Modern WisdomHow To Breathe Properly | Brian Mackenzie | Modern Wisdom Podcast 121
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 23,956 words- 0:00 – 2:28
Aerobic vs. anaerobic: why breathing determines your “default” energy system
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Today, 500 million years ago, aerobic metabolism sits at the forefront of the most efficient way to use energy. And so anything outside of aerobic metabolism becomes anaerobic. So if I don't have that process, that conversion of energy, I'll default very simply, and we should, to this higher stress situation of using energy. So anaerobic doesn't necessarily become a training process. It's more or less the byproduct of I'm no longer able to handle aerobically what's going on.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
So how quickly I can come back to that aerobic is literally how f- well I can. So w- having a very high aerobic capacity (laughs) means I function high aerobically. So when we look at people like a guy smashing the two-hour marathon, what does he look like physiologically? And although there's like ... Look, uh, to be totally hon- Like, look, I support and I'm very happy for the man and everything, but realistically, if he were in the same setup as they were in 1950 or even 1980, he wouldn't have run a sub two-hour marathon.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm joined by Bryan Mackenzie, the man behind Power Speed Endurance, and today we are talking about something that you will all be familiar with, but probably doing a little bit wrong: breathing. Bryan, welcome to the show.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
(laughs) Thanks for having me.
- CWChris Williamson
It's gonna be awesome. I'm really excited to speak about this sort of stuff today. We've been talking about endurance a lot recently. Had Alex Hutchinson, writer for Runner's World, on analyzing Eliud Kipchoge's recent performance. We've had the, uh, Bryan Carroll, uh, from, uh, PowerAct Strength on talking about squatting at over 1,000 pounds, and all of this is enabled by a lot of different things. But I guess principally, one of those is breath work, right?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah. Well, physiology and, I mean, all chemistry is regulated through our breath. So (laughs) anything and everything. I mean, I- I'm, uh ... I- I've known Alex for quite some time. We've kind of gone, we've gone back and forth over the years. He's a great ... He's a fucking s- kid, man. I like him a lot. Um, I don't know your other, the other guy, but to squat 1,000 pounds is to understand some things.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) He really does.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
He really does understand some things. I mean, m- uh, Kelly Starrett, w- we just released a- an episode with him today. We've had Dr. Stu McGill on.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
So, you know, we've had a lot of these guys.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Mm-hmm.
- 2:28 – 5:17
Why breathwork is overlooked—and how Brian came to it via yoga and endurance
- CWChris Williamson
And when they, when they talk about this, even, you know, Kelly and, and Stu, people that are really, really kind of at the, uh, the, the top of their game, very well respected within their fields, it's rare that I hear someone bring up breath work.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
(sniffs)
- CWChris Williamson
D- why do you think that is?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Did Kelly?
- CWChris Williamson
Kelly didn't. Kelly didn't, no. We were talking a bit about The Game Changers.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
We were talking about The Game Changers documentary and veganism. We went off on a rabbit hole down that.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Oh, really?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. That was fun.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Wow. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That was fun.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
No, I know Kel- Kelly's very much into the brea- breath work at this point. Uh, I mean, I introduced it to him, so ... Uh, you know, and I know he in- he uses it inside of his, uh, 101s and 102 courses now, so ... Um, you know, from his work. But, you know, uh, at any rate, um, Kel- Kelly's been a very close compadre of m- mine for a, a very long time (laughs) . Um, so we've kind of grown up together, but, uh, you know, it, it's interesting, uh, how I stumbled onto the breath work and, and why. Even though I was introduced to it quite some time ago, um, and it just didn't take. And, and I understand why it didn't take, um, because it was never explained in a way that, uh, made sense to especially a guy who was participating in strength and conditioning, was all about performance.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Um-
- CWChris Williamson
I understand.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
So I, I, I entered into this world of yoga many years ago, and had a yoga practice because I was a triathlete who was getting tight (laughs) . And when you get tight, you need to loosen up. And so I went to yoga, and I ended up enjoying yoga real ... like a ton. And I chased around a yogi in Ashtanga, um, that was really good at what she was doing. But I just never paid attention to the fact that we were in ... We were utilizing a breath practice at the foundation of this practice. Like, we were controlling our breathing. We were told to control our breathing. We were told to control our breathing in specific patterns. You know, this went on and on. And I was like ... You know, I, I just remember it blowing over to a large degree. And that, in and of itself, is kind of how we all behave to a large degree. And I'm, I'll connect all this through this talk, so (laughs) like so that it makes sense for everybody else. Um, you know, but I largely just paid attention to the fact that I needed to get more flexible or more mobile at the time. And then I drifted away from yoga for a little bit, really got hardcore into endurance training, obviously wrote a couple books on that, and c- came to a pretty good understanding of some ways to tweak things for people who are busy, um, and who are injured. Uh, you know, and that, that was a big part of my career for about 10 or 12 years. And then, um,
- 5:17 – 8:22
The training mask “aha”: diaphragm, spine organization, and stress physiology
- BMBrian Mackenzie
somebody handed me a training mask, and I laughed. And I was like, "This doesn't change altitude." I know how pressure works. I've actually worked on altitude training for quite some time, and this can't change press- pressure, so we're not talking about altitude with this thing. And, but nonetheless, you know, when you, you, you, you make fun of something and if you're in- you know, done enough work in your life to understand that, that you haven't ... If you're making fun of things or you're criti- criticizing things that you've never y- done, that's called ignorance. And I didn't want to remain ignorant to something (laughs) , so I put the damn thing on. And I instantly went from, like, I'm seated now to ...... I sat up and my, I engaged my diaphragm and I felt my ribs expand out and, like, my back light up, and, like, I was like, "Whoa!"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Like, you know, it was, it, it was just... I, I, I tend to feel a lot and because of my background in teaching movement and getting people fixed, or helping people to fix themselves, I, um, you know, I, I, I was just like, "Whoa! Here, whoa! What happened?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Like, maybe we've got something that I could put on my athletes when they're warming up so that we can get them moving properly and using their, you know, their core correctly, organizing their spine in a way that it should be because, oh, shit, like, it just so happens that we organize the spine based on our diaphragm. We have to. At the, at the root of who we are and what we do is a system that is dependent upon one thing, and that is life. And that life is predicated on a deal that was made 500 million years ago in order to use a- aerobic metabolism. So suffocation sits at the heart of that. So we could remove our amygdala, our panic, our freak out- or not our panic center, our fear center - and you will still have chemoreceptors that will set you off in a panic when carbon dioxide levels raise. So, if I'm not organized correctly around my spine, I don't use my diaphragm correctly, so I default into poor breathing patterns. So this is a rabbit hole of movement that really made more sense to something about organization of the spine, right? And there's a, there's a lot of minutia around the spine and organization and core stability and everything we want to do but, by and large, we have figured out and theorized that the only reason you need to organize that spine correctly is to actually take a breath and u- understand that breath, because the lungs don't do that work on their own. The diaphragm is the primary in that, and then we follow up with the intercostals and several other muscles that end up getting involved. But poor breathing hattern- patterns elicit poor responses, including that of the sympathetic nervous system, or I default into some poor breathing patterns that have me using my anaerobic system more than necessary.
