Hi there everybody. Welcome to another episode of
the cloud based Mayhem.
We'll different music to start us off here.
That is Jeremy Will Wi sitting right next
to me playing his hand pan.
And this is gonna get us in the
mood for this episode. We just all got
out of the water in the Columbia River
and did some breath work this morning, big
group of us here at S for the
Us Nationals.
And we've been doing this We did a
bunch of this last year at Us nationals,
and he and I recorded this show and
my microphones were all messed up, so we
lost that 1, and wanted to do it
again.
Jeremy is an
icon in our
in our para lighting tribe here in the
Us, and he got into breath work and
cold punch stuff, kinda of the Wim hof
method
about 8 years ago, and he's been sharing
it with our community and how it helps.
You to be calm when you need to
be calm or or you need more energy,
you can use it to get more energy,
but it really affects performance and safety
and all kinds of physiological things where you
can really kinda take control of what's going
on in your life, so it makes you
better on the ground.
And in the air, very powerful
and really, very easy,
things you can do to
literally changed your mindset and physiology
instantly. And so it's a great talk, and
we had a lot of fun with this.
Second time around.
You're gonna hear some road noise in the
background. I'm sorry about that. And it's very
windy outside and we had to do this
in the camper, and we're pretty close to
a road there's a little bit of side
noise, but
just ignore it and enjoy this great talk
with a really good friend of mine.
Terribly well need.
Hey, Jeremy.
Gavin. How we doing? Good. We're gonna get
to do this round 2. We did it
exactly a year ago here in Chilean, and
my microphones were screw, and we nailed it.
So we're gonna try to nail round 2.
Perfect.
Oh, did a really nice session with you
here at the beach a little while ago
with a bunch of the pilots here. Those
you listening were in Sc for Us Nationals.
We've got a weather day. It's really windy,
So we're or inside, you're gonna hear some
road noise going back and forth. But that's
the best we could do.
But Jeremy tell me what You got into
all these years ago. And last year was
7 years ago. So now it's 8 years
ago,
breathing Wim hof
what is it? What's the physiology of it?
Why are we talking about?
Yeah. Perfect. Well, thanks for having me on
the show gavin. And, yeah, like, you said
a re recording a year later.
So, yeah, My background is I've been fine
flying para
for 10:11 years and about 8 years ago
now.
I was actually on a van trip I
was traveling down in New Zealand. And I
was out I was out surfing 1 day.
And I met a local out in the
water, and I needed some help because my
van had some rust on it. So I
couldn't get my
warrant of fitness is what they call it
down in New Zealand to register my van.
And, so I was asking the surfer and
he said, oh, I got a buddy with
car shop, he can help you out with
that. Perfect. And he goes, then he invites
me to... You can come stay at my
farm tonight.
You're cool. Let's, you know, you can park
your van there. And so when I got
up there, I met his girlfriend who owned
a yoga studio on the North Island in
New Zealand,
And I got talking with them and they're
like, hey, you should you should come stay
for this. There's a Wim hof
event, and I'm like, what is Wim hof?
They're oh, man. This I like climbs mount
everest and shorts and no sure, and you
can, like,
you know, sit in ice water for 2
hours and do all this crazy stuff. And
I'm like, okay, that That sounds crazy, but,
you know, I'm living in Savannah at this
time, so I'm like, alright. Well I'll stick
around for a couple more days and check
it out.
And so I went to this
this,
workshop. Is about a 3 hour workshop, and
the Wim hof method has 3 pillars. Its
breath work,
it's cold exposure and it's mindset training.
I was like, yeah. Let's let's go check
this out.
So we did some breathing practices there.
And then we got in a bucket of
cold water, and we did some other exercises,
and I was jazz up.
And I left that thing
going and practicing myself,
because the breath work especially gave me this
sense of autonomy over my thoughts. And my
actions and
allowed me to regulate my nervous system,
kinda from the inside out.
No longer was I looking for external
validation or sources to change how I feel.
I could I could produce it myself. Yep.
And so from there, I practiced for a
couple years, and then I started showing all
my friends around town.
I showed my mom.
She
is very anxious about a lot of things
that I don't think are things you should
be. Anxious about and like most anxious. Yeah.
Exactly. You know, if we needed to go
to the airport. It didn't matter if we
left 4 hours early. She was racing into
the airport. And
1 day, I said, hey, mom. Let let's
just We got time to go to the
airport.
Give me 10 minutes.
And I guided her through a breath work
session for 10 minutes.
And she got up and she... She was,
like, a different person. She started doing the
laundry. She started doing these other things until
the point where I said, okay, mom. We
gotta go to the airport.
And
so there was this just this direct correlation,
and it was almost like this magic that
changes your physiology to whatever state you'd like
to get into.
And so I kept showing my friends and
family, and then at some, I was like,
maybe I should just become instructor.
And so this started as a total passion
project.
And I put over a thousand people into
ice plunge and done workshops and breath work
things. And
you know, I'm... I've sold real estate for
13 years, and this was kind of my
chinese. Side gig just having fun with it,
and it's really transformed my life, and
you know, I I love sharing with the
para community because
here we are, a group of, you know,
psycho that think were birds and
times we are.
But para you can agree is such a
mental
sport. You know? I mean,
and we have to react very quickly. And
we have to react and call manner else
the situation can you know, cascade and get
totally out of control.
So I think training the mind is
some of the most important things in para,
not only super perform well, but to stay
safe
to
and also to enjoy your time on the
ground when you're not para. So
breath work, cold plunging, the Wim hof method
has been super powerful and my progression as
a pilot, and
I just... I I love sharing of Yeah.
