From Combat to Calm: How Breathwork Helped a Special Forces Operator Heal

Hey, one more thing before you go. What's the thing that nearly destroys you because the thing that helped you save 40 lives?What if the patterns everyone else missed were the patterns that healing, sleep, and connection can solve? And what if the simplest human act, breathing, was the key to reclaiming the freedom you fought for? Today we're talking with a man who lived it.Former Aussie Special Forces operator, professional fighter, PTSD survivor, recovering alcoholic, and the founder of Breathwork in Bed, a program that's changing lives one night of sleep at a time. Stay tuned, because this conversation is going to profoundly shift you in the positive way. I'm your host, Michael Herst Welcome to One more Thing before you go. Tim Thomas is a former Aussie Special Forces operator, professional fighter, survivor of PTSD and addiction and family breakdown.He's the founder of Breathwork in Bed. He calls dyslexia his superpower because it allows him to see patterns others miss. And one of those patterns is this.Veterans are black belts in screwing themselves up, and many aren't enjoying the freedom they fought for. Tim saw two things in the veteran recovery space that no one else saw. And with those two things, he saved those 40 veterans in 12 months.Today, he's sharing those insights with us. So I am excited to introduce Tim Thomas.

Great to be here, Mike.

You know, you have been on a heck of a journey within your life. I mean, it's profound what you've been able to accomplish, where you came from and where you're at.

Yeah. Sometimes you do need a bit of an external focus point because, you know, you're in your own life.But it's funny, I know when healing journeys are on the right path, when you start wanting to bring your gifts into the world and, you know, flourish, I. I believe healing is. Gets you to the start point of you flourishing, you bringing your gifts into the world.And strangely enough, you know, and this is what I'll say to veterans, you might not think you're special, but I bet you've been through some, you know, and our job is not to stay in the. It's actually to be there, to be transformed into fertilizer. And it's. It doesn't seem like it's going to be the.The most beneficial thing to you, but it's. It's funny. I've observed that. It's. It's not. We get really wrapped up in what we do.As men especially, I do this and I do that, but from my observation, from people looking in and people experiencing us, it's not so much what we do. It's what we've come through that really adds value to them from their perspective.

I agree with that. And I think whether it's a veteran of armed forces, a warrior, police officer, firefighter, emt, paramedic, I think that kind of goes.Doctors, nurses, I think that could be actually stretched all across that. That's a great philosophy to think about.

Yeah, certainly what I say, veterans, that just happens to be my niche.That's certainly representative of anyone with a heart of service, because you become a black belt and screwing yourself up because you're so focused on the other person. And we are quite willing to sacrifice this mortal coil to ensure that our intention of making sure the world that we live in is a better place.So that's why I've got a real heart for those who have a heart of service, because they can really push themselves past most human boundaries and it is a superpower for them. But it's all. It can be. It can be all throttle, no brake. You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. I've been there, done that a couple of times, I would say at least a couple times. But, you know, and that's life. And I appreciate that.I mean, and what you've got to share, the stuff that I've learned about you so far, which is why I'm excited about this conversation, is that you are still serving. You're serving humanity. And I think that you're still giving.You're still giving of yourself and you're still sharing of yourself and you're still putting yourself on the line for other individuals so that we all can move forward in a positive way, which I'm grateful for. But I do like to start at the beginning. Aussie Australia. Where'd you grow up? Tell me about you and your family.

Sure. So if, you know, Australia just divided up into, you know, north, south, east, west. If you hit the middle and then go south.I grew up on the west coast of South Australia, where if you were to have like a US equivalent, it would be like deep south, kind of Mississippi. The movies I've watched about Mississippi, how there's that racial divide, that kind of stuff, that was where I grew up.And my father worked for the Aboriginals. And we were kind of stuck in this place where the white folks, a lot of them rejected us because we work with the.The Aboriginals, and the Aboriginals didn't dislike us, but it took a while for them to trust us. But at about the three or four year mark, the trust was established and I was Once you're accepted into that space, it.It was so nice growing up in the indigenous culture, having that real deep connection to the land. As they would say, we're not connected to the land, we are the land. And if you really want to build on that, we're not connected to each other.We are each other.And sort of, this is what I found where when one person goes through an experience successfully, they're qualified to do something quite powerful for others. So what I'm getting at here is you mentioned I'm dyslexic, so I see things in patterns.And the pattern I saw with pain is it really didn't matter if it was physical or emotional. It got to a certain duration or intensity where it transformed into loneliness, isolation. And we're really social mammals.We're supposed to be connected to each other. You know, our peace, power, confidence is relative to who is around us and how connected we are to them.You know, yourself, when you're serving, your day goes a whole lot better when you've got a good team around you. But if you're in a position where your physical or mental pain is. Has got you to the point where it's.It transforms without you even knowing into loneliness, isolation. I'm the only person going through that. And in that disconnected state it is, everything's hard because everything is hard.No one's got my back, so I've always got to be scanning for threats. And if I drop my guard for a second, something bad's going to happen. It's going to be my fault. So guess what? I'm not sleeping.So we found two main things. The loneliness that physical or emotional pain causes and the fatigue that. That causes not sleeping.And the programs I created, Mike, were the metric of success was measured on how much sleep improved. Because we noticed that if we could improve sleep, all these other metrics would improve as well. And I tend to think that.And what I've observed time and time again was once that social isolation was broken, and they start to say things like, oh, I thought I was the only one. When I start realizing that there's other people going through the same stuff, and then you get them improving their sleep.Those two metrics, we were able to achieve a lifetime goal, which was saving 40 veteran lives from suicide. Would have died happy if we achieved that. But that was achieved within 12 months by simply doing those two things.Breaking isolation and getting them out of fatigue. And when I was in that place, Mike, there was a lot of people promising but not delivering, and people that are hurting, they're very vulnerable.So when you really invest in someone who promises but then doesn't deliver, it makes it really hard to, to pick yourself up and trust somebody else. So who can you trust? You know, so we started, you know, these veteran groups focusing on breaking social isolation and getting out of fatigue.And I remember the psychologist team were going, tim, you're going to put us out of business. This, this is actually really successful. So, so I think I got off subject there, Mike.But yeah, growing up in a place where I had a deep sense of connection and then when that connection was fractured, I found ways to unblock that.And then I set up programs for other people to remove those blockages so they could be the most natural version of themselves, which is a really good thing.