- CWChris Williamson
And is that in and out of exercise?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
And so I... Yes. That is without exercise, my friend.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- 8:22 – 9:48
Nose vs. mouth breathing: your built-in training mask and metabolic differences
- BMBrian Mackenzie
You are constantly using anaerobic systems and aerobic systems at th- a- at all times. We all, we're, we're, like, this is... We know this. The, what we started seeing was... Like, look, man, we took a look back... So we, th- this started with a training mask. It inevitably became, like, "Oh, shit, you've got your own training mask on your face." It's called a nose.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
And holy crap, it, like, it has this filter system. It's got these, this humidification system. It's got, oh my gosh, this thing mucus. Oh, it releases, like, immune cells (laughs) , like, um, so it helps my immune system function better. I s- I spin the air differently. It forces my diaphragm to actually pull more because it's, it, it's not allowing for fast air to happen. It doesn't mean we can't breathe through our mouth or shouldn't, it's just when is it necessary. And we can get into that in a bit, if you want. But, um, you know, it, it's interesting th- we, we started understanding, we started looking at the physiology behind all of this stuff, and the framework behind physiology. And we've missed some big, big things. And the, it's all there, it's just the way we've taught it and the way we've looked at it has not been real, um, I would say it, it's not a very creative process, thus why it's eluded us. And even in the world of yoga
- 9:48 – 12:49
Pranayama, gas exchange, and why CO2 drives oxygen efficiency
- BMBrian Mackenzie
today, they've missed it, and they've misunderstood what it is that pranayama actually means. And pranayama is a word that is basically, it's a Sanskrit word, it's probably about 5,000 years old. And there's other languages that use this, these very similar terminology, including, um, Hebrew (sniffs) um, that it means energy c- control at its root. It also means breath control. Odd that they're the same. Odd that we use a cardiometabolic device in order to measure our breath, which tells us what's happening from a cellular level. So cellular respiration, we understand, the only way we can me- we measure that is through the gas exchange of what's going on here. So we said, "Let's look at this realistically and see what happens." And so we started measuring things, and we were measuring things in many different ways, including just a simple breath practice, um, or, "Hey, I'm gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna walk my dog." And W- Rob Wilson, who's my counterpart in The Art of Breath, who's our lead on education, he's our director of education, um, went for a walk with his dogs with his mouth open, and then he came back, reset his device and we have portable metabolic carts, and he shut his mouth and went for a walk with his dogs, the exact same route. Turns out those are two different and totally, totally different metabolic profiles. Weird. And, uh, uh, uh, it's not weird. It, it's, it's, this has been said for thousands of years. We're not actually bringing... We're not actually saying things that, you know, are, are that crazy. But unfortunately, they are crazy in our world because there's so many really, really, really smart scientific people who we look to who've missed the boat on a lot of this stuff, and the simplicity of it. And it's not that they're dumb or that they, you know, what, whatever, it's just we weren't really looking at this. And so we started really going after not only the movement and, and, and, and how the mechanics work around this, but then the physiology, right? Um, and then starting to see that, oh wow, it's all chemistry in the body is regulated through our breath. All of it. So how we shift from alkaline to acidic is literally governed through how I breathe.And how I absorb oxygen is dependent upon how well my body actually plays with this mole- this, this thing called carbon dioxide. In the body, i- i- in the blood, it's carbonic acid and as we exhale, as the gas exchanges, it becomes carbon dioxide. (sniffs) But e- I am largely dependent upon how well I actually react to that and that can, you know, that, that has other facets to it, I'll go here in a second. But my relationship to carbon dioxide is actually how well I play with oxygen, and how well I'm efficient, how, how efficient I am at using oxygen. So, I may be a free diver who can actually
- 12:49 – 14:33
Static vs. working CO2 tolerance: specialists, free divers, and endurance athletes
- BMBrian Mackenzie
sit here and do breath work and be very, very, very oxygen efficient because I can hold my breath for long periods of time, which also requires an ex- a very high level of CO2 tolerance. This is static CO2 tolerance. This is non-working CO2 tolerance. When we look at training or we look at "human performance," and I use quotes because, uh, performance, I think, is we're, we're about to kind of shift the paradigm on what human performance is. Um, but the idea that if I work, like, when I start to work out, that shifts. There's a different response or there's a, uh, there's a, uh, a very different play that happens within CO2 tolerance. And so, I've been, I've been able to observe and take people who are free divers, who are highly specialized or big wave surfers who are also, uh, you know, free divers in essence-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... to some degree. But they're sp- highly specialized.
- CWChris Williamson
(clears throat)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
And when we apply work to them, we see a very different story happen. So, we see the specialist kind of come apart, right? Meaning, there's a very different, like, that CO2 tolerance that was really high when I'm static and not a lot of stressors going on or a big wave, s- things like that, I'm very accustomed to.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
When I start working out, my respiration rate goes up considerably higher than it would with somebody, let's say, let's call it, you know, Eliud, right? His respiration rate isn't gonna go up so high, right? But the interesting thing here is I would bet if Eliud's never really participated in any sort of static breathing or c- carbon dioxide tolerance training, he's probably shit statically, right?
- 14:33 – 19:51
Breath, the brain, and prediction: why respiration drives emotion and heart rate
- BMBrian Mackenzie
And so, there's this weird world that s- we started to see. Now, my fascination is in connection with the brain, and so the neurobiology of it and the physiology. I'm, I'm, I've cons- I, I'm now considering what p- physiology is more or less our mind, our abili- that, that's what our mind is, and our ability to connect to the mind and understand the feelings and the processes and the things that are going on. And so, the brain is where the circuitry and, and the information is being sent out. The brain works perfectly fine as long as we're connected to the physiology and understand the physiology. If we don't understand the physiology, the brain will get away from us and start overthinking, right? And so, as kids, when we come into this world, we have this thing where we're attached to a parent, and we learn, and this is, i- i- it's unavoidable, right? And, and so, from a neurobiological perspective at the top layer, the most evolved part of the brain is our neocortex. And this is where the stories, this is where some of the emotional things, like, start to trigger. But this is where the storytelling, motor control, a lot of, there's a lot of, uh, uh, dedicated area to motor control in the brain, um, to where we can do different tasks. Like, I can ta- or, like, I can talk and drink water at the same time-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... or think and drink w- you know, you know what I mean? I mean, just-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... simple, basic shit that we go throughout our day that some of us confuse ourselves in thinking it's multitasking, of which it's not. Um, so that's the storytelling side of things. Below that becomes the limbic system. This is where emotions are now concrete and set up in the system, and where I will have a reaction emotionally to something, and then the storytelling gets played into there, right? And so, it can get exacerbated. Then down below that, we have the brain stem where th- or we could call it the reptilian brain, the oldest part of the brain. And this is where the kind of evolution of everything takes place. It just so happens that our respiration centers are set up in that brain stem. So, meaning, they are on autopilot with my system, and they can respond to every emotion and every thought that I have. It also can respond to the work that I have because I have dedicated chemoreceptors set up in the carotid and the aortic valves, which are, uh, headed out to the periphery. So, that means we're on a prediction system that carbon dioxide levels that are set up in my brain stem (slaps table) react to a prediction of what's occurring in the system through chemoreceptors and baroreceptors that are in my arteries, and it's triggering me to breathe.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
So, my heart rate responds to that, right? So, the heart rate's late to the game. And so, you know, th- there's a whole plethora of things in there, but how I decide to grow up and how I go through my experiences in life inevitably have a Rolodex of things on how I actually respond to breath. So, when I actually am working out, I can tell with many people where the potential trauma or problems can set up, or we can see metabolic issues even from somebody who doesn't work out as they sit and are doing things.