Let let's dive into that because when you
first approached me, you sent this great email,
which we just reviewed,
and
a couple of the things
grabbed me in that that I hadn't thought
of when it when I think of breath
work and
you know, mindfulness,
I guess, would be a way to put
that, But you said, you know, this can
really impact performance and safety.
And you just said that, dive into that.
How how can we
literally change how
we
our our our... We can literally change our
ability in the air and also our
calm ness in the air. Yeah used to
it and it's quick. It's amazing. Yeah.
Yeah. So the science
with breath work is...
So
We are a big electrical system.
We send impulses from the body, to the
brain from the brain down the body to
move,
to feel to act, whatever it is.
And our our central nervous system, our electrical
system, and we have,
multiple parts of it.
For the term, fight flight or sympathetic nervous
system running from the bear,
a big collapse.
You have that big collapse and recover it.
You you may be shaking a little bit,
scared or jacked up. However you wanna respond
to it.
That's our sympathetic nervous system kicking on, dump
a bunch of adrenaline,
cortisol into our system, and we have this
hormonal release and, like, if we make it
out okay, then we're good. We're stoked, you
know, Know, it's like. It feels good. Telling
the buddies. Yeah. If
that experience
stays with you, and you have almost a
fear injury over that
it's a recurring it's it's stress. It's it's
chronic stress that you're experiencing.
On the other side of the tone, we
have our parasympathetic
nervous system, which is or rest and relaxation,
rest and digestion.
And that,
you know, if that is firing too much,
it manifests self as being with ar or
un,
and, you know, not wanna get off the
couch or do whatever.
So on both sides of the
sympathetic or the parasympathetic nervous system,
if we have too much of 1 or
the other, it creates issues, But if we
have spikes in 1 part of the nervous
system, like, we
have that collapse. We recover. We're like, yeah.
We're good. We're we're safe again, then it's
awesome. It's like it's a... It's building our
resilience.
But in our modern day, if we have
the term chronic stress or we have this
low level
sympathetic nervous system response,
Maybe you're sitting in traffic.
Maybe your kids are crying,
you're stressed about work.
If we have that constantly constantly constantly,
chronic stress,
and that creates really
big detrimental
health effects.
K?
So 1 way to get out of that
is to have spikes in are either are
sympathetic or a parasympathetic,
and then we come down to baseline
equilibrium of our nervous system.
So good way to think about it is
if you're feeling anxious,
or you're feeling like a little uneasy and
you go out for a run or you
go for a bike ride or you go
for a long period flight. You come and
land
in your content.
You're like, oh, I'm go beers with my
buddy. Like, there's nothing else I'd rather do,
contentment. That is the balance of our nervous
And it doesn't take going for a run
or hiking or para. We can achieve that
state through
just laying in our bed or laying on
the ground and doing 10 minutes of breath.
So those weather days or the days you
can't get out or there's just on an
inability, You now have a tool
to control how you feel
in the comfort of your home or, you
know, wherever you like like to be.
So with the breath work, the power of
it is we can manipulate our nervous system
to achieve the state we would like to
go to.
So we're up on launch,
maybe it's before a race. Maybe it's just
before flight, and you got these jittery
nervous that happens.
You can sit down and do 3 or
4, 5 minutes of a certain type of
breathing that will get into a little bit
later, and it will pretty quickly calm your
nervous system, and you can feel that calm
happen.
Likewise, if you take a big collapse in
the air and you're still on this big
fight, but you're just feeling super anxious, we
can breathe in a certain way while we're
flying,
that will
physiological
calm us down.
Not even mentally It's like, we will calm
down. Mh.
And on the other side of the coin,
if you're feeling the thirds, you're feeling un
unregulated, you're like, god if I I love
flying, but, like, for some reason, I just
not that. Yeah.
We can breathe a certain way to,
you know, amp that up or get ready.
So the cool part is is you have
the ability to control your physical always. You
have the ability to determine how you feel.
And it's really powerful because it puts
the power back into ourselves. So we're no
longer looking at external factors says fix our
issues. We're like, I'm gonna fix... I'm gonna
go within
do a certain type of breath work and
I'm gonna change the state I'm into the
state I'd like to like to go to.
What I liked about it, I mean, in
the
work I've done with you last year and
then this morning here,
everybody says the same thing. It's it's immediate.
And it's easy. You know, You you get
the benefits
instantly. You'd lay down, you start doing it
and you're I mean, we did a session
for this recording a year ago where, you
know, you can do things. You can do
it in certain ways where it's almost el
ng. And when you come out of this
just in this bliss
state, which is really
quite cool.
Okay.
Yeah. No see why you're still doing it.
Yeah.
No. It's like,
Wim hof method, 1 of Wim quotes is
getting high on your own supply. Right. So
it's like... That's definitely wim off before.
Yeah. So when we mix, you know, like,
this morning,
we collected some people from the from camp.
We determined, you know, me and you were
gonna go out and do a breath session
and then it's like, hey, guys wanna come.
Hey, guys wanna come. I think there end
up being 10 of us or something. Yep.
And guided through some different breath work techniques,
and then we jumped in the Columbia river
together
as a tribe or crew
and experienced
voluntary
discomfort.
And I wanna highlight the word voluntary
discomfort.
We are putting ourselves with the with doing
a cold plunge
and doing this breath work practice because we
sometimes do long breath reach tensions.
We are voluntarily putting ourselves into discomfort.
And by doing that, we build resilience with
their body. We build this
determination. Alright. I'm gonna do something hard. For
example, I'm gonna go... It's this morning. It's
a little windy. It's a little chilly here
in, which usually doesn't happen.
But we went and jumped in the Columbia.