And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you had mentioned the aboriginal people that you had the connection with, it's similar to the Native Americans here in the United States.I have a lot of friends that are Native Americans and I've been to powwows and in some of their ceremonies and we had a medicine man that come to the house and cleared our house for us and things like that.And they wholeheartedly believe in we are the earth, we are nature, we are mother Nature, we're part of this land, we're part of this sky, we're part of everything.And I think that going into it with that understanding like you got and that I was lucky enough to also be exposed to, I think it allows us a better opportunity to understand how we're all connected. Because no matter what color you are, what race you are, what creed you are, we're still all connected.

Yeah.And we tend to think that when we break our connection with nature or we break our connection, you know, even within ourselves, there's going to be no consequence. But you know, this is where, you know, most people aren't broken, they're just really exhausted.Because it is exhausting when you're in a state of disconnect, you know?

Yes, yep. I can relate to that. I mean, look, it's.As we mentioned before we started talking, you know, I average between four and four and a half hours of sleep. I'm exhausted all the time. I do my best to stay out of that exhaustion. I do my best.And every once in a while I will get a refresh really, really good six hours in and then I feel like a whole new person because of this. And you know, a lot of people don't in today's fast paced world. I Don't believe that people really stop and think how valuable sleep really is.

You're right. They just give it lip service. Yeah, you need to sleep. But no one's actually saying, here's a way to do it. So that's what I started doing.I started running these workshops. And I remember after running a workshop out at the local army base, because they actually had a.They had a suicide and there were people that weren't sleeping. So they got me out there and I got an email from a Louis colonel the very next day. And after it, I withdrew from public life for about two years.Because in that email he said to me, tim, I didn't attend the seminar, but I had all my corporals and sergeants coming up to me afterwards saying, tim, after that workshop, that was the first good night's sleep I had in three years, four years, five years. And he thought it was awesome. But I'm like, you know how much damage can be caused in five years of not sleeping? And how easy was it to fix?You should have got me out five years ago. But what he said to me next made me realize I was failing. Because, you know, Mike, you know, I'm sure it's the same. You guys like your acronyms.So I've got an acronym. I call it my P test. I've got three P's and I've got to pass. Everything I do has to pass a P test.So the first P is everything I do has to be powerful, it has to be positive, and it has to be the third one's most important. Permanent permanency is to me, the indicator of success.Because if we say we care about people, we've got to care about them tomorrow, the next week, the next year. And when this Louis kernel said, tim, it was good when you're there, but what have you got when you're not there?And I'm like, I've just failed my P test. I can't. I can say that I'm positive and powerful, but I'm not permanent.So I spent the next two years and tens of thousands of dollars creating, creating, you know, breath work in bed. So anyone who has a phone can access the two most important moments of every day. Two golden five minute periods.The five minutes as you go to sleep and the five minutes as you wake up. Because most people and the world we live in poison those five minutes going to sleep and poison those five minutes waking up.And I am so goddamn tired of waking up and having this negative shit just dive into my head involuntarily So I thought, I've got to do something here and I've got to make it accessible. So that awareness of those two golden five minute periods, people aren't talking about that.And I'm trying to figure out why aren't more people talking about this? Because essentially, that's power underneath your own skin. Because what you're going to discover, Mike, is we weren't issued a set of lungs.We were given a medicine cabinet with a lot of different shelves. And you breathe a certain way, you can elicit a certain response. I mean, and strangely, we speak of connection.We're actually unconsciously connected to each other's breath. So I'm going to make an extreme example of this, all right? You're like, what's all that about? Okay, so if you're out, you read my mind.

You know that.

Yeah, right. No, I get it. You're going to get this, all right? We're gonna. We're connected through the breath. We don't even know this. Right?So if you're out in the field and you see someone going, okay, you know, even just doing that now would have created a response in you, right?

Yes.

But if you see someone going,.

I mean, that is an immensely different response. Because my first response was, I have to come help you. I have to see why you're breathing. So are you choking? Is something wrong?I immediately go up a little bit. My heart rate goes up a little bit. My anxiety goes up just a little bit going, should I go over here? What's happening?And then the second form of the breath was more of a calming, relaxing opportunity.

And this is the crazy thing, I don't normally talk about this on my first interview, but we literally breathe for others. So our state.

See, I have to explain that one to me because, I mean, it's one of these things where I've worked on people before where we had to breathe for them. So the first thing comes to my mind when we say we breathe for others is giving breath.

Because there is that manual cpr, right? When someone's not breathing properly, what I'm talking about right now is our state of being impacts others. So I'll take it to an extreme again.When someone comes in and they've got nefarious intentions and they go in the room and you get a sense that they're about to do violence, everything shifts in that room, okay? Because there's a threat in the space and people can pick up on that. But if someone's going in and they're in that Peaceful state.They're in control of their own peace, their power. Who knows, they might even have love in their heart. And they've got that presence and their breathing is slow.So it's not just breath that we do for ourselves. When I'm in a meeting, I'll often breathe for people in that meeting to create their state of connection, peace, power.And it's amazing how much people feed off each other. So we're talking about connection. You have a play with that in real life. Next time you're in a room of people, take a few breaths for them.And notice how this collective wiring becomes very evident when you try that.