- CWChris Williamson
I get you, yeah. Um, one thing that's just come to me there as you were talking. Do you think it's strange that we don't have control over our heartbeat as humans, as evolved creatures?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Well, the only way you're gonna control your heart rate is how?
- CWChris Williamson
Output? Movement?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Nope.
- CWChris Williamson
Breath?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
You got it.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm just thinking, because I can either-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
So if I just said, "Hey, Chris, check it out."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
"Control your heart rate for me, right now." And if we l- could put you on a heart rate monitor, 'cause that's what you- y- we- most people would do. They'd go, "All right. Let me get on a heart rate monitor." Like, w- no, no, no. Can you feel your heartbeat? Right now? Without doing anything? Can you feel it?
- CWChris Williamson
A tiny bit. I'd have to be very tuned into my body.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Took me about, it took... About three years ago, I was able to, like, I can just sit there and I can pick it up anywhere on my body if I really want to. Or I wanna do it in a toe, or a finger, or my neck-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... or whatever, right? But it's like, "All right. How do I lower that?" And I literally will go (breathes deeply) and my heart rate will just start to drop. I control my breathing.
- CWChris Williamson
I understand. I think that, that obviously shows that the heart rate is, um, at the mercy of the breath, to a large degree.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I was just thinking about whether it's, it's... I can control my breath. I can consciously-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... hold it, breathe quicker, breathe slower. But that's not something that we have with our digestive system. That's not something that we have with our heart. You know, that, that it would appear that from our, uh, the, the things that are inside of us, the lungs are kind of the only thing that we have that kind of control over. Is that fair to say? Or am I missing something there?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Your, your breath i- i- is... So check this out. This, and this might flip your lid. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I'm ready.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Y- your breth, your breath controls all that.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Rest and digest is controlled by the breath.
- 19:51 – 24:08
Sympathetic vs. parasympathetic: exhale as ‘inhibiting sympathetic’ + HRV manipulation
- BMBrian Mackenzie
B.K.S. Iyengar has a quote. He is responsible for bringing yoga to the Western world. He's one of the last great yogis. What... Now, he also taught things in a way that was fairly brutal. Uh, it would not have gone by w- real well today. Um, nonetheless, I, I, I'm of that school. Like I, I like that... I don't need to be coddled. I, I, I, I want work. I, I, and I want real work. Um, nonetheless, "The mind is the king of the senses, but the breath is the king of the mind."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I like that.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Okay? So, that was his. That's not mine. My breathing affects how I digest things. How so? Well, my diaphragm pushes down into my organs. I have regulation of my par... I, I, I, I have regulation of my sympathetic activity due to how I control my breathing. And the inhale is known as the sympathetic, and for a long time, people have said the exhale is known as parasympathetic. Well, it's not parasympathetic. It's inhibition of sympathetic.
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
So when I exhale-
- CWChris Williamson
... 'cause that's, that's where HRV, a lot of HRV stuff gets, um, uh, wrist monitors and stuff would come from, right? It's the variation-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... within heartbeats.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yes. Yes. Yeah. And so, the can... We, we started figuring out a long time ago that you could manipulate heart rate variability through breath control. Easy. So, you could change a profile of an athlete who, who might not have the score or the readiness state that we want, right? And we'd apply breath work to that person and we could manipulate, and then they'd have a green light.
- CWChris Williamson
What's readiness state? What, what's the, uh, characteristics that contribute to that?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
You fit into a specific profile of... So, like, think of a spectrum. Like think, think of an arc.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Right? Um, e- of sympathetic and parasympathetic, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Understood, yep.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
There's a specific arc with par- inside parasympathetic and slightly into sympathetic that you can be in order to be ready to train at, let's call it 80% and above.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Right? So we would have... If an athlete fell too parasympathetic, that meant that they were literally... You know, you're dissociative, you're shutting down type of thing. You need more up regulatory things like cold plunge, like some, you know, things to kind of bring you up out of that.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Um, but l- uh, from the s- and, and there's, there's a lot more to that. But from a more sympathetic side, this is where most of us tend to fall, is where we just aren't coming down enough. We're not coming out of that high sympathetic activity. That's by and large most of the people I deal with and I see. This is the people who you are probably listening to here.
- CWChris Williamson
The over-trainers.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Th- this is me. This is-
- CWChris Williamson
The people that are-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
This is me.
- CWChris Williamson
... decapitated, overworked.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah. I like coffee. I like to work out hard. I like to, uh, work hard. I'm very passionate about what I do. I'm type A. You know, maybe not so type A, but I do like to train hard and do things hard and do all this.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
And by and large what we t- end up getting with those people is an inability to understand actually what they're training for. Like, they, you know... A- a- and this is why breathing is so important, is because I can actually get you to understand a lot more through that process of training and understanding your breath. It's also why we created a gear system around training and how you can actually manipulate the one variable that is actually responsible for the rest of the variables that you are training for.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah. That is, that is right. And it, it does make sense that you have this direct control over one of the internal processes that's going on. (clears throat) We have a, I suppose, a quite diluted control over the thoughts that go through our mind.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But I have a lot better control over my breath than I do the thoughts in my mind. And that's after three years of pretty consistent meditation, so, you know, I think, I think-
- 24:08 – 30:08
The CO2 tolerance test: a fast diagnostic for mechanics, physiology, and panic response
- CWChris Williamson
... focusing on the breath seems like a good place to start. So if we were to do a, uh, a breath MOT, Bryan, where would you, where would you start? If you, you lay someone down, you're gonna look under the hood, you're gonna look at the way that they breathe, either a-... in or out of, of a training situation, where do you start? Is it the cycle? Is it the pace? Is it-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
I start with co- co2 tolerance test. I, I, I get a CO2 tolerance test done when I'm a max exhale test. That tells me literally what's going. Like, I mean, look, Ro- so my, my... Rob, who I work with, he's in Virginia Beach, which is l- the largest hub of, um, special forces, so special warfare in the world. Um, it's where they house SEAL te- Dev Group, SEAL Team 6. Um, you know, there's a, a, another team over there too, but there's a lot of high-level dudes over there.