That's probably high forties, and we floated down
together as a 10 of us.
And everyone's everybody's like, oh, it's called. You
know, it's like, getting all excite and jacked
up, and then we get out of the
water.
We walk back up, and then we we
circle up and start doing this, like tribal
movement. This horse stance and hoo and and
hahn and
just building the calm
within it. And in a very short amount
of time, you feel warm. And you feel
connected.
And you feel connected at a
deeper level than,
you know, when we go to these para
events and we go fly, we always wanna
you know, tell everybody about our flight and
anyway. This is why my collapse. Oh, this,
and I was like, calling this line and
it's And it's really cool. You know? Like,
that's what we'd like to. But at some
level, you know, there's ability to go deeper
with people and
talk about things that
maybe aren't para related, but maybe that need
to be
chatted about for 1 party's sake or the
other party So I think
think we have something really special in the
Us community, especially the comp seen.
And I can sharing these experiences that are
not exactly flying, but at a flying event
really
adds another layer and strength to that to
that bond. I would say it it... It's
kind of building
connective tissue. It's making the l and tendons
stronger
some know that are between all of us.
It's... Like you said it's allowing us
it's allowing but... Man, especially who are not
I'm not typically a very emotionally intelligent person.
I would say, I'm not very emotionally available,
and it allows
us to be more vulnerable or
open to
a man hug.
Nice get hug.
Totally. And,
you know, the... You take para, it's probably...
I don't know what the exact numbers, but
you know, probably 90 percent,
85 now. Shifting is participants Yep are are
men. Yep.
And,
you know, there's a smaller percentage of women
here, and we,
you know, know that women are intelligent. More
won't more emotionally emotionally available intelligent. And so
we have this... My majority group in this
sport
that we don't really get balanced out of
the most promotional intelligence of women even though
man, though numbers of women they're fantastic in
sport it's it's so fun of see.
So we've got this sport where they're...
We
we've got a core group that's not so
emotionally intelligent. Mh. Or maybe just don't have
the tools of the ability to go there
or feel uncomfortable going there, and then don't
have
an easy
way to see how to go there with
somebody. K?
So I think intuitively, even it's as guys,
we
can feel when there's something going on with
her buddy.
We can feel, oh, that... You know, my
friend just seems a little off on launch
from my friend. It feels like he's dealing
with some thing, But we don't really know
how to ask,
and we feel like,
I just won't say anything.
And I don't think that's a about method.
You know,
I think there's a decent bit of mental
health
she's in this... In the community.
In the world, it's not just the para
community. But here we are talking about para.
So let's let's talk about that. Okay.
You know, we've we've had loss. We've had
trauma. We've had injuries. There's things with family
there's things with friends outside of flying, and
sometimes we use flying as the escape.
So, you know, we're on the ground and
we're like, feeling all sad and depressed, but
then we go flying and we we forget
about that. We're we're in the moment of
what's happening,
and it feels really good.
And then we can... And then we land.
And maybe we have, like, some weather days
or we can't go flying or without these
work commitments and we kinda turned this like,
real kinda asshole on the ground.
Yeah.
Because we think that this external thing of
going flying is what's gonna solve all our
things.
And if we can,
you know,
we can practice for breath work, for example,
we're going into a a cold body of
water or at water,
doesn't take as much time as flying, but
it allows us to
go inward in, like, feel and and sense
own thoughts and feelings.
And you can also get to that state
by talking to your buddies about something that
is going on with them. You know.
And if you don't know how to ask,
I think a a suggestion I've used that
seem to
work for wells. If, you know, you have
a buddy up on launch or you have
a buddy that you feel like there's something
going on with him.
You can approach him and say,
hey, man. It seems like something's
a little off
And I just wanna tell you that, hey,
last week I was up on lunch, and
I was feeling a little off, and I
was just, like, having,
you know, me and my wife had a
fight. Mh.
Or something happened with my kid.
And
so I just... I don't know if that's
what it is.
But I'm here if if you wanna talk
about something.
And then you just gotta shut up and
sit there.
You know, and allow that to trans. And
maybe... And the thing is that friend might
say, no, no. I'm fine.
Okay.
But he's probably gonna... If there's... If he's
not fine. He's probably gonna come back to
you later or text you later and be
like, hey, man. I appreciate you. This is
at what actually is going on.
So I think within the community normalizing the
sense of, like,
especially as guys like, hey, let's let's talk
about deeper things besides you know, our flight
and how we did that. I mean, that's
fine we can do that. But if you
see something and you can tell something's going
on with somebody, like,
Let's just approach it.
So...
Yeah. You talked about
this morning, you were talking about how the
importance of
the way you breathe to transport
hemoglobin and carbon dioxide all these things. I'd
love to be free you to revisit that.
Just
what's going on physiological
how how important it is to breathe through
your nose,
and how that relates to
performance. How that relates to,
being able high altitude training, training in general.
Sure. Why we feel so much better when
we return to
the coast. Mh.
Some of that stuff. Yeah. Alright. So we'll
we'll dip into the science
a little bit and science nerds out there.
And we'll kinda will keep this pretty pretty
basic. Yeah.
So when we inhale, we inhale air, which
is a mixture of oxygen so the other
other molecules.
And when we inhale the air comes in,
it goes into our lungs,
and then it fuses into our blood.
Because these a alveoli Sacks at the end
of our. There all these millions and millions
of Sacks at the end of our lungs.
Our lungs aren't 2 bags. There are millions
and millions of small bags. Okay.
Sweet inhale that has oxygen in it.
It diffuse into blood.
And
the... The molecule of oxygen will attach to
our red blood cell,
and in essence the glue that binds it
is is called hemoglobin.