That's actually an interesting. It's almost like yawning. You yawn and pretty soon everybody in the room yawns.

For those people listening, if you just thought about yawning, you know, that's because yawning's interesting. Because behind our jaw we have two insertion points for the vagus nerve. Now the vagus nerve is where we hold all our stress blocked energy.And so often to clear that they'll go, all right.And when I'm working with high school students, I'll even show them how to power up their yawns to clear their heads before exams, you know, and it's, yeah, super effective and, and obviously in the word, in the, in the realm of permanency.I didn't mention this in the preamble, but I'd love to give everybody something that they can take home and put in their back pocket, you know, and use immediately.So at some point, at a suitable time, I'd love to show you a little breath work technique to give people immediate access and then permanent access, you know, post podcast.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, let's do that. I think that it would be a nice opportunity for people to get a little inspiration and a little education.And I like it when they can walk away with something like that. Can I touch back?I know in the promo material that you did send me and what you had mentioned to me before we started, how does your dyslexia become your superpower and how does that. I mean, I understand dyslexia, my father in law has got it.But from your perspective, you call it your superpower and you start noticing different kind of patterns and things like this. How did you connect that with your work with veterans and beyond?

Well, because it's the way I see the world. I can't see any difference from my end.But when I started doing this work, like the stuff that I thought was just Obvious that I thought everyone saw this, right? But it turned out that not everybody saw the fact that what pain did. Pain makes you feel lonely. We can handle pain.What we can't handle is disconnection. You know, if we've, you know, Mike, if you knew I had your back 100 freaking percent, right? And I had.And I knew you had my back 100 freaking percent. Like, firstly, we're going to have a good day. We are going to have a good day, you know, and secondly, everything else becomes a very small detail.You know, safety is made by the connections we have, not by trying to control the environment. That's where people get it wrong.And when people are trying to control the environment, it's just them saying, look, I don't feel like I'm connected to anybody, as I've observed, right? So. So observing what pain did, as a dyslexic, I could get to the heart of the matter.And when other, like the psychologists were like, tim, what's going on? We've, we've got these scores going off the charts. And I'm like, can't you see that. That what's going on?And then when they sort of said what they said, I realized that, oh, I'm seeing something no one else saw because I just, I just thought it was goddamn obvious, right? And then, and then, you know, to build on that, the, the poor sleep and what that did, because I just saw that.There's purely lip service given to the idea that sleep is important, but culturally, we tend to sort of accept the fact that it's supposed to be terrible and everyone's doing it, so it's okay. And psychologists will even say 95% of their job, 95% of their job is rapport. You know, having that person feel connected and safe around them.

Like,.

Why don't you then focus 90 plus percent of your efforts on breaking their isolation and getting them out of fatigue? Because we just noticed when we broke their isolation, when we got them out of fatigue, this internal compass would switch on.It's like the tourniquet would come off and their intelligence would kick in.If you're gonna, if you're gonna speak to the part of the, the, the brain, you go from your amygdala, your fight or flight, you know, it's fast but dumb to your prefrontal cortex, where it's like a satellite's in the sky. You can see it all, you can be with it all. You completely relax because you can see threats coming. And I'm okay, you're okay, we're connected.We got each other's back.And I, and I see a whole lot of benefit in making sure the people around me are having a really good day too, because that, that means I'm having a good day. So it, it was that pattern recognition that I thought everyone saw, but then everyone didn't see.And if they did see it, they weren't giving the actual resources and time necessary to breaking isolation, getting out of fatigue.And, you know, my whole thing about creating breathwork in bed was for people to get access to those, you know, moments that are so important that everyone steps over. And that's the, the five minutes going to sleep, the five minutes waking up, like I just sort of said.But I need people to see, like open their eyes to see what kind of thoughts are you having going to sleep? And that can be a little confronting because most people go, oh, right, too awkward.But then when you're waking up in the morning, what are your first few thoughts? What's coming through the system?A lot of veterans talk about having vultures on the bedhead, negative vultures, ready to dive into your thoughts when you're just waking up.So to be able to be prompted, to use your breath in those two critical moments while you're still in bed, you know, doing breath work in bed, that sort of gives you a chance to, to transform, you know, that negative vulture in the morning into a, you know, peaceful, powerful, competent eagle that can, you know, help you win the day. Because I just, I've just seen it so many times, Mike. If I lost the first five minutes of the day, I've lost a goddamn day, you know.

Yeah, I can relate to that. I really, I understand it from that perspective because that's what usually keeps me up.If I wake up at 2 or 3 o' clock in the morning, which is typical or standard for me, a lot of it is when I'm trying to go back to sleep. Every, every noise I hear, you know, I have to check it out. Every, every shadow, I have to make sure that it's not, you know, a devious shadow.Every thought is, well, now that I'm up, this hurts. Am I going to hurt the rest of the day? Cause I still have pain that I deal with on a regular basis. I have chronic pain.And if something little hurts, I'll sit there. This is just to confirm what you're saying, at least from a little bit of perspective. Then I start thinking down that road.And I lay there for an hour trying to go back to sleep instead of Just kind of breathing and then going back to sleep that way and getting good rest, because it's just like a. It's like a rabbit hole. It's like going down a rabbit hole. You start thinking this, this, and then this, and then this.You know, you hear the air conditioner come on, and you got to look around, you know, was that the door? Was that this? Was that, that? So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually.

