Patrick Obolgogiani (00:08)
Ben, warm welcome. About ten years ago, I believe, you were a high school teacher in the UK. I'd love to hear the story of what triggered the change from that trajectory of just being a high school teacher, continuing on that path to where you're now, where you're basically teaching a hundreds of breath work and breathing facilitators around the world. What was the trigger for that?

Benedict - Breathing Space (00:29)
Patrick, thank you so much for inviting me on and what a pleasure it is to connect with you and your audience. And I love telling this story. But before I do that, would it be all right if we just shared a few breaths together? That's how we start everything in breathing space, whether it's a podcast interview, a seminar or masterclass, to just stop and pause and connect with our breath, both individually and together. And if you're listening and

Patrick Obolgogiani (00:51)
Sure.

Benedict - Breathing Space (00:52)
watching this, please join in with us.

Thank you.

I don't think I can actually have a conversation without doing that exercise these days. And I will tell you that I have over my 15 years of doing breath work, I've learned hundreds, maybe even thousands of techniques and had experiences, but it is that one practice of stopping and pausing and taking a breath before an interaction that I think has made the biggest impact in my life.

But before I discovered Breathwork, before I had that amazing first session a little bit about my life, I was in my early 40s. I'd already had two careers, one as an IT professional working as a contractor in some of the biggest companies in the world, traveling around the world actually, but also as a high school teacher. In my 30s, I had a huge crisis of identity. I looked in the mirror and I didn't like who I was, who I'd been in my 20s, which was very

vain, very arrogant, very self-serving, obsessed by money. Also, I...

I don't mind telling you this, I wanted to be a rock star. So I was in bands trying to like make it big. But that all came to an end in my early thirties when I realized that I wasn't the person that I wanted to be. I'd always been interested in reaching my potential, becoming the best version of myself. And that wasn't about, well, I realized it wasn't about being famous or being rich. So I did a lot of introspection. Externally, I wanted to be of service to the world. So I decided to train to be a teacher.

and I worked in some of the most challenging schools in the south of England. Internally, I became a Buddhist and I started doing a lot of meditation, daily practice, very strong daily practice, and at weekends I would study Dharma. But by the end of my 30s,

I burnt out from teaching. I'm sure you know some teachers and I'm sure your audience will know what a brutal profession it is, how it will take and take from you. But also I'd reached the end with my meditation practice. It had given me so much, but it wasn't everything that I was looking for. So I did what any sensible person will do. I quit my job. I sold everything. I flew off to India. I bought a motorbike and I got lost. And I just thought, I'm going to start traveling and adventuring.

until

I find what it is that's really going to give me purpose in my life. And for the next few years, I have to say I had an amazing time. I did all sorts of things.

obviously motorbiked all the way through India. I hiked up to Everest Base Camp and that's actually where I met my wife who is a kindred spirit to me. She's also very nomadic and together we did all sorts of things. We trained to be yoga teachers in Vancouver. We ran hotels in the French Alps. We lived in Thailand and wrote books there. We trekked across New Zealand carrying everything on our back on an amazing month-long journey.

One of the things that happened just shortly after we got engaged we went to Bali which if you've never been to Bali especially the centre of Bali a place called Ubud it's one of the great spiritual centres of the world there is a yoga teacher or a shaman or a wizard or a reiki practitioner you know within spitting distance of wherever you are I got invited to a breathwork session

Now at that point I've been doing yoga a long time. I've been a lot of meditation which includes breath work. I thought I knew what breath work was. I thought we'd lie down, listen to some relaxing music maybe, do that weird nose breathing thing in and out of different nostrils. It wasn't like that at all. We were taught a very powerful technique, a very activating technique and the music was very intense and we had to breathe like this for about, yeah, over an hour.

Now I've done a lot of things in my life. I've done a lot of meditation, a lot of group therapy. I'd heard of these amazing states and visions and transformations that people had. I'd always wanted it, but I'd never had it. It seemed like something that maybe I'd reach in a hundred lifetimes.

And yet, that very first session, within a few breaths, I was gifted something incredible. And my life changed at that moment. Not only did I have a great awakening in myself, but I realized in breathwork, in this practice, that I had found something that didn't...

invalidate anything that I've done. didn't replace all the meditation or the yoga or the teaching that I'd done, everything that I'd learned through reading all the self-help and human development potential books, but it integrated it all and it elevated it all. And I realized looking around the room with people having extraordinary experiences that this could be what I was looking for to give my life purpose. And so that was the moment that the breath entered my life and I committed to serving the breath in the world.

Patrick Obolgogiani (05:31)
Hmm. Very yeah, it's a lovely story. Thank you for sharing. and to some extent vulnerable, like it sounds like the decision to

gonna leave originally. well, you said it's what everyone would have done, but I I'm pretty sure there are even now people listening who are maybe not in the exact state, but they're in similar states where there's you know, things are not easy and it may be f feeling of like as you mentioned, trying to find your purpose.