- CWChris Williamson
A lot of badasses. (laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Um, y- yeah. But these dudes like to train a certain way too, right? And so, you know, i- i- like, you get these guys, and, and they've got problems going on. And it's like, "All right," you know, Ro- Rob got called in yesterday, for s- or no, this morning. We were on the phone this morning. It was his afternoon, and he, um, it's like, "Yeah, I, I, I couldn't finish training. I got called in to go over to this, uh, this place to go meet this guy who seems to be a pr- pretty problematic, and he's got a lot of issues, and can't recover. He's got these injuries going on," and blah, blah, blah, blah. Just, there's a host of shit, and he's a team guy. And, um, you know, he... Rob went over, and he's like, "Guess what his CO2 tolerance level was?" And I was like, "Under 20 seconds?" And he said, "17 seconds." And I was like, "Yep. Get it." And, uh, you know, he is cooked, and most of us are cooked. If I've got somebody who's training like that, if I've got an operator, especially an operator who's got anything under a minute of a CO2 tolerance test, I've got somebody who's reactive. I've got somebody who, their system is reactive. They might... they may not be emotionally reactive, but there's suppression of things. I know that. The tissue isn't responding well, meaning they're tight. They're probably got painful tissue. Like, these things start to, like, compound, right? And, and they're all signs, like s- so, so carbon dioxide is the metabolic stress messenger of the body, of the system. Don't even need an amygdala, man. You know? So, it, it tells me what's going on with the person. So if I- s- like, when I have too much going on upstairs, I push that CO2 tolerance down, right? If I'm overtrained, if I've been training too much, and I haven't let my body recover enough, I'm pushing that CO2 tolerance level down. When I think, when I do too much, I'm pushing that CO2 tolerance level down, meaning when CO2 raises, it doesn't have to raise as much in order for me to react to it, respond to it, and the first respondent of that is your breath, because I have to offload that CO2 in order to feel better. So, my aerobic efficiency, capacity, threshold, whatever, switches based on how much... how, how well I tolerate CO2. It's also telling you what basically is going to be happening cognitively. So, if I get a person, the first thing I'm doing with them most likely is a CO2 tolerance test to tell me exactly where they're at. It's a three-fold test. So, I... we... you sit down for a couple minutes, or you lay down for a couple minutes, and you just do some slow, controlled breathing that you're comfortable with. Not fast. You can't hyperventilate (sniffs) . Then we go into a four-breath pattern, where we breathe up for, like, 3, 3 or 4 seconds, and then you relax, let it go for about five to seven, you know, five seconds or so. So, it's a little bit longer of an exhale, but let's relax, let it go, then inhale. Fourth breath, you pull it in. Start the timer the moment it hits the top of the breath, and you start exhaling as long and as slow as you possibly can. So, you have to control it. So, there's a three-part test, and it, it tells me how much control you have of your diaphragm. On the negative, how well I have control of that. So, there's the mechanical aspect of it, right? Then, from a physiological perspective, it tells me how well you ha- t- how well your physiology is responding to carbon dioxide. So, how aerobically efficient you're going to be. Just calm, okay? Remember the dog walking the dog story? How, how well do you respond in a very simple fashion to carbon dioxide? Cognitively, so from a state perspective, an arousal state perspective, how... what you re- how, how you react to carbon dioxide. So, the panic switch. So, wh- how- when you're going to be reactive, how you're going to be reactive. Anybody below 20 seconds, and we have a very reactive, volatile environment that we need to actually start working to clean up. And that's usually done fairly quickly with most people, if, and only if, they're willing to actually back off a bit and learn. That allows for a gap to start to occur and improvement to start to occur in the CO2 tolerance. So, then we start to administer some breathing protocols. "Hey, let's figure out..." and this is why we built the State app, was so that we could actually get people some protocols to use to actually work on breath control, to increase, um, their CO2 tolerance, but also allow them to kind of get into this more focused or calm, clear state, um, or downshift them prior to... after training or prior to bed. That was the whole point of that. And so we'll set protocols up for people based on where they need the most help.
- 30:08 – 37:09
Why one-size breath methods fail: individual fingerprints, protocols, and the State app
- CWChris Williamson
How much of the breath control that we're talking about there is simple ability to avoid discomfort? Because someone who is in a good place, who might feel like, "I can control this gasp reflex for longer," that will contribute a little bit. But as you've mentioned as well, the CO2, the CO2 tolerance appears to be like the master of this.... is that right?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah. So what's the question? You mind rephrasing it or, or bringing that back again?
- CWChris Williamson
So how much can be trained in terms of someone's ability to breathe that is, uh, separate to the way that their physiology is put together at that time? So is there someone who's very good at controlling their breath but still might be in this-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
That ... (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, that's, that's the interesting thing, and this is why, this is where my work really diverted, because I was running around with guys like Wim Hof. I was literally pretty close with Wim Hof. Um, and there's nothing ... Like, Wim's got a great thing. He's doing great work. Um.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
You know, uh, there's other ... Like, I've gone and participated and learned about Tummo, um, many of the, you know, yoga practices, et cetera, et cetera. Um, holotropic, um, like the, the Buteyko, um. Like, there's a lot of methods out there, right? And unfortunately, each and one, uh, each and every one of these methods is making claims that it doesn't do in some fashion.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
In some fashions they do, in other fashions ... And th- this is the problem with, you know, getting caught up in, you know, and, and understanding our attachments to things and, you know, thinking that, you know, we've got an answer, and the answer is you. You're the answer. You're the only answer there is. It's not your breathing. Your breathing's not an answer either. It's just an indicator of something, right? And so our abil- ability biologically is, is, is not even close to being tapped, and I, I think that be true even with something like, you know, what happened with the eleoid. But going back to this is it's ... I started seeing that not everybody reacts to the same protocols in the same way.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
And so it became a, there is not a one-size-fit-all, fits all. There's a, you know, there's a, a, more or less kind of a fingerprint to some degree, and although we can bucket people and categorize them in specific ways or, you know, things that are going on, like, "Hey, this guy d- is angry about stuff, and that guy's angry about stuff, and she's angry about stuff, and, you know, she's more emotional, and he's more emotional about things." Like, like, meaning depending on how you emotionally handle things, there are gonna be certain patterns that are gonna set certain, uh, things off and connect you to certain things. So we had to s- I had to start ... I was literally running around fingerprinting people with breath, breath protocols, because not everybody was responding the same way, and that wasn't a very, you know, viable thing for helping people. I was, sure, I was helping specific people, but I was burning myself out, and there was no way I was ever going to be able to do this by myself. So build an app and build an algorithm that worked with that, and we understood how to do that. So we, we, we literally customized things to people, but then it's like, okay, well, a lot of these people like to engage in performance, and they should, because you should have a movement practice. Any human being that does not have a movement practice is not being a human being. Um, we, we are designed to move. Now, m- getting neurotic about that to the degree that, like, I have to be this specific thing or whatever, that, that's where it gets crazy. But, nonetheless, applying this inside of movement, the framework of movement, becomes the next catalyst in how we do things. And the base layer of that is, hey, for the first few weeks, we're going to just be nasal breathing. You can't go anything past nasal breathing. And for most people, that's such a kick in the balls-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... that it's like, "I don't wanna do it." Like, my ego's not ready for that check." And, you know, you take a power lifter that squats 1,000 pounds, I can tell you right now, if they've not done any breath work, their CO2 tolerance is shit.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
That's a massive, massive carbon print. You're carrying so much l- lean muscle, so much muscle, but you don't do ... You know, most of these people don't do enough of the kind of aerobic efficiency work, and, and that's a scary word to guys like that and gals, because they think that they, they're scared of aer- And it's like, that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the thing that actually makes you survive, like, aerobic metabolism is what makes you survive. So when you're resting, you should be pr- high-level aerobic, and yet you see these guys and gals on oxygen tanks and, like, breathing like ... (breathes rapidly) And it ... That's, that's not necessary. It's not. And, and it's not healthy.
