>>> intro
Welcome to this episode where, together with Tom Stijven from Just Breathe, we connect the dots between breathing, well-being, and inclusion. Did you know that each of us has a powerful self-regulating device at our disposal? What if we could use our breathing not only as a coping mechanism to handle the pressure and haste of the system we live in, but also to change this system?
Listen in and get some immediately applicable breathing tips on the go!
Good afternoon, good evening, or good morning, depending on when you're listening. We are here with a new episode of our podcast, and we have as our guest none other than Tom Stijven. We invited Tom not only because we've known him for a while and have enjoyed working with him, but also because Tom is an expert in the field of breathing. And you might be wondering, 'What is the connection between a breathing expert and the theme of our podcast, which mainly focuses on the job market and inclusion?' Today, let's broaden that scope to include well-being at work and in the job market. When we talk about well-being, we come close to what Tom has to offer. But Tom, perhaps you could briefly introduce yourself.
Good afternoon everyone. I’m Tom Stijven. I've been very actively involved in everything related to breathing for 10 years now, prompted by a six-year period of illness where I was deteriorating and couldn't do anything. I sought help everywhere: advice from various specialists, doctors, hospitals... No one could help me, and the final conclusion was 'you have fibromyalgia, we will refer you to a pain clinic'. I politely declined that. Coincidentally, that same week, I discovered a story through my mother about a crazy Dutchman who claimed to influence your autonomic nervous system and immune system, and that was Wim Hof, the 'Iceman'. I attended a training and an introductory weekend, and I actually returned home pain-free and full of energy after just one weekend. Three months later, I was working full-time as an order picker at a large sports company, walking 8 to 12 kilometers a day through a warehouse and taking the stairs to the fifth floor.. everything was possible. That inspired me to get involved.
In January 2015, I became the first official Wim Hof instructor in Belgium, and since then, I have been focusing on acquiring additional knowledge, including through a breathology course: very old pranayama knowledge about breathing, but scientifically substantiated.
So you’ve personally experienced what breathing can do for a person, for a body, for health. If I heard you correctly, you were deteriorating for about six years and could do less and less. You consciously started working with your breathing and actually recovered very quickly - almost unbelievably quickly - from what doctors declared as something you had to learn to live with. And then you decided to further your expertise in this field because you felt, 'What I've experienced, I want to help others with. I want to understand what was behind it and use it as a tool to help others as well.'
And now Tom is an expert and one of the few Belgians who is engaged in this field at this level and is now working full-time professionally to help people with it.
So what do you do on a daily basis - what does that help consist of?
It’s very broad, ranging from one-on-one guidance where people come for counseling to seek advice. The causes are often mental or physical complaints they can't get rid of. Physical complaints like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia - even anxiety disorders, depression, chronic hyperventilation, and then we really analyze your breathing in a one-on-one session, investigate where it comes from and with the right exercises and tricks, we can correct that.
Another activity I spend a lot of time on is workshops in companies where we give workshops to groups of 5, 15, or 20 people, for example, for two hours about how your functional breathing works. How does your autopilot work? Is your breathing still supporting you or undermining you? And then we share knowledge and exercises and do tests to see how your breathing is doing.
And the second part is: breathing as the remote control of your brain. How do you use your breathing to regulate yourself? So you actually have the tools perfectly with you to choose how you feel. Each breath has a different emotional state, mood, and you can always return from any emotional state to another by changing your breathing.
We are discussing very exciting things here. You say that breathing is actually the remote control for your brain? You need to explain that.
In any situation you find yourself in, your breathing changes. So if you experience something very exciting or stressful, you will probably breathe faster with 99% certainty, breathe higher in your chest, and often through your mouth. And those are actually the three most unhealthy things you can do. That is chest breathing, over-breathing, and mouth breathing.
So what do we need to learn?
Relaxation is the opposite. If you are completely calm and peaceful in a sunny meadow eating an ice cream, you are probably breathing very calmly with your diaphragm and mostly through your nose. And that shows: those two emotional states have their own breathing. So when you get into stress or tension, you are perfectly capable of taking control of your breathing, making it calm and slow, focusing on nasal breathing and using your diaphragm, and your system will immediately calm down. It doesn’t take three minutes.
And if I understand correctly when I listen to you, in our Western society - because you mentioned ancient wisdom, thousands of years old wisdom.. Have we forgotten how to breathe in our Western society?