Maybe kind of a two-part question. If you could go deeper into the state you were in, and then what gave you the courage to actually take that kind of plunge to the unknown?

Benedict - Breathing Space (06:08)
Okay, I will first share a little bit more about my experience. I am not a religious person and I certainly don't subscribe to the traditional Christian vision of what the universe looks like, about that beyond our material realm. I didn't even identify with the Buddhist understanding of the universe, if I'm honest. And yet, in that first breath work...

I had a spiritual awakening. I saw angels in front of me. Beings of light and love who I felt, I knew, that were just there to support me. That's a real head... I hope it's okay to swear. It's a real head fuck.

Because when you don't believe in angels and yet suddenly you see something in front of you, you feel their presence. Well, what does that do? Well, it certainly didn't mean I converted to Christianity or Catholicism and started subscribing to that. But it was very difficult to deny that I could feel that there was something beyond the material world in which I moved. And there was...

If not consciousness, there was certainly love and support. And there was a feeling that there is something beyond just who we are. So that was my experience on that very first breathwork, an extraordinary powerful experience, a spiritual awakening or realization, if you like, to something beyond that.

I don't talk about that very often. Some people resonate with that imagery very strongly. But it can also be very problematic for people. There will always be people who want to interpret that, who want to give meaning for that. As a facilitator, that is something that really doesn't sit well with me. When someone has a powerful experience in breathwork, it is really up to them to find their meaning in this, to find their own interpretation.

There isn't a natural human inclination to want to give your power away and to ask for the teacher or the facilitator. What does this mean? What should I do? Actually, one of the things that breathwork has taught me, it is empowerment. It is to take charge of your own journey, realizing that you are the most sovereign being who can make meaning in your life. So that was my first experience.

But the second part of your question was, what gave me the courage to make changes in my life? Well, first of all, I was very fortunate at that point. I didn't have any dependents. I wasn't married and I didn't have any children. When you're in that situation, things get a lot more difficult and a lot more complicated. When you have people who are financially, emotionally, know, relying on you, you can't just sell everything and disappear as I did.

So in that situation, you have to take a longer perspective. Will you, will what you are doing currently serve people in the long term, not just in the short term, by making money for this year or the next couple of years, but what will happen if you continue on this trajectory for the next five years or next 10 years? Where will that leave you? Will you still be able to support them in that time?

And if the answer is no, if the answer is carrying on like this, getting myself chronically stressed, overworked, tired, crabby, you know, not even am I going to like cause great physical, emotional problems in myself, but actually am I going to show up as the best person in my everyday interactions with them.

Now, if you can't make big changes in your life, perhaps there are small changes that you can make. For many people, this is the career or the job that they find themselves in. Because, let's face it, a lot of the modern workplaces are not designed to support workers. By their very purpose, businesses and companies are there to make money.

Although, you know, if you really want to take the longer term view, the biggest assets anyone has is their workforce. So actually for me, that is the primary. But in the short term, again, businesses need to make money and so they will ask things of their employees that might not actually be beneficial for them in the long term. So really, there does come a point. Your body will start sending you signals.

You know, it might be stress, it might be overwhelm, it might be the inability to sleep, it might be digestive problems, it might be chronic back strain, it might be headaches, it might be you're getting forced to take time off work. That's your body telling you, you need to make some changes. And if you don't make some changes, well, your body is gonna make some changes for you. It's gonna make you so

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:06)
Yeah.

Benedict - Breathing Space (10:07)
sick you cannot carry on.

So to answer that question, well, there comes a point in your life when it is less painful to make changes than it is to carry on the trajectory that you are on. When it becomes like that, well, you know, it's actually easier to let go than to stay the same.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:23)
Yeah. I'm sure we'll get back to change, especially given like the people we work with and the experiences they've had. But maybe just to zoom out a little bit, we've been using the word breath work a couple of times and

even through the whatever four th twelve, thirteen episodes, it kind of means a lot of things. Like it means everything from what Huberman Labs talks about psychological si as one of the best ways to reduce your s arousal state of stress in just a couple of minutes. And I think you're talking about something completely different. So maybe how do you think about that word and and kind of where does the particular style of breath work that you're teaching kind of fit into that realm?

Benedict - Breathing Space (11:00)
I really love this question because there is a lot of confusion if you like and there's a lot of different interpretations around what breathwork is. Breathwork for me is very simple. It is bringing awareness and intentionality to how you breathe and that's what breathwork is. Bringing awareness and intentionality.

And I will say that most people forget about the awareness of how we breathe and they focus on the intention. What am I going to be doing? Is it an exercise? Am I using breath for something to do something? But the simple effect of awareness, I think is half of it. BreathWork is a very wide church and there's all sorts of practitioners doing all sorts of things. But just like human existence, you know, there are some people who want to focus on their external journey of how, what they achieve in the world. Some people want to concentrate on or

or even if they're just on this journey of self-development, how they look, how they physically feel, some people will want to be, you know, how they emotionally feel, you know, concentrate on their happiness rather than they look. Or some people will be interested in a deep spiritual journey. Breathwork is the same.