- CWChris Williamson
What's that due to?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
That's, that's an indication-
- CWChris Williamson
What's that due to?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
C- po- poor CO2 tolerance.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. And that is exacerbated-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... by people who are high mass, high muscle mass, heavy weight?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
It's a car- hu- look, look, lo- h- what's the demand for oxygen with more muscle mass?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
It's up higher.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
So I need more oxygen in or- because the m- like, look, like, you know, so I've got all this tissue. Well, when I don't have enough oxygen, or I'm not efficient enough (breathes rapidly) , about four or five breaths in, you're gonna start dipping that needle more towards those anaerobe, like, like more towards the, the, the, the demand for, the tissue's demand for more glucose, more glycogen. Okay? The nervous system and brain are pr- are, are stuck with glucose and glycogen. There's no, there's no ifs, ands, buts about that, right? But fat is what the muscles, like, can use. So the more fat we're using with, with tissue, the better, right? And so the better we get the mitochondria functioning, the better off we are, and there's no reason why an NFL lineman and a gymnast or an endurance athlete can't all be aerobically efficient.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
It's just different thresholds at which point ... Like, sure the foot- lineman's going to be much more of an anaerobic athlete, like much more high level s- you know, sh- you know, sprinter type explosive, you know, and so is the gymnast to some degree is, you know, pulling it back a little bit more, and then it's like we got the endurance athlete where you're like, you know, all slow twitch, right? And it's all the same thing in terms of efficiency aerobically. It's like, so if I got an, uh, if I've got an endurance athlete who's going out on an, uh, uh, a-... high-level aerobic ride, but they got to open their mouth, I can tell you right now, they're not as aerobic as they could be. They might be somewhat aerobic, but they are not as aerobic as they could be, and they are not utilizing the system in a way that they could. With- th- this is literally factual things we have tested that are now going into read- that, that have raised some eyebrows enough to go, "Wow, we didn't really look at it like this. We should really be testing this." So this is what's happening.
- CWChris Williamson
I get it. So let's take it-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah.
- 37:09 – 40:26
Practical baseline: nasal-only breathing blocks + daily protocols for calm and sleep
- CWChris Williamson
... from the top with regards to Bryan's advice for good breath. Where do we begin-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... with that? What are the, what are the principles for good breath?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Fa- f- l- the STAY app was created for this. Like, look, start n- do one, one breath protocol exercise in the morning, do one in the evening for sleep. Play with that for a few weeks, see where it improves, what you feel, how you, what, what you like, what you don't. If you wanna play with more, go for it, right? Th- that's probably gonna be in the m- vicinity of five minutes each, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
That's not hard for people who like to train.
- CWChris Williamson
Morning and evening.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Secondarily. Morning and evening, right? Simple. If you wanna do all four, go for it. Do it. Like, you're, you're getting an A+ now. Um, y- the second part of this is if you're not going to the World Championships or you're not competing for, you know, an Olympic medal or you're not, like, going to an A-priority race within the next two months, you do not, or event, you do n- like, there's no reason why you can't go dedicate three to four weeks to strictly nasal-only breathing and take enough step back to actually get your physiology rewired. And, and, or-
- CWChris Williamson
Across all, across all training methodologies, whether you're doing-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Across all training methodologies.
- CWChris Williamson
Powerlifters, CrossFitters.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
I don't care if you're an MMA athlete-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, MMA.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... powerlifter, CrossFit, whatever. I've done it with the CrossFit athletes. I did it with Tia. Like, I've done it with, like, I've done, done it with several fucking athletes that people would never consider would do, would be able to do something like this. And it rearranged what was going on and gave them an ability to do things that they didn't think they could ma- they could manage to do.
- CWChris Williamson
And full weeks-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
So it just empowered them at a level. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, how long does it take to create adaptation to something? Right around three weeks.
- CWChris Williamson
I like it. I like that. Um, uh, uh, of course, everyone who is listening, the STAY app will be linked in the show notes below. Bryan's app, which, uh, I'm pretty certain, is this the first iteration or is it on to kind of 1.5 now?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
(sniffs) What's the- the app?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Uh, this is the first vers- there's been a couple updates on it.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
But this is the first version of it. We're- th- there's a lot more that's gonna come into the pipeline and w- o- once we get through the first investor stuff that we're going through, uh, there will be some serious, serious things that are coming down that pipeline. Um, y- you know, I mean, it, it's already, uh, uh, r- uh, been way more successful than we ever thought it was gonna be. Um, but we also know, like, there, there's a lot more that we do than just doing some simple breath protocols. Like, there's high-level things you can do in order to change your physiology that could, you know, that, that are game-changing things.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. So what happens when you breathe-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... through your nose? Tell me. Someone's training, they're just breathing through their nose, what's happening? Why- what's, what's the, we've talked about the, the different workout of the walk-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
I- i- it-
- CWChris Williamson
... with the dog-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... with the nose open and closed. What- how about, how is that characterized?