And you've worked really hard to develop a system, a threat radar that has served you, kept you safe, and kept those around you safe, you know, and it. And it's trying to help you, but no one's shown you how to turn it off effectively.And, you know, your mind's like a garden, whatever your water grows. And for years, you watered the weeds of threat, okay? And they end up. The term is if you fire together, you wire together. All right?So if you're continually firing neurons in your brain, then they wire together, and then. Then it's just like a big, you know, booby trap. All right? So you've wired together, you know, the threat response, but as well as the pain response.And it's really hard to out think that. And this is this, and. And it's really hard. And what I've observed and to. To.To share with you, like, how I came to breath work, I discovered this in the dirt of Afghanistan when I was completely fatigued. Um, it's like I only had 2 cents worth of energy. I thought, what's the point? I'm going to die.But then it was like this voice came through me, said, tim, if you've only got 2 cents worth of energy, you better invest that energy wisely. So we never got anything you'd call sleep, but you'd lay horizontally in the dirt.And instead of just trying to sleep, I would focus on my thumb, and I would pretend there was a little pin prick in the tip of my thumb, and I would suck air through it, like, really take a deep nasal breath through my thumb. And eventually, it didn't just feel good. It. My thumb turned into white light in my mind's eye. And I'm like, this is feeling really good.And then I drew that through my thumb, drew that through my pointer finger, and I fell asleep, and instead of, I went to bed with 2 cents worth of energy, and I woke up with $2. And I'm like, that's really interesting. I don't know what's going on, but energy is a lot like money. How you invest, it's how you get it back.And so the next time I got horizontal, I had with that $2, I invested it into my breathing, in my thumb, all my fingers, pulled it through my hand. I went to sleep and I woke up with $20. And I noticed that every dollar of energy I invested in my breath, it gave me like $20 back.And I thought, I've got to keep doing this. And I noticed as my energy increased, Mike, I. My awareness increased. When I had low energy, it was all about me, stuff the world, I'm hurting, right?But as my energy increased, I realized that, hey, I'm in a team and if my team's having a bad day, I'm having a bad day. And I didn't, like I said, I didn't know it was breath work. But then when I got out, I discovered Wim Hof and all of his stuff. And that's amazing.I still do that every day. But it wasn't until going through my divorce that a very different war zone was going on in my head. Mike.And the analogy that, you know, you shared about, you know, you have a thought and then it triggers a bunch of other thoughts and your mind's like a garden, whatever your water grows. I was watering the weeds of stress. So you can bet post divorce, lost house, home, regular access to kids, sleeping on my parents couch.And at 2am I had the stress weeds in my head were loving it because they were getting watered with all the stress that I was experiencing. And what I noticed with stress weeds, it's, they don't just take over the garden.It's like eyeballs pop out of a mic and they actually become sentient. They become aware of the things that you do that feed them and they become hyper aware of the things that you do that might kick them out.So if you've ever sort of wanted to go do some exercise or some physical movement and there's a part of you going, oh, let's not do this now, let's do this later, let's procrastinate. Well, that's the disempowered parts of you knowing that if you exercise, if you invest in your physical body, they get kicked out.And so all the disempowered parts of us scream the loudest before they get kicked out because their survival's on state, because they know if you were to engage with your body, become powerful, they're no longer there. And 2am on my parents couch had all this crap going through my head. The stress weeds were loving it. And at that point I was A breath work coach.My mind knew that if I breathed, things would get better, I would get the peace I was looking for. But do you think I could do that? Absolutely not. My own mind had me locked down and I was feeding those things that were destroying me.And it was like there was nothing I could do about it. So I get out of bed and I'm about to do pills, alcohol, self harm, maybe all three. But then I looked at my left thumb again.I said, tim, you can take one breath. Take one fucking breath. And I drove it into my chest. And it was like the first breath coming up from the deepest ocean. This is working. Take two.And I stuck a second finger into my chest. This is working. Take three, get to five.And then finger by finger, breath by breath, somewhere between breath 15 and breath 25, those stress weeds got kicked out of the garden. And the rest of my brain came online. Said, Tim, thank goodness you kicked them out. This is working. Don't stop.And I'm like, I think those 20 or 25 breaths put a little tear in the fabric of time. Because if I hadn't taken those 20 plus breaths, then there would be a version of me drinking pills, self harming.And I realized in that moment just how powerful the mind is. But I also realized how powerful breath work is. Breathwork outranks your mind, but it does need to be coached.You do need an external point to listen to. Oh, I can listen to this. I can do this. I can listen to this. I can do this. And then bit by bit by bit, you start reclaiming your own headspace.And the reason I'm confident in saying that is because, A, the experience I just had was real. B, I've had a lot of other people experience the same thing. But think about it yourself and think about our bodies.Your breath actually outranks your thinking mind. So if you've ever had the wind knocked out of you, it's all, it's like, oh my gosh, I just, I need to breathe. Nothing else matters besides breathing.And if you think of how humans were built before we were sentient creatures putting paintings on rock walls, we were breathing before we were speaking, we were breathing. We had a nervous system interacting with the outside world that was happening before we thought or spoke. And this is where people get it wrong.And psychologists, no one tells them this. They study for eight long years, but no one tells them that the trauma goes down deeper than the words can reach.Because trauma hits those that ancient wiring that existed before we spoke or thought. So, you know, psychologists it's like they've worked really hard to shoot targets that are 20 meters away. Right.But then a lot of people get frustrated because it's like you're not even getting close to unlocking hitting the targets that I need hit. So therein lies the, the power of breath work outranking your thinking mind. Because a lot of the intrusive thoughts, a lot of the stress starts here.And when we can't get relief, we end up pouring all sorts of stuff on top of it. We don't go inside our own skin and discover that the solution is actually there.