As humans we live on all sorts of different levels from the purely physical to the emotional to the energetic to the spiritual. Breathwork intersects, nourishes or manifests if you like on all those different levels. So you will get some facilitators who concentrate on just breathwork for physical well-being or how to optimize performance or how to increase longevity or how to fight colds.

You'll get some breath workers who will want to use their breath for emotional regulation. You know, to help them cope with stressful or difficult situations. Sometimes there are other, you know, physical ailments such as lack of sleep, lack of concentration that you can use breath work for. Some people will want to go deeper with breath work.

And it has this capacity that not many people know about to help release stuck, stored energy, emotions, difficult experiences in your body. Some people call that trauma release, but breathwork can do that. Breathwork can also go into the even more subtle energetic realms, such as the spiritual experiences that I shared a little bit earlier. They don't necessarily have any religious interpretation. It is a non-denominational practice.

but there is the possibility for a really deep powerful subtle experience. Now where do I lie in this spectrum? Well I believe to be a truly gifted facilitator or breath worker you need to meet people wherever they are. So as a breath worker I feel that I have to have if not a mastery of but an ability to play in all those different areas of breath work from the breath works that support our physical well-being.

And I know that you, this is a particular area of focus for you and your company. But also, if I'm meeting people who is ready for, or is open to, or it's their time to receive a spiritual awakening or great trauma release, I have to be prepared and I have to be ready to hold people in that experience. So, I feel if I'm truly to serve the breath, I need to be open to supporting people in all those areas.

Patrick Obolgogiani (13:55)
What do you think is happening mechanistically? How much do we know about when you think about those deeper sessions like that go through all the layers? And I I've sp I've spoken about this with a couple of scientists and and it feels like there's many things going on when it comes to of course the brain, the the physiology, but like

If you try to describe like what's going on first on the first layer that then helps to get through the other layers, what do we know about that?

Benedict - Breathing Space (14:21)
This is an amazing area to talk about it and I love it. Unfortunately these days there is a lot of research going on into this area which which really excites me. So the powerful breathwork technique that I talk is cool that I teach amongst other things is called conscious connected breathwork. There's a lot of different variations of that but they all roughly have the same physiological action on the body. Now

I don't want, know, people will study this for years and years, so we can't go into too much detail. But when you breathe in this particular format, you are altering the levels of carbon dioxide and oxygen in your body. Now, actually, people try and alter those things through their diet quite a lot. But actually, you can do it with your breath very simply, because when you change the levels of carbon dioxide in your body and oxygen, it does some things. The most obvious thing that it does physiologically,

chemically is it changes the level of carbon dioxide and oxygen in your blood. Now when that happens that changes the pH level of your blood. I'm sure everyone's heard of acid rain.

Now acid

Patrick Obolgogiani (15:21)
Mm.

Benedict - Breathing Space (15:22)
rain is actually when carbon dioxide or some variation of carbon gets dissolved in rainwater in the sky and it comes down slightly acidic. Well the same thing happens in our blood. When carbon dioxide, is a byproduct of intracell respiration, our cells turning sugar into energy, carbon dioxide is produced and carbon dioxide needs to be released from the body so it travels around, it gets dissolved in the blood plasma and gets expelled when we

exhale, but that makes our blood a little bit more acidic. When we have more carbon dioxide, sorry, when we have less carbon dioxide in our blood, which is what we do when we do conscious connected breath, we are reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in our blood. And so actually what happens then is that makes our blood more alkaline.

all sorts of things start happening when our blood pH changes. Now, these are very minute changes and they happen really quickly. So it's not just this happens and then that happens. It's constantly flowing and changes. Some of the things that happen, it changes the the vasodilation of our blood cells. So it changes our blood pressure.

But then it also changes where our blood flows to. And this is a really interesting part. And I've been fortunate to take place in some studies on this at Sussex University. I got put into an MRI scanner and I did this technique. And so they can map where the blood flows to. Partly, it gets reduced into your brain.

Now that sounds really bad. Like blood flow getting out of your brain. Well, actually not completely because our brain is all sorts of different parts and the blood flow reduces from some parts, especially our frontal cortex and goes into other parts of our brain. The limbic system which controls, you know, is more associated with the emotions or the reptilian brain at the back, which is, you know, more associated with, you know, our basic survival. And that

kind of correlates with many of the experiences that people have when they do a deep recession. Their thinking brain recedes and their emotional experience brain, which, you know, we don't get to explore in our everyday so much, gets actually turned on a little bit more and we get to tap into that aspect of our being. So that's just one of the mechanistic things that happen. It's difficult to quantify because every single person has got a different physiology.

Patrick Obolgogiani (17:37)
Mm.