Yes, that's right. And unfortunately, it has also been somewhat forgotten in the medical world. Even when you seek help from professionals - if you're lucky, a doctor or medical professional will detect that you are chronically over-breathing and refer you to a physical therapist to learn to breathe differently. And if they can’t help, they refer you to me because those are often the people who also come to workshops: psychologists, physical therapists, osteopaths. Because even there, the basic knowledge of how proper breathing works is almost no longer taught or present. And if you read certain books about breathing, you notice that over the last 150 years, knowledge about breathing flares up and then ten years later we forget it again. And that cycle continues in 10-15 year intervals throughout history: that knowledge resurfaces and disappears again. Whereas: pranayama yoga is thousands of years old and had certain exercises where people thought 'what’s that about' – but if we look at it now and measure it, there is scientific evidence of what exactly happens in your system in your breathing. And it’s quite surprising to see. Why don’t we know that?
I think our Western society is primarily focused on performing and being present.. And we are almost always in our ‘on mode’ in our fight and flight mode; and that is also the stress level that goes with it. And stress is super healthy, right: we need stress to function well, otherwise we would never take action or undertake things. But stress becomes problematic when it is chronic and you don’t know how to handle it. And then you end up in a state of overload. And that overload is where the problem lies. Everything has to do with your own resilience, your own capacity. If the stress becomes heavier than what you can handle, you get problems. And some people thrive under enormous stress because they know the tools and understand the importance of unwinding and calming down.
Can you reveal a few tools? What can you share with people via the podcast to relax and manage stress?
There are a few very simple things. Basically, you need to understand that relaxation is in the exhalation. For your heart, each inhalation is a kind of action mode, during each inhalation your heart beats a bit faster and during each exhalation your heart beats a bit slower. This is purely related to the stimulation of the vagus nerve.
And a very simple exercise that is now somewhat more known is heart coherent breathing. Heart coherent breathing means inhaling for 4 seconds and exhaling for 6 seconds. No more than that, no more complicated than that. But it has an impact on your entire heart rhythm and cortisol level within 3 minutes, so it’s actually the ideal way to de-stress in a few minutes. If you do that for 5 minutes 3 times a day, I’m sure you will feel a lasting effect on your mood and how you can calm yourself within 4 weeks.
Four counts in six counts out?
Yes.
Last week, I heard a podcast by Dr. Luc Swinnen who talked about a similar exercise: you should do the 4-7-8 in the morning and evening: inhale for 4 counts, hold for 7 counts, and exhale for 8 counts.
Your tip is even simpler: four in six out.
Definitely, and I use 4-7-8 in my workshops as a way to fall asleep. If you inhale for 4 seconds, pause for 7 seconds, and exhale for 8 seconds, you are actually using two ways to calm your biology. So I just said 4-6 is heart coherent breathing, if you have acute stress, then you go to 4-8: exhale twice as long as you inhale. I call it one-two breathing: simply the ratio - exhaling twice as long as inhaling. Because you make even more use of the slowing down of the heart rate.
The 7-second pause in the 4-7-8 breathing actually goes back to a biological system we have called the ‘mammalian diving reflex’. If you stop breathing, your body detects that no new oxygen is coming in and goes into a kind of saving mode. I use this especially within the Wim Hof method, free divers use it to calm down before diving. Especially if you combine the breath hold with cold on your face, your heart rate drops immediately. And I demonstrate this kind of thing in a workshop by not breathing for 40 seconds while putting an ice-cold wet cloth on my face. Within 20 seconds, my heart rate drops by 25 beats. Your body responds to that. So there are two ways to slow down your biology. With the 4-8, the slowing down is in the exhalation and the 7-second pause in the 4-7-8 breathing refers back to the mammalian diving reflex.
That works perfectly if your autopilot already has good breathing. Four-seven-eight breathing can also be stressful for some people because it feels like too little and too slow breathing - then it completely misses its effect.
That’s why my workshop always starts with exploring how your autopilot breathing works. And it’s very simple: you should be able to hold your breath for at least 25, preferably 40 seconds. Just stop after a normal exhalation without preparation and see how long you can go without breathing. If you can’t last 25 seconds, you have disturbed breathing and suffer physically and/or mentally - even if you don’t realize it and don’t recognize the signals, but that’s where the problem lies.
So if someone can only hold their breath for 13 seconds and I recommend they do the 4-7-8 breathing to sleep better, it will never work because they will be completely stressed out. The basics need to be right first.
So dear listener: you can all test that now. Just inhale and exhale once and then see how long you can go without breathing again.
Yes.
And you say it should be at least 25 seconds? But I can imagine that for some people around 20 seconds - maybe even earlier - the urge to breathe again gets stronger and stronger so it’s not necessarily that those 25 seconds feel very comfortable?
No.