You know, that fascinating how all that it was able to come about and you have a better understanding of how breath work works.My son in law introduced me to Wim Hof breathing and I started to learn it and then I, because he lives in California, he and my oldest daughter live in California and we live here in Arizona. And it was difficult to connect and to keep going lives from both sides.But I know I seem to remember when I was doing that it's almost similar to meditation, but deeper. Because when I do meditation, I do breath work in my meditation, but not as deeply as Wim Hof breathing. So when you.I love the fact that you look at your thumb and your thumb went to five fingers and the five fingers turning into a white light. I understand that. I can relate to that.It resonates with me as an opportunity to kind of really focus on breathing and to take your mind off of that so that you can like you say, kick. You describe that brilliantly, actually, with the little stress demons and the eyeballs and the crap that gets tangled in your brain.Because that's exactly what happens. And it always seems to be between 2 and 3 in the morning. Yeah, no matter where we're at, it's always two or three in the morning.So this allowed you to overcome your own ptsd, I'm assuming, as well as overcome your pharmaceutical dependence and your alcohol addiction and everything related to that. Has that helped you to kind of eliminate a good portion of those.

So initially it was sleep and pain reduction. So what I was later to find out is that, you know, breath work is anti inflammatory. All right.So if I was to turn around and lift my shirt up, I'd show you. My back is strapped. Right. So classic lower back. Not a lot of cartilage left in my L34. Classic kind of thing.So I noticed that every time I did breath work, my pain scales got better and I didn't need to take as many pills and I just noticed the more I invested in my breath, the more my pain scales went down, the less, the more energy I had to actually proactively deal with the day and not just react. Because, you know, when I was in pain I had low energy.It's like everything was a goddamn trigger even before I even got to a place I could be fully triggered because my threat response is going, well, there's something that could happen. You need to be ready. And essentially pain finds a way for us to self isolate. And in our self isolation we can justify everything.All the dumbest stuff seems normal when you're in a place of disconnect. And so, so breath work, the way I describe it, Mike, is everything has a certain nature to it. You know, air has a certain nature.And one of the natures of air is you can't, if you try to grab it, you can't hold air, right? You can't be held.And so when we breathe air to a certain way, not just regular breathing, but prescribed breathing a certain way, it doesn't allow we take on the nature of air. It doesn't allow us to hold on to physical tension, it doesn't allow us to hold on to mental tension.And so just to, just to give yourself a little off switch a little time away, like a little micro holiday, then your brain isn't on that loop of, you know, scan for threat, respond to threat, scan for threat, respond, and, and that, you know, when they fire together, they wire together and, and, and it just gets locked in.And so to, to actually have a day to rest is really hard because you feel that if you drop your guard, you relax, something bad's going to happen, it's going to be your fault. So the art form of being gentle on oneself is, I believe, the easiest gateway is through your own breath.Because meditation in my observation, is thoughts controlling thoughts, which works for some people. And if you're at a certain state, you can do that.But if you've got a goddamn train wreck going through here, it's really hard to get control of that with thoughts controlling thoughts. But breathing, on the other hand, this outranks your thinking mind. But like I said, the only but to it is it does need to be prescribed, guided.And there's a, there's a specific kind of breath work that'll turn your bed into a cloud tonight, Mike. All right?And there's a specific type of breath work that in the morning, if you do it, it'll turn your bed into a trampoline and you'll win the first five minutes of the day. But these are the things that I've been evolving for about 15 years.And nobody, like I said, no one's really talking about this because not many people are making money from free breath. You know,.

I also think that people who are especially in pain, and whether it be mental pain or physical pain or both, when you isolate yourself, you're also trying to protect those around you. You don't want to express the pain. You don't want to express how bad you feel. You don't want to.From my perspective, when I was having a really, really bad day, my wife would always come to me or my kids would say, we know you're having a bad day. You can talk about it, you can do this, you can do that.But in my own mind, in my own capacity, I felt that sharing that would then put that pain on them, so to speak. It took me a long time to figure out that. It's like you said earlier, I've got your back, you got my back kind of a thing.I grew up in that mentality as well. I was a cop almost 17 years. I was in the military before that. And you learned to work with a team. You learn to count on each other.You learn to have each other's back kind of a situation. Sometimes we forget that even our families are now our team. We just have to recognize that and allow that to happen from those perspectives.But it's difficult for us to, I guess, understand how.And when I say this, this is so that we can enlighten people, how simple a breath can be to start your journey of kind of healing and recognizing that. Right.