Benedict - Breathing Space (17:38)
Every

breath that we take has an impact. So it's a dance, it's a flow, it's not this happens and then this happens because it isn't the same.

In some ways, unless every time we put on a skull cap with electrodes on and did it, which would change the experience in itself, it is impossible to exactly quantify. But we know roughly the physiology and the biochemistry of what happens when we do this breath work. There's lots of other things I could talk about, but that's just a taste of some of the things that happen.

Patrick Obolgogiani (18:07)
Yeah, it's fascinating. I I've heard about like the basically the oxygen reduction when you which is kind of almost like counterintuitive, right? Where you people think that when you breathe more you would get more oxygen to the brain, but actually it's the opposite. But I haven't heard about the exact mechanism that happens like with preforeneural and then transferring to the back. That's fascinating.

Benedict - Breathing Space (18:27)
Mmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (18:28)
what what's maybe

one question like you mentioned like earlier that a lot of people when they go through this deep deep practice for like an hour of this type style of breathing, like there's no denying that people have these, you know, very deep subjective experiences.

And yet like when you're talking about it, like externally, whether it's like sa a facilitator's webpage or you know anywhere else, you know, there's the c some sense where you don't wanna be

kind of overselling the like almost like as like something mystical. how do you thread the balance as both like a teacher of teachers, but also like in your own in your own work? Like where do you draw the balance of like like not like dismissing lived experience people have while still kind of being a bit conservative around what are we actually talking about here?

Benedict - Breathing Space (19:19)
That is a really good question and there is a lot of debate and talk around this. When you see facilitators with videos of people having big emotional cathartic releases, from many experienced facilitators there's a lot of caution around this and selling that kind of big experience, maybe even promising a spiritual awakening. And it isn't really, I don't believe it's responsible to do that. We're not

Patrick Obolgogiani (19:43)
Mm.

Benedict - Breathing Space (19:44)
miracle cure salesmen. We're not saying you do this and you're gonna have this

exceptional release and I think that can be problematic, should we say, ethically as well as anything else.

But there is no denying that this happens. Now, one of the things that I feel is a particular mission of mine is to normalize exceptional experiences, maybe even miraculous experiences. As humans, the access to those supernormal states of consciousness should just be something that we accept that happens. It is part of being human.

So being able to travel to mystical states or magical states or places where there is deep emotional expression or release. Well, wouldn't that be amazing if that was just accepted reality that we have the potential to do this, that we exist in all these ways. So personally, what I do was, you know, it might happen, it might not happen. Really.

One of the things that is really important to me as a breath worker is giving people agency, empowering them. This isn't about me saying, I'm going to doing this to you, this is going to happen. This is giving people the choice, the invitation to explore this aspect of their own journey if they wish to. If the breath guides them to that place, well, let's accept that. But let's not try and force it. Let's not chase that big high. Let's not just go for that big emotional cathartic release.

because that might not be what you need at that moment. It might be that it is, in which case, hallelujah. But if it isn't, and there's something else you need, also hallelujah. This is what you need.

Patrick Obolgogiani (21:14)
Yeah. Yeah, it's also I think both for people kind of doing the services you mentioned, but also for companies like ourselves where

You kind of wanna stay grounded in what is known, but then again, as you mentioned, like with consciousness, it's so abstract as a space and and like whatever you experience is is is subjective true. And I guess what's what's helping here is like the the research on consciousness itself is improving and like there's the frontier which kind of is ahead. But even like what's accepted it feels like it's changing slowly, like the what was true maybe ten years ago is different than what is norm now and what is accepted

In the kind of more mainstream scientific debate around consciousness and what this different states it has. So I think in a way, hopefully kind of Breathwork as a community can add to that and keep pushing the frontier in what's, as you mentioned, what is normal without overstepping, because I think that's the danger what I see is like at least this, again, this if you think about a community, whenever there's like these.

like stepping over the boundary, it r erodes trust, I think, for the entire community easily in front of the kind of the the mainstream like audience that ultimately we wanna help here. So it's it's a you know difficult balance to thread I guess for everyone and every one of us.

Benedict - Breathing Space (22:22)
It is.

There is a place for it. And I don't want to just say that is wrong and people shouldn't do that because those experiences for many, many people can be a real wake up moment. It can be where something changes.

Patrick Obolgogiani (22:34)
Course. Yes.

Benedict - Breathing Space (22:36)
Whether it's right for everyone at that moment.

That's where it becomes problematic because when you're that activated, there is the potential for things to go wrong. If it isn't a really well-held, safe place for people, then there is the opportunity, what we call re-traumatizing people, where experiences come up and are not well-held in that place where the processing goes wrong. It can do more harm than good. So there is a place for them.

I don't mind saying this, the places that have those big glossy reels of people having those big spiritual experiences are often the places that are doing a lot of marketing, that rely on a lot of people coming in, that actually for their business model they need that as a selling point to keep themselves afloat. That doesn't sit with me ethically.

to do that and sometimes

Patrick Obolgogiani (23:22)
Mm.

