me is they want the accountability, you know. Um often people say they're overwhelmed because especially in the world of breathing, um, it seems like everything's conflicting with everything else. You've got Wim Hof mouth breathing, you've got other people talking about naze breathing, you've got, you know, me talking about like releasing, and so you've got all these different things and they all do sit together, but it can be quite overwhelming. So people often say they just want somebody to hold the hand, walk them through it step by step, so they know exactly what to do. Um, but accountability is a big part of it as well. Um, you know, often I I can be the coach they need me to be. Some people need their ass kicking, and that's their words, not mine. Other people just get on with it and they just want me to check in with them from time to time. Um, so yeah, so it's it's an interesting role. It's it's really, really lovely. We're switching recently to group coaching. Um, and so we're just going through our first major group coaching program at the moment. We've got 40 people going through that. We're kind of about halfway this week. Um, so that's been really interesting as well. Very different skill set needed for that because you're trying to look after a lot of people at once versus you know dealing with one person, but but both um seeing lovely results, seeing people do the homework, and that it's the same thing. I have to get them to commit. It's like, well, what are you committing to this week? How are you gonna know if you don't do it? What's your plan if something gets in the way? So I think we spoke about being present earlier. Um, I feel like we're so easily distracted these days. I I always quote and I forget who I stole this from, but we live in the most overstimulated time in all of human history. And, you know, we're so busy. And so one of the I feel like coaching is a little bit of a life hack because um I've got a PT that comes to see me, and like there's no way sometimes I'm leaving this office. I'm just you know, I'm sure you know it's like you've got your head down, you've got stuff to do. It's like I'm not going to gym today. But when the PT comes around, I hear that doorbell go. I was like, well, I've got to do it now. I've paid him, he's here, and then you go and get a good workout in. So um, and I've done the same thing with business as well, and the same thing with breath work for me. And so there's definitely a life hack to having a coach, whether you, you know, you've invested with finances or time or both. Um, what I've found is a human's results exponentially increase once they've got a coach. Whereas if they go, I'm gonna do it by myself, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and research the best chiropractic methods for my back, and I'm gonna watch all the podcasts on how to fix my back, and I'm gonna spend, I'm gonna set some time on my calendar to do some back stretches every day. That person versus the person that pays for like a nine-to-day course on like uh working with a chiropractor, you already know who's gonna have more results. It's the person that's got the stuff booked in, and and so it's the same with what we do. So, yeah, so accountability is is a huge part of what we do.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

I love it. That's amazing. Is um where can we where can we find you on social media or is it just a website or yeah, no, the best place is just where all the free stuff is.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

So if you head to YouTube and just type in take a deep breath, um we've we've been there for nine years now. We've got I think close to 500 videos, um, all our podcasts there. Every breathing exercise you could imagine is there as well, beautifully edited and and put together in a studio. So you can really go in and dip your toe, try something fast, try something slow, try something stretchy, uh, try something for stress or anxiety or depression, whatever it is that you're you're you're looking to work on. Um and then yeah, and and in in all of those videos, if you want to know more, there's little links and you can book a one-to-one with me and book a course and and all that good stuff as well. But go and have a little sample of the of the free stuff and see what you think, first of all.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Yeah, that sounds wonderful. Thanks so much for thanks so much for your time, Mike. We definitely appreciate you being on here with us. And it's it's been such a pleasure to get to know you and get to know your methods. And if there was like your 90-second elevator, you know, what would you what would you pitch or or say to our people that you would want them to uh go away with?

SPEAKER_01 34:44

Oh gosh. Well, well, I mean ultimately it's it's think about that that word reset. So stretch your body out, release it. That's gonna make a big difference to the Ferraris engine if it can actually move. Work on your sleep, so that's critical. Think about how you can balance your nervous system, which is the soothe, and there's exercise on our channel to do that. Try and get out of our busy mind, which is embodiment, and the final bit is like slow it down, slow it all down. So I can't, yeah, that's my that's the pitch. Reset, release, uh, energize, soothe, embody, and tolerate your breath. If you do those five things, you will have a very different life.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

That's wonderful. Thank you so much. We definitely appreciate everybody tuning in to the Pulse Beat, sponsored by Cody Miracle, uh, where we are here to save millions of lives and save the hearts of mankind. Um, definitely appreciate our guest, Mike Mayer, and and love the fact that we're able to talk with you today. And uh hope everybody has a wonderful day and we'll be we'll be in touch. Thank you so much, sir.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Cheers. Thanks for having me on. Thanks, everyone. Cheers.