K?
So that you can think of it too
as, like,
you know, the oxygen a little kid getting
on a school bus,
and the red blood cells the school bus.
And the hemoglobin the seat belt.
K?
The oxygen jumps on the bus,
the bus transports
the oxygen to different parts of our body
to be utilized in our muscles in cells.
Okay?
Then
the bus stops that the
you know, the bus stop, which of a
muscle cell, the oxygen gets off and the
carbon dioxide gets on
and the bus drives back to or,
to our lungs,
and then that that carbon dioxide goes back
into our lungs, and then we expire the
carbon dioxide back into there. That's in essence
respiration. K?
Now
there's this common myth that
when you feel this... If you do a
breath hold and you feel this stronger to
take a breath,
and it's because there's a lack of oxygen
your system.
It's actually the opposite.
It's the build of carbon dioxide within our
system,
which causes us to take a breath.
K?
So when we relate this to performance
and
athletics,
we can increase the performance
by building our carbon
tolerance.
So doing long breath,
We train our body to be able to
withstand the buildup up of carbon dioxide within
our body. K?
Because when we breathe in oxygen,
that oxygen through combustion
produces energy and the byproduct of energy is
carbon dioxide. And water,
and then b x expel that. K?
That's why when you're running a endurance race
got p.
It's you're burning. Right. And the 1 of
the byproducts carbon out dioxide the other byproducts,
water.
Okay.
So we can train ourselves
to
have a higher threshold of carbon dioxide in
the body.
And that allows us to better utilize the
option that we're bringing it. Okay?
So to better explain this,
Almost everybody, humans 98 or 90 98 or
99 percent of our blood is saturated with
oxygen.
So that red... The red blood cell that's
transporting through our body, the bus, it's filled
with oxygen,
and it's circulating around her body.
However, the only way the bus lets the
oxygen off
is by
if there's enough enough carbon dioxide to replace
it.
K?
So we've got this bus driving around with
a bunch of oxygen.
And if we have a large
If we have a large amount of carbon
dioxide in our body
ready from exercising.
And the carbon docs switch places with the
oxygen,
and we
get fresh oxygen toward our muscles in ourselves.
Otherwise, just carrying a lot of dead oxygen.
Base. It's not dead auction. It's just not
letting it go. Okay. It's just staying it's
it's staying on the bus. Okay. There's no
bus stops. Yeah.
And so when it comes to,
performance,
if we can allow our body to build
up more carbon dioxide within it. And when
we take fresh oxygen in in that oxygen,
we'll switch places really fast with the carbon
dioxide and go into our muscles and ourselves.
Okay. So So another way to look at
it, if it's your... It's the start of
the season, you're going on your first mountain
of bike ride, You're going on your first
run, and you're out there and you're like,
Breathing really hard... It's probably in and out
through your mouth, and you're doing that because
you're trying to blow off carbon dioxide that's
being produced in the body
through the mouth,
because you're not trained properly. You don't... You
haven't built up that tolerance to a withstand
carbon dioxide.
However, then you do a couple trainings, and
then eventually you find yourself running or biking
for 10:20, 30 miles, and you're barely breathing.
That's because you built up the tolerance to
withstand the carbon in your body.
And when you breathe in fresh oxygen,
you are able to
switch the...
So the auction gets off the bus and
the carbon dioxide that's on, and then you're
able to feed your muscles themselves more effectively
with the fresh oxygen coming in.
So if you're going throughout your day and
just breathing
shallow breaths in and out through your mouth.
You're pretty much blowing off all your carbon
dioxide. So you have tons of oxygen circulating
through your body, but it's not being utilized.
It's just going around,
on the bus never getting off.
So there's a really good book called breathe
by James Nest
that
talks about this, and there's also also the
oxygen advantage by Patrick Mc mckinnon.
When you're going through your day to day,
breathing slowly in and out through your nose.
The nose is meant to to breathe. The
mouth is meant for talking at et 18.
K. And there's a couple important things that
the nose does when you inhale through the
nose,
it acts it humid solidifies the air. So
if you're living out west or you living
in a dry climate,
it it humid solidifies air. It also,
conditions air.
If it's really cold air warm enough, it's
really hot arrow cool down. So when it
comes into lungs, it's inside of at a
better temperature. Mh And then we have a,
nitric oxide that resides in your nasal cavity,
and we breathe through our nose, we get
nitric oxide into our blood system it actually
dilate our blood vessels and it helps move
oxygen more effectively throughout our body.
And it also filters
pollution or, you know, poll poll in the
air. So there's huge reasons
breathe in and out through your nose.
And the nose is meant for breathing and
the mouse met for eating and time. This
is a really big deal
with
kids
that often if, you know, if kids have
ad problems or tongue ties or and it's
becoming more more prevalent as I understand it
across the board, which can't get it janelle
out to another discussion. But, you know, whether
that
pesticides or
bad food or whatever. But you know, if
you're a mouth breather,
especially as kid. You don't develop a draw
line. You don't develop
a good immune system. There's
that's a there's a big cascading
of bad if you don't... If you breathe
through your mouth. Mostly at night. You that
you really want
sn.
Yeah. And and some people say, hey, my
nose is always clogged. I can't breathe through
my nose. Like, it's just clogged.
That's a byproduct of breathing through your mouth.
Right? So you may have heard become a
little popular taping your mouth.
So
if you tape your mouth and we're talking
about, like, a little piece of medical tape,
right in the, you know,
small piece of medical tape, right, on the
center of your lips. And, you... We're not,
you know, taking duct tape. Yeah. Right. You
wanna.
Even though maybe if maybe if you sure
out listening in your your partner sn, you
maybe wanna do that to him.