Benedict - Breathing Space (23:23)
it feels that this isn't about serving the breath, this is the breath serving maybe something that is more profit driven. So there's concerns around that for me but I don't want to judge anyone else. Everyone there is serving the breath in some way or the other and in other ways the breath knows what's best. If that is what wants to happen, I can't knock what other people do. I'm going to concentrate on what I can change and how I can serve the world.

Patrick Obolgogiani (23:47)
Yes, yes. I do want to talk about the craft of facilitation which you al already alluded to, but before we do, I just want to touch on something you mentioned, trauma informed as a word. I think I've seen it now somewhere else as well. Like how do you define what that means in your work and maybe what does it look like in practice? How's it different from something that is not trauma informed? Breath facilitation.

Benedict - Breathing Space (24:12)
my goodness, that word gets banded around so much, doesn't it? You see it on every website. So there's lots of different variations, trauma informed, trauma sensitive, trauma trained.

Patrick Obolgogiani (24:21)
Mm.

Benedict - Breathing Space (24:22)
I don't really like the word trauma very much. I don't think it's an accurate description of realistically what's happening inside of us, but we can only work with what we've got. What does trauma informed mean? Well, really it isn't any different to good facilitation or good teaching or good space holding.

It is making a place safe for people. That's the first thing. To make sure that they feel welcome and accepted. That people will not be shamed or rejected. And that's really important. It is about empowering people to giving them choice.

to giving them agency to decide, say in the context of breathwork, how far and how deep that they want to go. You know, as humans, we're often in the habit of giving away our authority. When we go to visit the doctor or a medical professional or even a therapist, we'll ask them to interpret or to, you know, to heal us. But what if the best way to do this is to take charge of our own experience? You know, with the breath is what is right for me at the moment?

So one of the ways of good facilitation is you're inviting people. You're not telling them how to do this. Now it is a craft, you're right. It is a skill that comes with practice and experience and understanding. And that's why a good training is a long time over a long period. For instance, our training recommended by the...

you know, the standard setting bodies, the GBPA is 400 hours, at least 400 hours over at least two years. And that

Patrick Obolgogiani (25:41)
Mm.

Benedict - Breathing Space (25:42)
is a lot of work, trust me, because it takes that amount of time. There is a science to facilitation as well. You know, I was a teacher for a long time and I used to teach some of the most difficult kids, some of the most hated subjects, French, maths. You know, I used to teach all of those things. How do you teach that? Well, you know, the rules to good classroom management actually

where you make the learning environment fun, you make it accessible to people, you make it relevant to people, you make it exciting. Actually, when you start to do that in a breathwork session, you make it accessible to people, you can do this. You make it fun. We are gonna have so much fun together doing this. It's gonna be amazing. You make it safe for people. It's all right to get it wrong, by the way. There's no right way to do this. Whatever happens for you, let's just say now it's okay.

You put clear boundaries in place, firm boundaries. If you've got contraindication, if you're perhaps on a substance, if you're not on your right stage of mind, maybe this isn't right for you at this moment. Maybe let's try it another time when you are ready for this. So there's boundaries. You don't have to enforce them like a dictator.

but you make a space welcoming for people to come into, you make it safe for them to have their experience, you give them agency and choice to how far and deep they go, you make it fun, exciting and accessible, then that is what makes a trauma sensitive, informed kind of experience for people.

Patrick Obolgogiani (27:01)
Hmm. Yeah, you mentioned the 400 hour, which as you mentioned is is a long time, but I'm curious to hear, like, I I'm sure even within a cohort of people who go through the foot those four hundred hours, there are some that you would deem like like the best. They're really good at what they do, and some that are good, but there's a difference. I'm I'm curious to hear what's the difference between those that are great versus those that are merely good?

Benedict - Breathing Space (27:25)
Practice.

Like anything else, it's riding a bike. The more you do it, the better you get. You know, without any question. Because you learn from experience. When something occurs, you'll learn from that and move on. Some of the... It's difficult to like... You know, when you say best, I mean, that is, you know, a really subjective term. There's people I respond

Patrick Obolgogiani (27:41)
Yeah. Great.

Benedict - Breathing Space (27:44)
to a little bit more. Everyone comes with their... Well, at least for me.

A good breath work training isn't saying here's a method, learn it, this is how you facilitate it. It's not black and white like that because everyone has got a different flavor and a different style of how they do things. Everyone will do a different bit of their personality to it. So I love it when people come in and they train with us and perhaps they've had a training or a lot of expertise in sound healing or they come in as a house DJ and they mix it up with

house music or perhaps they are a yoga teacher with great experience of restorative yoga of putting people into like really comfortable positions or perhaps they want to kind of combine breath work with I don't know salsa dancing.