Well, Mike, first up, I don't want to step over what you just said, because one of the biggest conversations I had around suicide prevention was eerily similar to what you just mentioned about people get to a point in their physical, emotional pain where they go, well, what do I know right now? I know I'm in pain, and I can see I'm causing pain to others. And if I look into my future, I can't see that changing.In fact, it's probably only going to get worse. And that's. They're being honest. Because if you've only got a small amount of energy and you look into your future, you're being honest, going, yeah.And then they start thinking, well, you know what? I've got a great idea. I'm going to end the pain to me. I'm going to end the pain to you by removing myself. I'm doing everyone a favor here.Been there and this. Yeah, and it's yeah, right.So one thing that sort of has been effective is the conversation around where I'll say words like okay, no one can actually stop you. If you've set your mind on committing suicide, no one can actually stop you.But here's the thing, if you're doing it, I'm going to challenge your assumption here.If you're doing it to save an experience of pain for others, anyone who knows you, their pain is going to be multiplied by about a thousand if you fulfill on removing yourself.And you need to understand that your idea of saving people's pain is, is absolutely wrong because it's only going to increase the amount of pain that everyone who knows you, you feel that's currently in. So that can be a bit of a circuit breaker conversation when someone's actually thinking removing themselves is actually doing a service to others.And the other sort of golden question, which is on the, on the back of that one that I've had a lot of success with is asking the question, okay, so you know, you're in a world of hurt right now. How many other people do you think are in the same situation as you?And then I'll pause, their eyes kind of look around the place and I'll say, look, let's give it a real number here. How many do you think? And, and, and sometimes they say 10, 20, sometimes they say 1 or 2, 5 million others.And that's when I'll say, okay, these people, they're real people. There's let's say, a million others up against what you're up against.And if people are listening to this right now, I really want them to really draw this closer to themselves because everyone's up against something. Whoever's listening to this right now, you're up against something.And if you ask yourself a really simple question, how many others do you think are in the same situation as you?And then give it a tangible number and you know, if it's 10, 20, a million, place those 500,000 to your right, 500,000 to your left, and they're all looking in hurting just as much as you and willing you on saying if you can find a way forward for you, you can find a way forward for us. And so it's, this ties into what we spoke about initially.It's not so much what we do that's valuable to others, it's what we've come through that's valuable to others. And when you're really hurting, progress can be frickin hard okay. But understand this. Understand this.If it takes you a week, a month, a year to make an inch of progress, you're actually making a million inches of progress. And when you can get your head around that collective connection, a, You've broken your own isolation.These people, a lot of them you haven't even met yet, okay, but they're going to say words like, you know what? I'm so glad that back in 2026, after listening to that podcast, you chose to move forward just an inch, and it took you a year. But you know what?The conversation I'm having with you right now, you've just saved me a year of work. Thank you. Thank you.You know, and if you can grasp the number of people that are in the same situation as you and then contextualize your forward momentum with multiplying it out, all of a sudden, like I said, you break your own isolation, you might be very surprised at what that feels like.You might actually start having thoughts and connections that you never had before when you realize you're connected to so many other people and you've been gifted this obstacle that if you can get over for you, you can get over for them.

Yeah, a profound way of putting that.Actually, it is challenging for people, but in helping them to enlighten themselves to the opportunity that does exist, even to move an inch is an amazing opportunity that they need that they should always grasp. And you are correct. I've delivered many messages. I mean, that's one reason I was fully aware of my thoughts when I had gone through that.But understanding that it was. It was difficult to.I would not put that on my family, understanding the messages that I had to deliver to other people about that, you know, somebody taking their life and the effect that it had on them. So, yeah, an inch is a very positive thing. Even an inch.

Well, I think we also need to swing the pendulum in the other direction. If nothing was to change, if you said, no, I'm just going to stay the way I am and self isolate, what would be the natural future of that?If you thought ahead, where would you end up? If nothing changed?And sometimes really seeing that and feeling what that would be like, then that can give you momentum to go in the direction you do want to go. You know, there's. There's going towards what you want, but then there's also using the momentum of the propulsion of revulsion, I call it.You know, there's something that you really don't want. So imagining if you said, well, I'm just gonna. If I Didn't change when I changed. I would have been pills, alcohol, self harm.I certainly wouldn't be on this podcast. I'd be lucky to be in jail.

Or in an alley someplace or on a beach someplace.

Yeah. But, you know, to, to have this conversation with you on the other side of the planet. Mike, actually, actually started in, in 2011.It was April, and I'd reached my rock bottom and I was about. I was literally about to kill a man, right? And my time in the Special Forces ended a year earlier. The government wasn't paying me.This would have been murder. And with family falling apart and all this crap in my head, I didn't know conventional wisdom said you got to go see a psychologist. And so.And that didn't make any sense to me because, like, it's hard for me to talk about this stuff and I don't trust this guy. That makes no sense. I don't. So. But what do I know? I'm going crazy, right? So it was very difficult for me to go see this psychologist. And I.In a very short period of time, I realized I just paid a lot of good money. These things aren't cheap to do. A lot of good money to sit in front of a guy that wasn't just incompetent. He was completely apathetic.You know, he was sort of staring at the ceiling and not even wanting to be there.And after I told him all the stuff I saw in Afghanistan, all the stuff going on with my family, he just does this big sort of snort and goes, oh, you think it was a problem with your mum and dad?

I have to grin because, yes, yes, I've been there as well,.

Because I tell you, that whole room froze, you know, and I made a quick inventory of all the things in that room. And I saw this guy and I'm like, this guy says he's a healer, but he's not just not healing, he's harming people. So in. In my disconnected state.So do you remember I said, like, when you're in a disconnected state, crazy shit can seem normal. In my disconnected state, removing this guy made a lot of sense because I'm helping others. Right?

Right.

And how perfect. There's a glass frame psychology degree behind him. I'm going to feed this guy his words.And I'm getting out of my chair to do this and got a certain skill set. No one could have stopped me. Two hands on the side. I push myself up.And then, and then it gets a bit weird here because I felt like a hand pressure on My chest. Not enough to stop me, but I'm like, huh, what's that? And then three words I'd never heard before, Mike.Red flag, Tim H. And it was enough to sort of stop me.

Like, what universe whispering in your ear.

I don't know what it is, but I'd never heard those words before.And I'm just pausing here, and I'm like, tim, you're the toughest mother trucker you know, and you are struggling in this system that doesn't seem to want to help or know how to help. In fact, they seem to want to keep you sick. And then I said, how many other people are in this same sort of situation?And I sort of fell back into my chair. But, Mike, that's when I saw them.Hundreds of thousands of people to my right, hundreds of thousands of people to my left with the same look of, we're stuck. How do we move forward in this? And I'm like, okay, okay, okay.Even if it takes me a week, a month, a decade to make an inch of progress, you know, that's. That's the amount of time I'm going to save all those other people.And with my isolation broken because I saw all these other people, genuinely saw them.