You know, Let's shut you up.
But no, closing the mouth and
breathing in and out through the nose well
actually, if you do it and force yourself
to do it, it will clear
your nasal cavity.
So if you feel like your nose is
always blocked and you kinda force yourself to
breathe in and out your years hills, it
will it will start to clear.
And we can also
taper her mouse shut at night.
Because for those of you that wake up
in the morning with a dry mouth,
you're breathing in and out through your mouth
night. K.
And so we sleep for 8 hours a
night. So if we can practice breathing in
and out for our nose at night,
you know,
subconsciously with our mouth being taped shut, then
that trans... That goes into your day to
day life. So it's like a... We can
train all night to do that. Alright. And
the crazy thing is we take, like, 60000
breaths a day.
So even these things we're talking about with
breath work and changing your breathing patterns, breathing
in and out through the nose.
It might seem like so my you in
such a
nuance thing to somebody.
Oh, how is...
What do what do you mean? I need
to learn how to brief properties? It's like,
This is something you do 60000
times a day.
The smallest change can affect your life in
such a positive way. Right. So it's like
other things you use 60000 times a day
at, you know? Maybe take 10000 steps, not
60000?
Alright. You know? So
what are...
Let's give people a couple of action, so
you're on launch and your low motivation. You're
you're not you're not feeling it. You'd rather
just be down to bed
and wake up. Right whatever.
Your you're notched out.
What what can you do?
Yeah. So if we look at this, you're
un,
your lower you're probably having more firing of
your Parasympathetic
nervous system. Maybe you're not motivated, but you
know you're going on a big flyer, you
kind race or, you know, do something like
that. And in that sense,
even though we just talked about breathing in
and out through the nose,
we can use mouth breathing in short stint
of training
in order to elect a different change in
our nervous system. So for that situation,
and I could take you through a couple
rounds here is we're gonna do... And I
wanna preface this that breath work and breathing
techniques to be super powerful.
And they're meant to be done lying down
or if you have a comfortable seat to
position.
Never while driving,
this this exercise never won't para. I have
another 1 that is is fine to do
all your flying. Not this 1. And
never around the water in the water, driving
your car on the chair. They they can
be very profound. Okay? So let's just do
these in a comfort. Alright, man. But let's
take this for example, You're up on launch.
You're feeling tired and let.
Alright.
Step away off launch. Let's go go in
the trees, find a find a spot.
Sit down, lie down, close your eyes and
you can go ahead and do this cabin.
K. And you can do 1 round. You
can do 2 rounds. You 3 year rounds,
whichever.
So in order to help stimulate our sympathetic
nervous system, we get more energy. We're gonna
breathe at a faster pace in and out
through the mouth. K? K? And this is
a quick. This is only gonna take a
couple minutes,
and we're gonna do about 15 to 20
deep breaths in and out for the mouth.
K?
The last 1 will take a full breath
in, we're gonna hold at the top of
the breath.
And while you're holding at the top of
the breath, you can start to engage
the muscles of your pelvis, your lower back,
your abdominals,
and start to imagine that energy you created
while doing the breathing is going out the
crown of your head. Okay? K. So esoteric,
as it sounds. It's just a good visualization.
To go...
If you if you wanna try this at
home, again,
lying down or see it not driving, doing
this please.
Go go ahead and close your eyes.
Take a nice deep breath
fully in.
Open up your mouth and let it go.
We just take a couple breaths here to
settle in fully in.
Let it go.
Last 1 for year.
Let it go.
Now we're gonna do 15 deep breaths in
and out through the mouth at quicker place
moving quite a bit of air.
And as we're doing this, imagine you're building
energy within your body. K?
So here we go.
Inhale.
Let it go
inhale.
Let it go
inhale.
It go.
Inhale.
Let it go.
Him.
Let it go.
Him
Let it go.
Inhale.
Let it go
Inhale.
Let it go. 5 more in here.
Let it go
in here.
Let it go.
Him.
Let it go. 2 more. Here we go.
Him.
Let it go.
Last 1 full breath in.
Hold at the top of the breath,
sipping in a little bit more air.
Hold here. Now start to engage the muscles
of your pe,
your lower back, your abdominals,
your middle back,
your chest,
your upper back,
Imagine
that energy coming up to the crowd of
your head.
We're gonna hold for 543
to
let it go.
That feels so good.
I feel so good. So that... I was
just 1 round. Maybe that took a couple
minutes. Yeah.
You you can do another round. In in.
So we're really just trying to change our
state. Like, if we're in 1 state,
and you wanna go a different state.
And it's a it's a tool just shift
how we feel.
Yeah. How on your own fly. Totally. Yeah.
Feels so good. Hopefully y'all do that with
us at home, that feels amazing. Okay. So
now,
you're you're in the sky,
it's Lee. It's rough. You're not digging it.
But you know, it's this is a good
day. You wanna keep flying, you just need
to reset in the air. You You're you're
you're being forward. We all do this. And
and
we're tents. We're too hard on the bees.
We're jan things around. We're too we're too
hands.
There's just too much
energy. There's too much there... There's too much
noise in the system. Mh. Well what can
we do then?
Yeah. That's a great question. I think this
is super powerful thing that we can we
can utilize and coming back to focusing on
our breathing.
Because when we're, you know, flying in turbulent
conditions flying,
we take a big collapse,
you know,
at the end of the day, we're we're
the pilot command. Like, we need to write
the ship.
K? We need to change and shift our
state
to more common and clarity.
K?