And when you start to realize and understand that breathwork is part of all those experiences and breathwork can support and nourish those experiences and you have an experienced teacher who is not afraid to let go, to explore and to grow, bring their own facilitator, then it becomes like a banquet of food. You know, what is better lobster or, I don't know, potato soup?

It depends who you are, what you are craving at that particular moment. But it is a buffet of things that you can enjoy all the time. So the best facilitators are ones who will combine everything from their lives, that they will have a lot of practice. They're not afraid to dance and to experiment and to live in the moment. They don't rely on a method or a script or a form that they are able to respond as themselves, relying on their experience and their wisdom to create something amazing. That is what I think makes you really

good facilitator.

Patrick Obolgogiani (29:20)
Hmm. Yeah, allows us also like to basically have endless variety if you're making it basically unique to yourself, which is beautiful. What about like

You already kind of to some extent answered this when when you said like just practice. But it is when you think about new people coming out of the program, whether yours or in someone else's, it it does feel like it's it's a change that people are doing, partly to gain purpose. Like very often I'm seeing people shifting from corporate world. They feel they have maybe a transformative experience themselves in any form, and basically they want to share that that feeling to other people they they care about. And thus

kind of train themselves to be a facilitator. Some of course may might keep their main thing as main thing, but some actually have like an a ambition to move to this full time if they can. Do you have any any thoughts on like what makes up

kind of a sustainable practice for someone getting into the field? Like what do you see maybe as some of the mistakes people do early on and how could how do they actually get to stand on their own two feet, especially when early on you might not get as much practice as you want to if you're not getting the clients in. Any any kind of thoughts you wanted to share for someone recently moving into this this field?

Benedict - Breathing Space (30:34)
I will first of all speak from my own experience. When I finished my training, I was

Patrick Obolgogiani (30:37)
Please.

Benedict - Breathing Space (30:37)
on my own. And this was 15 years ago. Breakawork is a big business these days. a global enterprise with people all over the world doing different things with Breakawork. 15 years ago, it was much more niche. No one had really heard of it. I was on my own. I completed my training, but what next? What could I do?

The first thing, and this is something that I really wanted to change in what I do in breathing space is to make sure that people are not alone. That make sure that they have the continuing support of a community that will nourish them, that will support them when things are...

going difficult, the arm around the shoulder or perhaps the wisdom of encouragement in the ear, but also to celebrate when things are going well. And that's something, you know, genuinely we do not do enough of in our lives. We all have that voice of that inner critic saying, you've got to do more, you've got to do better, you're not good enough to do this. But I think we need to change the dialogue around this. What about, wow, that was amazing what you just did.

Or, I've just had a victory today, I didn't get stressed all day and I feel really good about that. Or I led three people into breath work, or I led one person into breath work for three minutes. You could have changed not just someone's life there, but the world, the way going forward. So that's the first thing. Making sure that you are supported, that you are connected, that you are nourished. And that is really serving...

the breath as well. And when you look at it like this, this isn't just about what am I going to do, you know, how do I support this, but how do I serve and support the breath when you take a bigger vision than just yourself and what you do. So that's the first thing. There's all sorts of other tips that I can do. One of the things that I love saying is you've got to think big because the work that it takes to have a one-on-one client,

is pretty much the same effort that it takes to run a workshop where you might have 10 people come up or 15. And that is the same, pretty much the same effort that it takes to the same planning that it takes to run a retreat where you might take people away for a weekend. But the economies of scale, if you're just looking at what can support me is much higher. So I know for many people it is their ambition to run restorative or transformational retreats for people where people come out of their normal everyday existence. And in the connection

of a community have something extraordinary happen. And I will say that often just that by itself coming out of your normal everyday life and being in true connection and community which isn't something that people get to have in their normal

Often that's enough. You don't need to have those big breathwork sessions. So there is no one path of what a successful facilitator looks like. You're right. Some people will just do it on the side. Some people might have retired and just want to serve the world. Some people say, like I did, like...

What else am going to do with my life? I'm here to serve. Some people might want to open up a school to train others as I did. Some people might want to take on high-end corporate clients, which will pay three, four, 500 euros an hour to finance themselves. All of that is welcome. So there isn't one way to do it. The best advice is don't try and do it alone.

Patrick Obolgogiani (33:22)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, it's we need people around us, especially when you're moving from an office where you probably had, you know, friends around you and suddenly you're by yourself, it can be probably very lonely. same for any solopreneur, which basically you are as a facilitator, so it's it's good good

Benedict - Breathing Space (33:36)
Yes you are.

Patrick Obolgogiani (33:37)
advice is to figure out and also I think it's

You know, you are the average or whatever, five people around you. So like in a way if you have other people that are going the same direction, it can be a great supportive mechanism.