- 40:26 – 45:11
Nasal breathing, evolution, and Kipchoge: staying aerobic and reading physiology
- BMBrian Mackenzie
It, it, it's your biological way of staying aerobic. Y- 500 million years ago, cells, single-cell organisms figured out how to become multicellular organisms. They said, "Hey, let's you and I communicate like you and I are right now. Let's talk about some things, let's share some information so we can pass this shit on." And see the, see that oxygen-rich environment now? It used to be hostile. It used to be mostly carbon. Like, and it was n- we had to be m- anaerobic and we, you know, changed energy other ways. And this is where, like, we're headed right now, is this is all about energy. There's nothing else. There's nothing eith- else other than energy. All energy that's ever existed has existed, it's how we're con- the conversion of energy is happening. We don't, it's not we burn, we don't burn calories. Okay? That, that's us, we're converting calories. We're literally taking energy, converting that energy, and then putting energy back out. Like, it's literally this cycle of, and we forget about all of this thing. And so that energy deal got made when cells learned to communicate and said, "Hey, let's take this oxygen and let's use this," and it's much more complex than this, but this is just the story that I like, you know, like... But it's like, hey, 500 million years ago, multicellular organisms figured out how to use oxygen after algae, and algae literally figured out how to convert sunlight into energy itself. And the byproduct of that was oxygen. So the e- earth became engulfed in this algae. All of a sudden, there's all this oxygen in the environment. Then cells were like, "Yo, there's got to be an efficient process to this," and here's that process. Today, 500 million years ago, aerobic metabolism sits at the forefront of the most efficient way to use energy. And so, anything outside of aerobic metabolism becomes anaerobic. So if I don't have that process, that conversion of energy, I'll default very simply, and we should, to this higher stress situation of using energy. So anaerobic doesn't necessarily become a training process. It's more or less the byproduct of I'm no longer able to handle aerobically what's going on.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
So how quickly I can come back to that aerobic is literally how f- well I can. So w-... having a very high aerobic capacity (laughs) means I function high aerobically. So when we look at people like a guy smashing the two-hour marathon, what does he look like physiologically? And although there's, like look, uh, to be totally hon- like, look, I support and I'm very happy for the man and everything. But realistically, if he were in the same setup as they were in 1950 or even 1980, he wouldn't have run a sub-two-hour marathon. That ha- that wouldn't ha- it's not the same marathon. It's a different marathon, even though the distances are the same. The shoes, the pacers, the, the, the, the, the, yeah, all of these things exist. But I don't deny the fact that this man's physiology is off the hook and the on- only reason I really know that is not only have I studied how he moves, but I've watched how he breathes.
- CWChris Williamson
What's your analysis of that?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
He primarily-
- CWChris Williamson
What's, what's your analysis of his breathing?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
He primarily breathes through his nose.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Most of his marathon is done nose-only breathing. You can find pictures all over the internet with salt marks that come down his nose, and you'll see when he's running that m- most of the pictures are of him with his mouth shut.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. I didn't notice that.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
And I... So I've watched video. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've, I've done video. I've, I videoed the video so that I can go and slow it down and look at it and watch it and, you know, I ve painted a... And there it is. And, you know, I mean, he comes from African culture, right? And, and what, what is of the African nose? Like they've got larger nostrils. Well, they've dev- uh, uh, like, genetically they are set up to do something. Like, if you've ever watched a horse race. So I, I watch the an- I watch animals, like, it, like, i- i- i- i- it's a, like, big passion. Like, I'm, I'm almost, uh, neurotic about it, you know. You watch animals who don't sweat and they don't actually... The only time they're mouth-breathing is when they're overheating, okay? You watch animals who do sweat, a horse, a racing horse, they will not breathe out of their mouth. They just have a bit in their mouth. They breathe through their nostrils. They literally will not breathe out of their mouth.
- CWChris Williamson
Why do we then?
- 45:11 – 54:17
Culture, convenience, and ‘black mouth’: mouth breathing, overstimulation, and sleep issues
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Because we... Uh, you know, it's interesting. We have, um, done real well at progressing ourselves culturally through comfort and convenience. And in that process, we've more or less stressed ourselves more than we actually needed to. So by that I mean this. Uh, there's a book written in 1867, I believe. I, I forget the date. Um, but George Catlin wrote a book called Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life. And he wrote this book as a historian who was a lawyer from England who came over to the States, which was basically North America and South America at the time, studied about a h- a million and a half indigenous cultures and civilized world. He was, uh... The biggest thing he picked up on was the fact that indi- in indigenous culture, they did not breathe through their mouth. Rarely, when, and when they talk, when they spoke, they spoke with intent. They did not speak too much. They meant what they said, they said what they meant. When they slept, they slept with their mouths shut. When they hunted, they hunted with their mouths shut. They did everything they could, including when children came off of the nipple, mothers would shut the mouth of the child for fear of the black mouth. Because not only was the white eye called the white eye or round eye-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... he was called the black mouth. And the reason he was called black mouth is because his mouth looked disgusting. And why would that be? Well, look at what we started doing culture, look at what, what we started doing. I mean, we're drinking more alcohol, we were, sugar started to become, agriculture started to kick in. All of these things of convenience started to happen, right? And here's a culture of people who pay attention to nature. What is nature? Physiology. That is literally one of the definitions of nati- uh, uh, physiology, is nature, origin. And thus paying attention to the feelings of nature and what's going on. So what happens when I feel when I breathe through my mouth, right? Well, I get ramped up. I turn on. I speak. If I go speak somewhere and I talk just for an hour, I'm on. Like, I feel like I'm on. If I speak for a entire day, I'm exhausted. I don't go work out. I try not to go to dinner with people afterwards.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Why am I so exhausted? I'm blowing off a ton of carbon dioxide. I'm more sympathetic dominant. I'm actually using less of the fat, so I'm use... I'm not as aerobic e- as, as I could be. Even though I'm still slightly aerobic, I'm not as aerobic as I could be, right? So it's learning those waves. They felt that shit, man.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
They felt it. We don't feel. We le- how we have these things in front of us and we're getting stimulated and we've got all these kids that are going batshit crazy because they don't have recess anymore, they're told from playing, they're told what to do, they're told how they're gonna learn, then they're given infinite possibilities on a machine to play games and keep them occupied because mom and dad don't wanna deal with them, and then they've got anxiety because of this. They don't have anxiety. They've got proper stimulation from being overstimulated. They've got physiology that's running amok and they don't understand it. And this has been, by and large the, what's going on with us even those of us that like to train a lot.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Like, I mean, I'm on, I'm talking to you, I'm on. I need to shi- when I'm done here, I'm feeling this. I feel it. So I've gotten to the point where I feel all this stuff and I'm paying attention. If I, my mouth opens when I'm asleep at night, I wake up.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Why would I wake up if my mouth opens-
- CWChris Williamson
I don't know.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... based on everything we- I've just kind of gone over?