And
for the most part,
the conditions that we're in,
depending on your skill level,
we can manage it. If we write our
mental aspect of it. Mh okay? Whether you're
a competition pilot,
whether you're newer, I mean, at at some
stand be flying in the right conditions. But
sometimes shit happens, and we get in the
lead and we get a big collapse and
we're like, oh, my god. I wanna go
land.
Maybe you're flying in the middle of the
desert, and it's the middle of the day,
you don't wanna go land. Mh, you know?
So we need to ride the ship and
we need to write the ship as quickly
as possible.
And so we can do a different breathing
technique that utilizes nasal breathing
with some mouth breathing. That will help calm
our nervous down. So the 1 we just
did
energized us. Made me feel a little moves
a little high. This is to calm down
our nervous system. Okay?
So
what we're doing, and what I like to
call this is called pyramid breathing.
So imagine a pyramid triangle. Imagine you're on
a big Fa triangle record.
Yes.
Use triangles. Everybody likes triangles.
So what what we're gonna do, we're not
gonna close our eyes because we're flying paragraphs.
You know, we're still in the mix.
But
for this example, you you can close your
eyes if you're not flying a car driving
a car doing like that.
But we're gonna inhale through our nose for
5 seconds,
inhale 234,
and then we're gonna exhale
through our mouth
with purse slips. So, like, pretend you're blowing
out of a straw.
K? For 5 seconds.
And then we're gonna hold
our breath for 5 seconds. Very short breath.
K?
And what this does is it helps you
focus on your breathing
and take your mind off, you know, the
fear and the stress or whatever. It's it's
it can be very powerful. K?
So we'll run through this with you,
Gavin. Yep.
If you're listening at home, again, if you're
not flying para or you go and close
your eyes. And if you're listening to this
while flying a para or you need to
seek help.
Actually, that's really rare rad if you good.
If you're doing that. Get on yeah.
So go ahead and close your eyes.
Again, we're gonna breathe in through our nose,
and then we're gonna breathe out through our
mouth with purse lips like we're blowing out
of a straw, and then we're gonna hold.
K.
5 seconds on each.
Let's go ahead and inhale, 234,
exhale.
234,
hold,
234.
Inhale to the nose,
234,
exhale to the mouth with purse lips.
234,
hold,
234.
Inhale for the nose,
234,
exhale first lips, flowing out of a straw.
3,
4,
hold,
2341
more time, inhale,
234,
exhale,
234,
hold,
234.
Nice full breath in through the nose.
Let that go.
Lovely.
So nice.
So what is the... What's the physiology there?
What are we doing that's so so much
different?
Yeah. So
if we breathe in and out for our
mouth, it's very stimulating.
It's very more sympathetic that's really easy to
way to think about it from breathing in
and out through my mouth and probably get
you
have this more, like sympathetic nervous response.
When we breathe in and out through our
nose, it's more it's more calming.
And it
and the blowing out of the mouth with
the straw
has to do it actually activates our... It's
called the Vagus nerve. It's our tenth cra
nerve. Have 12:12
cra nerves, nerves.
Pretty sure that's right. Studied gross anatomy. There's
a long time ago.
I'm our tents creating a nervous called our
Vagus nerve, and that nerve innovate, and it
actually passes through our heart.
Kidneys needs use all these different organs within
our body. So if we can stimulate that
vagus nerve, which is our trans cra nerve,
that innovate to all these different parts of
our body and
that's how that's how we're able to get
a para that response and and calm down.
Same thing happens when you go into cold
water.
And you bring that water up over your
shoulders? Is it stimulates that 10? Cra nerve,
the vagus nerve and then it helps us
relax?
So when I take people into cold plunge,
you know, some people... They don't wanna go
on the shoulders on my trust me, it's
gonna be better if you want the shoulders.
Or if you dip your head first, it's
it could be...
It it it helps calm me down actually.
So by doing that breath work and blowing
out
like you're blowing out of a straw, that's
that's stimulating that. So it it... It's not
just a mental thing. It's like
physiological
calming your system down. And that's why it
works, and you can you can feel that
or if you tried this with us.
And so imagine you're out you're out flying.
And you do 2 rounds that in the
pyramid breathing in through the nose, about through
the mouth, hold.
Physiological you are calming now. Mh. And you're
taking your mind off the stress or that
collapse or whatever. Because at the end of
the day, you're up in the sky, you
still gotta deal with this shit. Yep. And
what happens is when we have accidents is
something happened
collapse, then you're nervous, then you're scared, and
it's like the... Then it feels like the
conditions just got 10 times as strong and
then the wind got stronger and it it
didn't.
That's what happened. You're you're having this mental
exercise in your brain,
and you're you're scared. Then that's fine. Yeah.
You're all get scared.
But
scared and fear as part of this sport,
but if we can train ourself to manage
our fear in real time,
then we reduce the amount of
incidence is and total accidents, like, extremely fast.
Yeah.
And if we build this awareness,
of
ourselves and build this
train ourselves to know... Okay. I feel fear
coming. As opposed to fear take over. Yeah.
So the difference is
if you feel the fear coming and you
recognize that, then you can go, oh, I
feel this is fear. I have this tool
to mitigate the fear.
As opposed to
this fear came over me. Now my vision
narrowing.
Now all a sudden I'm at of control.
All sudden, I'm trying to come in and
land and, like, that tree looks like the
only option when there's literally a field over
there. There's a field over there. You can
go back down when there's a field. And
so your vision narrows in your life I
have no way out.
But at that moment, you gotta be like,
you know, take a breath, take a second
if you have a second. Which we usually
do. Yeah. Things don't fly that fast. Yeah.
And look around. And it'll open up your
vision. And so if you train yourself in
I'm feeling fear come in. I have a
tool to mitigate that as opposed to fears
here, I have no fucking idea what's going
on anymore.