It's.

Yeah, the tourniquet came off my intelligence. I started thinking more. I wasn't reacting. This guy just disappeared. He was just really highlighting the blockages that I had.And then I went on to create all these programs on the back of those sort of moment. And if you. If you really want to go there, Mike, you were there with me. You were there wheeling me on in 2011.

I would say, collectively, I would believe that I would be there for you. I mean, I would have your back in that regard, because I know what you're going through. I know what you have been going through.And I don't just understand it, I empathize with it. Because I've gone through the same things myself. Not to the same extreme as that particular point in your life.

Well, let me explain it a bit better, but. So every. Every choice we make sets us up to meet a different group of people. Okay.So if I chose in that moment to, you know, get that glass frame psychology degree and feed it to him, I'd be in jail and my future, you would not have been in whole different.

Whole different one.

Yeah. So. So when I'm saying when you were there, you appeared. I hadn't met you yet, but you were in that moment as I was moving forward.I didn't know your name. You Know, but, but I, I knew that the choices I was making there brought in a future with a group of people.And you were there, you were, you were made possible with that choice.And then when I moved forward, I started making these inches of progress with the idea that these people I hadn't met yet would be really glad I chose what I chose before we even sort of met each other.

Yeah, that's profound. I think that's fate, that us putting our.That talks about the universe, that talks about how we decide where we want to go, that goes back to, we're part of the earth, we're part of the land, we're part of the air, we're part of the trees. I think it's the same philosophy that we, on our journey, we are, we meet people and some stay with us for a long, long time.Some move on and new ones come into play, but we can see them way down the path. We just haven't met them yet. And that's what the medicine man told me and my wife about some other friends within our lives.And that clicked to me when you said that. It really. That makes a lot of sense.

It's not something that we've invented, it's something we've discovered.So universal truths, the kind of true, whether you're in Australia, in the U.S. you know, whatever color skin and doesn't need to be explained, it's just kind of felt, known, experienced.

I find it interesting. Obviously, I think we're all meant to. The people we meet in life, I agree with you. The people that we meet, we meet for a reason.We meet for a purpose. And it was destined to be that way. And I'm grateful that you reached out to me because again, we wouldn't have this conversation. And you're.Your contribution to society and to veterans in particular, or first responders, because it's the same message is profound from that perspective. I gotta ask you this though. I'm sorry. We could talk for an hour, man. We talk for another hour. Let's talk about sleep. Yeah, I mean, I relate to this.I said earlier, I relate to it so many ways because of, you know, my career has put me in such a pathway that my sleep patterns were constantly affected by changing shifts, call outs, working the street all the time, being on that, you know, like you said, as a cop, as a warrior of any type, you are constantly reassessing what if, what if, what if, what if you see this, you go, what if you're in a restaurant? You go, what if somebody comes through that Door. What if this happens or that happens?So your brain is constantly running at a thousand miles a minute. So how did you level it out to understand that the foundation of healing is not where.I think society has a general forethought that sleep is a luxury and that it's an afterthought, but it's really a gateway to health, isn't it?

More than, you know, and athletes kind of know that, like they love to, let's say an athlete loves to run, okay. But if they just kept running around the track without resting, their performance would dip. And, and there's natural traits we all have.You know, we, we like working. You know, there's particular people that can scan for threat really well.There's particular people that, you know, are artistic and make something out of nothing.There's all these, you know, human traits, but if we, if we work on them too much and we never have and it's all throttle, no brake, then all of a sudden we start often seeing our sense of self worth attached to this thing that we do in this world.All right, so it's hard for people to drop a habit they have if they're continually scanning for threat or if they're continually seeing that what I do is, is who I am. And people can live with this sort of stuff in the daylight hours, but at nighttime, that's when the imbalances show.And the way I sort of describe this to my corporates is performance is like a pyramid, top of the pyramid.You're achieving what you want in the outside world, whether it's successful operation, whether it's money, whether it's, whatever it is, that's the top of the pyramid. Everyone sees that and you often get a sense of self worth around that. But the bottom of the pyramid is your rest, recovery and healing art forms.And nobody's cheering you on for that. It's hard to get a sense of self worth from that. We're very visual people. No one's going to cheer you on.Oh, look, Mike had a really good night's sleep last night.

Woo.

All right. So to actually understand the importance of sleep, I'll often say, well, how would your performance be if you didn't sleep for three nights?Well, you start understanding that performance pyramid, 90 plus percent of it is actually sleep, healing, rest, recovery. But because our human bodies are built so amazingly, we can actually get by with a small.We can, we can, we can live out of balance for so long and the world we currently live in loves to supply us with all these short Term energy loans, as I call them, where if you're low on energy, they'll lend you $100, but then you got to pay $200 back the next week. So, you know, coffee, energy drinks, sleeping pills, all these things. And I'm not anti those things at all.

But.