One question I want to ask you, I know of course you deal with this mostly felt sense and of course in the sessions you don't need any technology, but as you know at Alvious we work with data and and hopefully can expose or at least create meta awareness for people around the way they breathe. And I was just curious to hear like if you could have something like objective around the way people breathe or otherwise just are

in the world, what would you want to have for every client between sessions, for example, that would be interesting to see either for themselves or for you as a coach?

Benedict - Breathing Space (34:25)
This is great question actually and I have thought about this question in the answer. And I'm going to talk about the empirical things that you can actually measure because the internal subtle things which I think many people really want like my happiness or my level of fulfilment or my wisdom level, by their very nature they are unmeasurable and they cannot be. Two things jumped out at me. The first thing that I think would be really useful is breaths per minute.

So.

when you're using breath word for your physical wellbeing, these are the things that you can often measure and chart over period of time. And I think breaths per minute would be a really good one. Generally, we want to lower our breaths per minute. We want to have deep, slow, longer breaths, so fewer breaths. For those people who study Bottecho, for instance, the less we breathe, the better. So that's one thing that I think would be really, really useful to

measure breaths per minute and I suspect if that technology isn't here already which I think it may well be I would say that's one of the things. The other thing that if you study breath work especially for this physical layer you'll know one of my favorite authors Patrick McCowan is this is like front and center is the importance of nasal breathing

Most people chronically over breathe through their mouth, which is not optimal for your health because your nose has got all the equipment to clean, filter, humidify, sterilize the air that comes in. So if you could have a device that measured the proportion or the percentage of nasal breathing to mouth breathing.

I think that would revolutionise people's ability to chart their breathwork and through that their health and wellbeing and see the difference that they would feel and their fitness and their performance when they started to switch and they noticed a change in more nasal breathing to their mouth breathing.

What do you think here as someone who focuses on that empirical, measurable side of breathwork? I'd love to hear your answer to that question.

Patrick Obolgogiani (36:23)
Hm. Yeah, it's something we've been talking about internally as well for the last several weeks and months as we've been working towards an actual

Product experience, which is now, you know, finally in just the next couple of weeks going be released to people, for the first 50 at least beta testers. and essentially where we've landed here is that we have basically three kind of almost like loops or connection points that could add a lot of value. So the first one is

Is help people in the moment. And if you think about the existing wearables where it feels like the biggest gap is, is exactly that like the fact that they're really measuring what happened yesterday instead of what's happening right now. And essentially that's around either it's the combinatory thing where it's like multiple things playing a role, which could be something that we're, for example, thinking of calling like energy. It's basically basically arousal. It's a arousal your nervous system going up. And when it's happening without your

activity level going up, meaning you're still and yet your system is like getting wired, which is probably going to be your breathing rate going up, it's your heart rate potentially going up. And importantly this thing called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which basically is it's now called respiratory HRV, also, you know, triggering, it mean it basically is a great proxy for your arousal state. And we can combine all that to see, hey, that is happening, and again you're not moving, so you might want to get a little nudge.

And that creates the first like loop where you get detection of the state, you get nudge physiologically with this like very low frequency vibration. And then if and then you can either just like become more meta-aware of your own state and and kind of change it if if you know what to do, or you can quickly open the app and do a breathing routine, most likely gonna be resonance breathing, longer exhale, and so forth. So that's like the first loop.

and then in the second one, it's like more a daily loop. So at the of the day, you check, you give or you're given a summary of what are the learnings from the day, applying everything we can track from variability of breathing to the the kind of heart metrics, the retrophore metrics, and just trying to see correlations between your behavior and the actual data. And it's something that, you know, going back to what you were saying around like this the things that are unmeasurable, at least we have proxies in subjective kind of state.

So, for example, we have this like two-dimension cross of your emotional state. So you have energy level on the horizontal axis, and then you have the vertical axis, and then you have the pleasantness on the vertical. And basically what it helps us to do is you can map your emotional state at each point of the day. So particularly after each exercise, but also if you get a nudge, you might want to quickly like log where are you? Because sometimes when you're aroused, it just means you're excited. And that's fantastic for you.

But sometimes you're actually angry, and that's a very different state. Both are high energy, physiologically look very similar. So, what we can now do is just ask people where are you in the year, and then basically start learning what did it look like for you physiologically, and also how do we help you move to where you want to go emotionally? So, even though, as you mentioned early on, like we're focusing on the first layer, the physiological layer, we are starting to go into the emotional layer more and more. And I feel like when it comes to the true value, I think it will actually come.

Benedict - Breathing Space (39:29)
Amazing, I can't wait to see it come out and congratulations on your first run coming out. I'm super excited for you.

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:34)
Thank you. Thank

you, Ben. I appreciate it. Maybe a few just little questions here, and then if you'd be open to maybe we can close with something very short for the for the audience to, you know, get their system in the in the right place. But before that, I'd love to hear a couple of things. So one is there's a lot of myths going around in in the around breathing, breath work and so forth. What is the one myth that you'd kind of want to bust today for the people listening?

Benedict - Breathing Space (40:00)
Mouth breathing is always bad.