That's gonna save you from you know, packing
it or something worse happening. Yeah. And I
think that's what, you know, as you
experience you talk about experience,
you gain that and you gain that experience
and manage your fear and manage the risk.
And for new pilots out there,
it's like we can change our physiology and
experience this re relief from anxiety in
a very stressful.
Yeah. Environment man. Mean we're pilots we. Yeah.
It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen.
Cold. How does cold fit into all of
this?
Yeah. So when we relate back to the
Wim hof method, there's 3 pillars. There's breath
work. There's cold,
and there's mindset.
K. So we we touched a little on
the breath work. That wasn't Wim hof method
the breath work, but that's...
You know, it's other breath work that we
can practice in the setting. They shouldn't to
lining pilots that I think are most effective.
Going into the cold water.
K. The cold water
is
an ability and a chance for you to
voluntarily
go into a stressful situation. K?
So
if you wanna get stronger muscles,
you go to the gym and lift weights.
Makes sense.
If you wanna be more resilient, you put
yourself in stressful environment
voluntarily just like you go to the gym
voluntarily and you train that mental muscle.
Because guess what, if you go out and
your para some shit hits the fan, and
you haven't trained your mind to deal with
shit hitting the fan in a safe environment.
Then batch can happen. Mh. K? So the
ice bath it could be different, stimuli. You
can go Asana, whatever. But the... Going into
cold water,
it's funny. You'll you'll be in the supermarket.
You'll I'll see these magazines and say, like,
be present,
live in the moment, meditate mindfulness, and you're
like, for some people, they're, like, yeah. I
just close my eyes and I sit there
and then it's like,
I keep thinking about thoughts and this and
this is a. This doesn't work. No mind.
But I challenge you to go find
cold plunge.
Or freezing body of water. Go get in
there and think about your taxes or your
problems with your girlfriend or the problems with
your kids. Like, I'm didn't boss. It doesn't
happen. You're you are you are a hundred
percent in the present it because you were...
It's like, you kinda go into the survival
mode.
K?
And I would...
And if we can train ourselves to go
into this survival mode,
extreme uncomfortable miss and be able to recognize
how our body responds to that.
Then when we are
para lighting, and we go into this mode
of,
like,
extreme discomfort falling out of the sky,
wind rotor collapses,
Then now instead of that being a new
situation. Now we're like, oh, I was in
that bath.
I was stressed out, but I was able
to regulate.
Oh, I'm in the sky. I'm stressed out.
I can't I regulate here.
And I and I think you can't.
And I think you can and not not
every situation, but I... You know, most of
the accidents...
If you go back and look at them,
it's usually pilot air. You know. Yeah. I
mean, yeah. It's not gear. Yeah. Yeah. Big
gear great. And
but it's mostly popular. Yep. And it comes
with the experience, but it also comes with
the mental capacity to deal with
what is in front of you. And so
likewise, if you just go jump into cold
water, there's a huge
physiological response, huge. It's huge.
If you take a big whack and
you come down. You have a huge physiological
response. The responses aren't different. Our body doesn't
know if we're, like, you know, we're having
response because we jump in ice water,
voluntarily or we have a response because we've
started falling out of the sky,
but we we can train ourselves... Because there
similar responses.
So we can train ourself using the coal
to deal with that when we're flying. And
so it just allows you to be more
calm and cool and collected when
shit hits the fan.
So
again, just think about, you go to the
gym to lift weights to train your muscles
stronger,
We go into the cold water to train
our minds to be more resilient
under extreme stress. Right. I mean, and
is this
recreating
in a sense who we once were
as a as a
people was it as humanity as a society.
You know, we we are... We've gotten pretty
good at surrounding ourselves with not having to
deal
exactly With...
There's plenty of stress, but we're not having
to deal with fight or flight. We're not
running from the tigers anymore, you know, we
we
we create
more and more and more stuff to make
life easier.
And so we've lost that
you know, campfire fire.
We've lost the we've we've lost the...
There's not many things that are gonna eat
us or kill us or
there's many of things that are gonna kill
us slowly. Yeah. Not fast anymore. And so
we... We're not
you know, these kinds of things jumping in
the cold water is very to me primal.
Makes feel alive. Oh, yeah.
Makes you feel alive and and quickly. And
yeah I know it's a it's a great
point when we look at our modern
society,
You know, if it's if it's too hot
in our house, we turn the Ac aco
on. If it's too cold, we turned the
heat on. Yes. We we didn't used to
be able to do that. And now we're
we're living in this sense of comfort in
this very small,
you know, 67
to 70 degrees. They're like this is premium.
It's great.
Nice warm showers. Yeah. Showers for my wife.
Yet.
Exactly. But I I think our modern society
has correlated
being healthy
with being comfortable. Right.
And I would I would say,
abundant comfort
is killings. Yeah. K. It's like,
abundant comfort, more food, more
relaxation more this. It's it's it's not what
our species was developed on our species was,
you know, developed.
On scarcity. Exactly.
Hunter Gather Caveman,
And so while, you know, not many of
us would probably
desire to go back and live in caves
with our early heating source of fire and
you know, pounding on our chest and doing
that.
Somehow, we have to mix in with this
with modern society and modern society saying, Here's
a comfort. Here's a comfort. Here's a convenience
Here's it's convenience. Have this convenience. Have it
and you'll be happy in your. And then
we're, like, oh, yeah. Track distracted. Yeah. Yeah.
We got all this comfort and convenience, but
I feel empty. Yeah. And I don't feel
like,
full.
But I have my car and my para
and this and
I got everything, I feel empty. Where you
feel empty because you're youtube fucking cultural.