No one's showing us how to access the medicine underneath our own skin. And if you really want to, a little thing I do with high school students is like, we eat food and we poop, right? That's a natural process.Imagine if you said, right, you can't poop anymore. You gotta, you've got to hold it. You know, you'd struggle. You would really struggle.And our brain, it creates a lot of energy, but also it's got a poop, right? It creates a lot of waste, but it sits in this blood brain barrier, okay?And at nighttime when we have a, you know, quality sleep of six to eight hours, the, the spinal fluid comes up and rinses out your brain, pulls out all the waste, pulls out all the crap.So if you're waking up feeling crappy, if that crappy feeling is following you around for the day, there's a really good reason for that, because we haven't allowed ourselves to fully discharge, literally discharge the day before. And all this crap is kind of accumulating.If you want to talk numbers, then corporates kind of love my work because they know that sleep poor employees take twice as many sick days. So if you want to cut the your sick days in half of your workforce, work on improving sleep if you want to.And it's not just absenteeism, it's presenteeism. Sleep poor employees are 30 to 40% less productive than their work, well rested colleagues, and workplace accidents greatly impacted by fatigue.In fact, I think in the States the statistic is 100,000 car accidents each year are attributed to poor quality sleep, not being rested. And you know, you might blow in a bag or get a breath test for alcohol, but no one's testing fatigue levels.So, you know, ultimately, Michael, my ultimate vision is for a metric of success of any government is the quality sleep of the people they govern. Just get your head around that for a second because there's government saying, oh, we're killing it.Look, we're building roads, we're balancing budgets, but other people you govern sleeping peacefully in their beds at night. And that stuff's very measurable, you know, it absolutely is.

I mean, I ran a traffic unit when I was a sergeant and I had a traffic unit. That's all we did. Was traffic accidents and things like that.And I can tell you that in certain hours in the morning and at night, the multitude of accidents that were directly related to people falling asleep and, or. Or dozing or so dazed that they look like and acted like they were intoxicated, but they were not. So, yes, I validate you in that regard.From working on the job, it was systematically a problem.

Well, in war, Mike, we used to deliberately target the enemy sleep. Not that we knew about the science of it. We just knew if we could take it out for three nights, it would mess them up better than a bullet.

Cops do that. When you got a barricade situation, you blast it with music. You keep them awake. You keep them awake. You keep them awake.

Yep. It completely melts your brain. And, you know, then I come back to this, you know, modern western world, and it's like our sleep is getting attacked.There's no clear enemy, but the quality of our sleep is getting eroded. And it seems societally accepted.But I thought, well, okay, if there was two groups of people, one was sleeping well, knew how to invest in themselves, could build their own value, and the other group, you know, didn't know their value, always had to work for extra hard, never really slept, who would buy more crap they didn't need, who would be more easily influenced and who would be thinking the answers are outside of them, not inside of them. Because in warfare, yeah, it's kind of obvious, right?So to me, the ultimate act for, you know, world peace and, you know, disrupting all the modern technology is quality sleep, because then we can actually access that. That higher state. And Mike, I'm actually really excited to see how I'm going to actually challenge you, my man, to do the breathwork in bed.28 Day free trial.Because everyone listening, I'm gifting them 28 days of the free trial where you get guided into your unconscious with breath and then in the morning, guided out of your unconscious with breath. And I'd be very interested to see, A, if you want to take me up on it, and B, if it makes a difference to you, I will.

Take you up on it. I will take you up on it.If somebody wants to get a little more into your work and a little more into your mission with breathwork, let's tell everybody how they can find you to get a little deeper into this and get a hold of that 28 day challenge.

Yeah, sure. So 28 day challenge free. Just whatever phone you've got put in. Breathwork. One word in bed. Choose the 28 day free trial.But it's going to ask you two really important questions. When do you want to sleep and when do you want to wake up?Take the time to answer those two things because once you do, you won't have to touch it again. You'll get notifications that when it comes time to sleep, you'll just tap that.It will guide you in the most amazing, amazing way to have the turn your bed into a cloud, literally tonight. And then in the morning you'll have that notification there. You tap that. You don't even have to get out of bed.You just do the guided breath work and there's a few little body movements that help your body remove that stuck energy. And there's a few little bonus features in there too, that I won't mention. I'll just let people explore. But yes, be like top secret information.

That's going to come out.

I made it super simple because fatigue, people don't want six things to remember. They just want to tap a button and go, can you take care of this for me?

Yes. Because we lay awake for about an hour trying to figure out the list. See, we don't want to do that. Tim, this has been fantastic.It's been a pleasure getting to know you. I am so happy to be part of the rest of the Mike crowd that you have mates all named Mike. Yeah.

We got to do this again. You know what I'm thinking now? We should do this again in 28 days and check back in. I don't want this to be just hit it and quit it.

I would absolutely love to be able to do that. Yes, I would. In the meantime, I would love to keep talking to you for another hour, but we have to give a message to people.This is one more thing before you go. So before you go, where's the wisdom? What's the one message you want?Every veteran first responder, every human being that's suffering silently, what do you want them to hear today?

If you can control your breath, you can control everything.

Profound words of wisdom. Very profound, Tim.Thank you very much for joining me me today on one more thing before you go sharing your journey, your wisdom, your opportunity for some relief. I greatly appreciate you.

Thanks, Mark. Great to be here.

For everyone else out there, we all carry something, something heavy. Sometimes we don't talk about it. Sometimes we think we're supposed to handle it alone, as we just talked about.But healing doesn't happen in isolation. It happens in connection. It happens in community.It happens when we take one breath and then another and then another Better sleep leads to better humans. Better humans lead to a better world. And you deserve both. So that's a wrap for today's episode.I hope you found inspiration, motivation and a few new perspectives to take with you. Please take Tim up on his 28 day challenge. I'm going to if you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to like subscribe and follow us and stay connected.You can find us on Apple, Spotify and you're following favorite listening platform. You can hover to YouTube. Catch us the full video version. I'm Michael Hurst.Have a great day, have a great week and thank you for being part of our community.

Thanks for listening to this episode of One More Thing before you go Check out our website at before you go podcast.com you can find us as well as subscribe to the program and rate us on your favorite podcast listening platform.