- CWChris Williamson
(sighs) Because you become more stressed?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Bingo. I'm now slipping more into sympathetic and I'm (claps hands) turning myself on.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Okay. I understand.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
How many of us are trying to sleep in this high sympathetic activity f- state, right? And I'm also not as aerobic. And then, oh shit, I've got sleep apnea, so now I'm holding my breath in an awkward fashion and (breathes heavily) like I've got all... Like, weird. Like, what are you paying atten- Are, are, like, you need medication and a fucking... You need a, a, a mask to wear at night? I've got friends who do this. And they refuse to do breath work. And I'm like, "Dude, it's your choice."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
I've got more DMs and pe- I don't even talk about this. I don't write about this stuff publicly. Like, I don't go out and go, "I'm gonna solve your problems." No, here, start with some breathing protocols, start rearranging your training, then start feeling what's going on in your body. You're gonna default to places that you can. Is it weird that George Catlin was also in a book that I've read and the- I'm the only person who's caught this so far, right? Only because I've read this other book. It's a book called Empire of the Summer Moon, and it is about the Comanche Indians, who are arguably th- the most war-driven tribe of people that have almost existed. They're, they're in comparison to the Mongols and like, um, you know, a lot of the stuff that happened then, but they were very, very gnarly. They were so gnarly that had the Colt revolver not ended up in the hands of a few young white boys from Texas called Texas rangers, they would have... Th- this world, th- this country would be a very different place right now. They knew how to fight off of horseback in a way that no other culture had understood, and they couldn't combat it. So shooting a rifle with one shot was no good, right? And so, this book was written, and there was a guy around. There was a number of historians that were there that were interviewed, and one of those historians throughout this book that was written about was George Catlin. And so there's this guy that's there, and the biggest thing he picked up on was that the people who were of the pla- uh, of the Earth, that were literally living on the Earth, that were living in plains that everybody feared to cross because they had no idea how to navigate, they had no idea how to do things, and there was this murderous culture of people who did not want them near anything, in- including other tribes. Like, other tribes feared the Comanche, right? Like, they were feared. And it, it's a fantastic read. But the fact of the matter is, is I'm able to now connect through reading physiology and then reading about literally... Hey, George Catlin wrote this book in the 6th and 1800s about this... Holy crap, there it is. What is history? It's literally telling us what's going on w- like, wh- there's lessons to be learned about all this stuff and what people were doing. You think, you think a Comanche Indian who knew how to navigate the land could get onto his horse and ride for three or four days straight with no food basically or limited food supply and water supply? Um, what do you think the physiology of a human being like that is? Like, literally could survive in freezing cold temperatures, navigate land and storms? Like, where do you think we're at culturally right now? We're worried about squatting 1,000 pounds-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... and running a two-hour marathon. I don't think we're anywhere close to what our biological potential is. I think we missed the boat. I think we're confused. I think we think that technology is this great thing that's gonna get us into the future, and it's not. It's gonna, s- just gonna lead us right back to our own biology and going, "Shit, we're mimicking all this technology after stuff we internally are able to do." It's why I asked you, what would you, how, what, what, what's your hear- how do you control your heart rate and how do you feel that? "Well, I'd have to be calm for a minute, and then I could really pick up on it." Yeah. Well, guess what? You can feel that at any moment you want. Just gotta spend the time to get back to that.
- CWChris Williamson
I understand. Yeah, I, it's interesting what you said there about when you spend a whole day talking, right? So I do coaching calls.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I g- I coach a, a-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... sales company in Germany, and every time I'm done, let's say it's maybe three hours, and I've been talking to these guys, and it's a conversation. It's at least 50/50 between me and them. It's not all me. But once I'm finished, let's say I've done three hours, four hours of, of talking, a little bit of water in between, a little bit of chill or whatever, after I've done that, I'm absolutely gassed. Like, once I'm done, I'm like, "Oh, I'm really tired." And I, I wasn't really too sure. I thought, "Well, maybe it's 'cause cognitively it's quite demanding. I'm trying to link these things together. It's because I'm really putting myself into the person I'm speaking to," or whatever it might be. And your suggestion here is that one of the principal reasons for this is going to be that I'm just inhaling and exhaling quite a bit of air quite a lot.
- 54:17 – 59:04
Beyond breath: vision as the second conscious lever + redefining ‘human performance’
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Well, you're bre- yeah. Y- y- yeah, you're on, right? And so you're getting stimulated. But you're getting a stimulation that you're automatically... Like, you're falling into autopilot on because you're talking. I'm talking, right? So we're... I'm, I'm ramping myself up. Not only am I ramping myself up and getting into what I'm doing, I'm getting focused and I'm being engaged with you, but the byproduct of that becomes my breath. My breath is the instant reaction to that. It, it, it's, it's the first respondent. There's only two, two things we can do in order to regulate or, or stimulate autonomic control consciously. That is our breath and our vision. So I can choose not to look at you right now and I can look at the end of the room and I can go into peripheral vision and I can downshift myself. I can go outside and look at the fucking... Look at nature, look at trees, right? How many people freak out looking at a sunset?None of 'em. Why? 'Cause it's math. No, it's beautiful. Yeah, beautiful is there, but that's not math. Math is the algorithm that enters the light waves that enter your eyes and open you up to go whomp. And it drops you into parasympathetic.
- CWChris Williamson
It's interesting you're out of sight.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
We've got so many tools and things going on that we don't know about. Like, I l- man, I was just at the Cleveland Clinic. I was in open heart surgery with them, with a team there. And they were like, "What do you think you could help with?" And it's, like, simple man, control your breathing and control your vision when you need to, when you need to make a better decision or something fucking... the shit hits the fan, like, it's time to do that. That's human performance. That's human performance at its finest and trying to help somebody's life be saved. You know? And like, why'd that person get there is another fu- another story that we could be dovetailing back towards, hey, why we move and what we love about human performance, but that's human performance for me. Like, human performance is literally getting to the core of why, you know, w- people doing everyday stuff, right? Like, that's human performance. And I think we're alluding ourselves into thinking that we understand something by, you know, like, what's a 500-pound deadlift do for me? It's re- these were things I had to ask myself, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Like, this isn't... I'm not asking this of you. I'm a- I- I had to ask this of myself, "What's a 500-pound deadlift?" 'Cause I've had a 500-pound deadlift, right? And it's like, I, I, I was not able to connect the dots on what that meant. It... I don't know that that made it better for me to survive, getting up off the couch or picking shit up off the floor. I, I don't know that, that 500 pounds is necessary for that. Like, what's running 100 miles doing for me? It was a fucking amazing expe- spiritual experience. But what was it doing for me, right? And, like, where was I at? And so what, wha- why, you know, do I need to actually run a hundred mile? No. But will I? I mean, sure, I did a couple times, but, you know. Like, i- i- it's just, like, I've done these things and I'm like, "So what's the point of this?" Is this, oh, I'm now clinging to this thing thinking it's the thing. And it, there we go. Now the mind, now, now let's look at the ne- let's look at the neuroscience. Let's, let's, let's really start looking at the down, the up, the how everything's compiling in what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. So when I ask people, like, "What do you want?" 'Cause they'll come to me. I literally have a call after this from, with our mentorship program, and I've already had two today. And it's, "What do you want?" And I'm pretty quick to, to understand that they don't know what they want, even though they're telling me what they want. And so it's usually, like, "Uh, you tell me what you want, I'll show you a liar."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Because w- we're just not ready, re- really ready to let, let go of all these ideas that we have. And it's not that you can't go deadlift 1,000 pow- or, you know, whatever. You can't squat 1,000, deadlift 500, go run 100 miles. Like, these are just extreme versions of them, right? I don't need to go dive with great white sharks, but I did, and I got that experience, and it taught me some profound lessons, man. Profound. But if I'm actually in the moment and understanding what's going on in this very moment and how I'm operating it and what I feel, then I'm moving back more towards what that Comanche was doing. And I'm actually getting in tune with the vibration of how everything works and why when I go... wh- why... You know, I went on a run earlier. What I'm trying to accomplish with that run and understand about that run. Where is it that on this hill that I'm climbing right now that I have to... that I feel like I need to make this switch? And how, like, how cooked do I feel and where is that at and what can I do in order to improve that so that, like, "Hey, this, this improves my day, and it doesn't ruin my day?" Right?