You.
And like,
I love comfortable things. I love, but we
have to mix with discomfort. Right. We have
to voluntary go into comfortable things. We have
to go
You know, like, you might have that epic.
The type 2 fun.
That's like
you know, hiking for 30 miles and you
have blisters and you're beat up and you're
exhausted and you're hungry and blah blah blah.
It's like,
those are the best memory. Yes. The next
days. You're awesome.
That's that's did that. That's what we do.
You know? It's like, you know, I'm probably
your best vacation wasn't that memory of sitting
on the beach sipping a mark you know,
a margarita.
It was probably like,
what you went on a fishing trip, and
then the storm hit and this happened in
blah, and I was just trying to survive.
Yeah. And that's like what it comes down
to and, like, when you jump in the
cold water, you're really just you're just trying
to survive. Yeah. And then you
survive the experience. And you're like,
like, whoa. I
I feel alive. Yes. This is it. It's
not all the stuff. It's here. It's in
within me. Simple. Yeah. Didn't need anything to
do it.
You don't even need a pair shorts. That
my my gym recently
installed a a cold plunge and
I was surprised
how the brutal
backs off pretty quick. You know, the first
few times it's just
Oh, god. I hope I can make 30
seconds. And then really quickly, you're going
3 4 minutes, and it's still pretty brutal.
Mh. But it's
I mean, really quickly, Yeah. The end of
the week, you're you're you're you're going for
sustained amount of time. Mh. And the getting
out feels this it just feels blissful both
ways. The 30 seconds, the 3 minutes. It's
just... It you you just... You feel like
you
accomplish something, Mh. Which is weird. You're just
sitting in the cold water, but you've you've
come out feeling really in
stoked, happy, and, yeah. I survived. I mean
yeah It's quite an easy way to, you
know, it's cold cold water.
I mean, it's the fastest. And it's scary.
You when... You know, go do it. Yeah.
Oh, this is gonna be brutal. I mean,
I've been doing this it's a hack. For...
That's what I'm like, yeah I I've been
I've been doing this for 8 years and
every time before I go on the cold
water, take a cold shower. I like hap...
I have this mental talk with myself. It's
like...
Yeah. Okay. You can do this. You can
do this. And it's, like, never really gets
that much easier, but you get more used
to the ability to do it, and that
is building your mental resilience.
So that when
you have something else happen in your life.
The your boss is yelling at you wife
the kids, you got all this stuff instead
of, like, oh, I don't wanna deal with
this. You're like,
Okay. Let's just deal with it. Let's let's
go, like, because you build this mental fort
to
in order to do that. So while you
say, you know, very quickly, the it it
gets better. It's a little easier.
It's because you're building that you're exercising that
mental fort 2 muscle.
And that's that's why your perception of it
is is easier. Mh So
it's it's super powerful, and it only takes
a couple minutes.
It's like all these things like the breath
were, we can go into deeper sessions, but
he got 5 minutes. 2 minutes. 1 minute.
I don't care I'm like. You know, just
focusing on your breath,
because when you start to build that ability
to recognize subtle changes in differences and, like,
have a moment with just yourself,
then you get this, like, new autonomy. Like,
well, I'm I'm more in control of my
life than I thought, like,
I can I can do hard things? I
can
go on that cold shower. I can go
in that cold water or
I'm more aware of what's the subtle changes
that are happened in my body because I
did 1 or 2 minutes of breath work
and just kind of focused on myself.
And then it's like, oh, when I do
that, then I show up as a better
person.
And then all of a sudden,
you know,
My wife's not is agitated with me, and
my kids seem happier around me. My flying
is improving.
Wow life just feels like a little bit
nicer.
But
we often think the answers is outside of
us and
it's Hip sounds It's like, we're we're right
here. Like, we have our own medicine cap.
We are our own pharmacy to deal with
a lot of the things,
But it starts with us. You know, it
starts with that, like, self reflection and the
ability to
do things you don't necessarily wanna do. For
very short spurt of time because
there's some stuff we don't wanna do.
We can keep putting it off and putting
it off and putting, And then at some
point it just drags on. Mh. It's, like,
it's like, flying on full bar and, like,
pulling some break.
It's like,
so inefficient. And you're pulling and then all...
And then it collapses.
You know, be bolt too hard on those
2 liners.
Yep, you get a collapse. So now you're
spiraling down. And you're like oh, I gotta
fix this and you just lost more altitude.
And I like the analogy too. The
you're dealing with hard stuff that you don't
wanna deal with. It's like...
Or you're
have a negative attitude towards something.
Then fly to the fly out of it.
You know? Like, when para lighting, we're going
on a big cross country flights. We're racing.
What do you do when you get into
sync?
Leap sync. Leave sync
to where?
A leg left.
Okay.
So your day to day life
use this as an example,
when you feeling crappy or if you're feeling
negative, or this, push on some bar and
get out of that sink, this this downward
trend
to the lift. You know, Like,
utilize your same principles in para in your
day to day life. And whether that is,
you know, there's something going on with your
kids your wife? Okay. To leave that sync,
Go jump up the cold punch. Go do
a little bit breath word. Find the lift.
Quick change. Quick change. Yeah. Don't dwell on
it. Quick change. Go. Yeah.
Yeah. You dwell on it. You just start
going down. Right. So...
Yeah.
Great stuff. Jeremy. Thanks for sharing all this
knowledge and your passion for this with with
me our community in this community. I really
appreciate it's very powerful, and that made me
feel nice.
Thank you so much for having. Glad I'd
be able to do this again and,
Yeah. We'll
excited for another another couple more days of
racing.
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