Patrick Obolgogiani (40:03)
Hmm. Can you elaborate?

Benedict - Breathing Space (40:05)
Yes, like as a daily, everyday breath work, you should breathe through your nose. That's

Patrick Obolgogiani (40:10)
Mm-hmm.

Benedict - Breathing Space (40:10)
where all the equipment there to prepare the air to hit your lungs happens. But there is a place for mouth breathing. When you do it with intentionality, for a reason, then there's some extraordinary things can happen.

because of those physiological changes that that will induce that we talked about a little bit earlier. So I want to dispel the myth that mouth breathing is always bad. There is a place for it.

Patrick Obolgogiani (40:32)
Yeah, great. You've written books, so definitely people should check them out. but besides your own, what would be a book you would recommend people read if they're interested to learn more about the topic of breath work and breathing?

Benedict - Breathing Space (40:44)
Well, the first book on our reading list is Breath by James Nester. As an introduction to breathwork and the power of breathwork, I think it makes a difference because he's an award-winning journalist and he knows how to write, he knows to tell a compelling story. And so much of what he says is...

is so powerful and it will open up the eyes of so many, especially around things like nose breathing and mouth breathing, but also the deeper effects that breath work can have on you. if you have never read anything about breath work, I would recommend that book. If you have already started reading breath work books, mean, for what you're interested in and the area that you wish to explore, there's a lot of different things that I would recommend.

I think one of the most comprehensive books that I would recommend is Jessica Tibbs, Breathing and Psychotherapy. If you haven't connected with Jessica yet,

Patrick Obolgogiani (41:33)
No.

Benedict - Breathing Space (41:33)
she is one of the founders and the co-directors of the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance. She's an extraordinary individual.

has created the Universal Breathing Declaration, created so much and she's been doing this a very long time. She is an extraordinary person. She's deeply...

spiritual person. When you are in her presence you feel different and that's a big claim to make but her capacity for love is huge. But that isn't all she is. Her understanding of breath work from all levels from the physiological and she does the science in a very approachable understandable way which some of the other authors

get so quickly into the deep biochemistry that it is difficult for the lay person to understand. So for a comprehensive understanding of breath work that will go very deep, I would recommend Jessica Dibbs, Breathing and Psychotherapy, came out about a year ago.

Patrick Obolgogiani (42:23)
Awesome, brilliant, thank you. And last one maybe, if if somebody is where you were when you had that resignation letter in your in your pocket back in your high school teacher days, what would you recommend that they do today and and next?

Benedict - Breathing Space (42:37)
I'm really surprised you found that story. for those of you who don't know anything about me, when I was a high school teacher, I knew that this career wasn't healthy for me and it really wasn't serving in the community that I was in for a long time. But I couldn't quit.

I couldn't leave just when I wanted to and I'm sure that will resonate with many of your listeners who feel trapped in a career perhaps that they know isn't serving them. So what I did, I wrote out my resignation letter at the beginning of a school year and I put it in my pocket and that was my security blanket. Whenever things got too bad I knew I could just whip it out.

and just going up to the head and say, right, you know what, I'm ready, I'm done, I'm out of here. I kept it in there until it was the right time for me to leave. So that's what I would probably recommend to everyone. If you feel trapped, if you feel stuck, if you can't find a way out, well, just be prepared to pull.

Pull the life jacket rip cord to smash open that emergency window. Write out that letter but just know it's there. Start

Patrick Obolgogiani (43:31)
Yeah.

Benedict - Breathing Space (43:31)
to plan what exiting might look like for you in a longer term, in three months, in six months, in a year. What will happen when you hand that letter in? But just know that your own well-being, your own life, your own life is worth more than whatever is happening to you in that moment. There is something that is not serving you and is causing you hurt and harm and through you

everyone else connected to you, well, you know, there comes a point where you have to get out. If it's now, take out that letter. If it's in three months or six months when you are clearer about what comes next, then let it be that time when a transition may be more gentle for you.

Patrick Obolgogiani (44:05)
Hmm. Yeah, it's a beautiful way to end this. Ben, thank you so much. Where can people learn more about breathing space and the work you're doing?

Benedict - Breathing Space (44:15)
And breathing space, if you Google breathing space breath work, you'll find us. The website is makesomebreathingspace.com. Breathingspace.com was taken. But I love the idea that it is a conscious decision that we have to choose to breathe. is an expression of empowerment. So look up my name, breath work, you'll find me somehow.

Patrick Obolgogiani (44:33)
Right. Ben, thank you so much. And for everyone we'll definitely add a few links into the notes, show notes on our website. But with that, have a lovely time in Canada, right? And yes.

Benedict - Breathing Space (44:42)
Well, it is, but perhaps to close, Patrick, maybe we

could just end just as we began with a few conscious breaths together.

Thank you.

Patrick Obolgogiani (45:09)
Thank you, sir.