- 59:04 – 1:06:12
Training for awareness, not winning: hypoxic carries, ego, and CO2 as stress messenger
- BMBrian Mackenzie
That's what I'm taug- you know, this is where we start to... My reactions to what I'm doing in training, my reactions to what I'm doing throughout my day are the same thing. But I'm just getting people closer to what that actually is. And that's what we've been doing with the art of breath, is really just... You know, like, people come in there and, like, you know, this gal this weekend who showed up at Rob's seminar, she was like... she's a CrossFit Games athlete, and, you know, she identified as a CrossFit Games athlete. I love that. Like, I, I just love... somebody comes in, "I'm, I'm, like, a professional athlete. I'm a professional crossfitter." It's like, "Wow, (laughs) okay." Um, I get it. I know where you're at. Uh, you know, we're doing all this work and stuff. And there's a hypoxic set where you do farmer carries with, with kettlebells, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
So, like, you'll do some burpees, and then you go and you, we have people grab the, the kettlebells and then they dump their air and they have to walk as far as they can down and back, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Yep, yep. Just farmers walks.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
And it's... And it... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep, yep.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
And, and so everybody... Like, this chick just takes off running, man (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Like, she's trying to win it, you know? And one of our coaches, Danny Yager, who's phenomenal, um, he runs CrossFit Kingfield out in Minnesota. And he's, like, he watches this and then he sees a bunch of guys. So there's a lot of people there in, in the warfare community. And so there's a lot of, you know, dudes and people who are, like, wanna win, right? It's like, "What are you trying to win?" So Danny stop it, and he goes, "Hey, if you think we brought you here to actually see how long you could hold your breath while farmer walking kettlebells, you don't understand why you're here. You don't understand what we're doing. What is it you're feeling when you're holding your breath and walking these things? W- what's... If you're trying to win the farmer carry holding your breath, what is it you're winning here? There is no reward." It's, we're here to experience something and understand what this thing can do and teach us. "Well, I thought I was gonna be able to carry those kettlebells a lot further." Or, "I thought I was only gonna be able to carry 'em a few steps, and I went further than I did." Awesome. Now we're starting to get somewhere.... versus, "Oh, I gotta win this." Like, win what? What are we winning? That's called ego. And, and you just removed yourself from understanding all purpose of, of training. All training, at the foundation of training, is to make better decisions under stress. Carbon dioxide is the metabolic stress messenger of the human body. Done deal.
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. I love it. Brian, today's been fantastic. I really appreciate you coming on. Anyone who wants to check out some more of your work, where should they head? We've talked about The Art of Breath. How does that relate to the State app? Is the State app a part of that? No.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Doesn't. Separate. No. State app's sh- uh, a bit, a bit diff- um, uh, the State app's separate. The, you know, a lot of the stuff with the business is gonna change real soon.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Um, in fact, the whole name, everything's gonna change. We're changing that so it'll all kind of fit and be seamless, so it makes more sense (laughs) to the world.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Um, that being said, uh, The Art of Breath is a component of what we teach with- inside of Power Speed Endurance. It's a performance-based seminar. There's a 101 that we teach around the world, but we also have it online, so that can be found on Power Speed Endurance. The State app is, you can find each app, whether it's Android or iOS, on shiftstate.io. Anything about me or, or if you wanna get in contact with me, or, you know, whatever, can be found on brianmackenzie.com or you can go through Power Speed Endurance.
- CWChris Williamson
Amazing. I, uh, I, I have to say, it was, uh, a listener who recommended that I, that I check out, uh, the State app and, uh, get in touch with yourself, and I think I found the new thing that I'm going to add into my morning and evening routine. I've been looking for what it's gonna be. I've stopped doing, uh, ROMWOD for the time being, and I do miss some of the breath control. I miss that parasympathetic activation. I'm still doing my meditation on the morning, I'm reading, I'm doing other bits and pieces, Stu McGill's Big Three, but I'm not, I'm not feeling myself in the body quite so much with that. It's very, it's very visceral. It's very kind of, um, transactional, that I'm doing it for the, for the return on, on what I know it needs to do to my spine health. Uh, and I think-
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I think the next, I think the, between now and Christmas, it'll be, it'll be me doing that. So I'll report back. I'll keep you updated and I'll, uh, I'll let the listeners know as well.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Please do. Please do. Yeah. Look at, like, I, I would do the either feel alert or be present protocol. If you're g- if you're s- doing, doing your meditation in the morning-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... do the breathing beforehand. There's a reason why breathing is at the foundation of every meditative practice.
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting. So you'd say, for a lot of people that are listening, maybe we'll have a meditative practice in their morning routine. You'd say, "Do the breath work before that"? And then w- how, how would you program that in an evening? Immediately before bed?
- BMBrian Mackenzie
I- i- if you have an active sitting ... Yeah. If you have an active sitting meditative practice-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
... just be clear that if you want that brought up to the next level, add breathing before that. If you want it really brought up to the next level, use the State app so that you can fingerprint your, the rhythms that work with you. Like, so your app's different, gonna be different than mine.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
Based on to- you know, how you actually handle carbon dioxide, cognitive, and, and how you handle emotional stress. So, that can give you an, a ramp in. I can't tell you how many people who come to me who are like, "I, I can't meditate. It's just, I don't have the patience. I don't have this. I don't have that." You're already there. But it's like, I show 'em breathing, and the fact is, is breathing is, uh, controlled breathing is meditation. Literally.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BMBrian Mackenzie
It ... You'll get there. It ... Just give it some time. Right? So, so use that beforehand. In the evening, anything less than two hours before you go to bed.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
Episode duration: 1:06:12
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Transcript of episode xaNl2EY8b-c