The point is to look for a clear breathing urge, that is when you really feel like you want to breathe at that moment, but you shouldn’t delay it just to reach 30 seconds. Because if you go past that threshold, you will almost panic when you inhale again. And that’s not what you want. I usually advise taking two calm, slow breaths, exhaling, and then stopping breathing. Start your stopwatch then and feel when you have the clear urge to breathe and can still breathe in calmly.
And if you want to do it right, you should actually do this for three consecutive mornings and take the average. Because in the morning you are still stress-free, you have just woken up, that’s the best time to measure it. In the Oxygen Advantage method, we call it the ‘BOLT score’. In heart coherence, they use the same and call it ‘control pause’. It gives a very clear picture of how your autopilot works.
And when you work with groups, Tom, what is your experience? What percentage of participants has no problem with it?
Sixty percent of people have no problem reaching above 25 seconds. It’s a small minority that reaches 40 seconds. And nearly 40% of people in the groups I guide don’t reach 25 seconds. And when you start explaining the consequences of that.. it’s all related to energy management, sleep, calmness in your mind.. It’s all linked to that.
I’ll interrupt for a moment because I hear various terms: ‘clear breathing urge’, ‘mammalian diving reflex’, ‘one-two breathing’, ‘heart coherent breathing’, but what I haven’t heard you say, Tom, is ‘deep breathing’.
That is correct.
‘Deep breathing’ – we used to say, ‘if you’re having a hard time, take a few deep breaths.’ That’s a big misconception because people think ‘I’m going to fill my lungs completely’. And that can be somewhat relaxing, but what you are mainly doing is filling your chest. Whereas real deep breathing actually means you take in barely a liter of air but very deep into your lungs, into the lower part of your lungs, and you have to breathe with your diaphragm for that. That is actually the only truly healthy breathing muscle. And you fill the lower part of your lungs where most of the alveoli are located (in the lower 30% of your lungs). The most efficient gas exchange happens in that lower part of your lungs. So deep breathing is a good tip if you understand what deep breathing means. And there is a lot of misunderstanding about that.
That’s what people often call ‘abdominal breathing’?
Yes.
And there’s also a danger in that. If I see people who are very much stuck in their chest - because due to years of stress, tension, or traumas from the past, you move very much towards chest breathing. And that diaphragm breathing works like this. The diaphragm is the separation between your lungs, heart, and intestines. It’s a muscle that you can tense up very easily and take small breaths with.
Abdominal breathing means that if I move my diaphragm, I have to make space somewhere for my lungs to expand. And that is usually in your abdominal cavity. But if I tell people to breathe into their belly while they are no longer used to it, you see the opposite happening. By inhaling, your belly should bulge a bit, and during exhalation, it should sink back in. And if you force that, you see the opposite. People use their abdominal muscles to bulge their belly while exhaling. It can go wrong that quickly. So I don’t like using the term ‘abdominal breathing’. Because it can be quickly misunderstood and actually have a completely wrong effect.
So you say ‘diaphragmatic breathing’?
Yes. Because you can also breathe perfectly with your diaphragm so that you push your lower ribs sideways and your belly barely moves. So ‘abdominal breathing’ can be correct, but it doesn’t fully cover it.
I also wondered about something. You mentioned it a few times. People are often stressed, the combination of work and life or the rush.. You could see mastering your own breathing a bit as a kind of coping mechanism. But you also work with groups, with companies - do you also see that breathing and mastering it as a way to shape society and the work environment differently? Or does it remain about better coping with the stress that is there?
No, certainly not.
People get into trouble when the load is greater than the capacity. And at the core of that lie choices. What do you choose for? Not only professionally but also in private life.
‘I have a busy job and I still have to go to the gym, and I should visit my parents. And on Friday, I should visit my friends to maintain my social contacts.’
Those are too many ‘shoulds’. And people are afraid to make choices. I think certain societal expectations feed this: you should meet all these expectations to be a good citizen - or a good brother or a good son or a good friend. But our life is just too busy, and we make no choices or make the wrong choices. And when I tell people they should learn to relax a bit.. Relaxation can also mean running 10 kilometers through the forest. For your system, a long run can perfectly mean ‘rest’. If your mind clears completely and you only hear your running steps, then you are meditating while running and are actually in a state of ‘rest & digest’.
Your autonomic nervous system knows a fight & flight status and a rest & digest status. We mostly live in fight & flight mode: I still have to go to the gym, I still have to do this, the kids have to go to swim lessons, I have to visit my parents.. While going to the gym can mean ‘rest & digest’ if you do it with full enthusiasm and enjoy it. Rest & digest doesn’t necessarily mean sitting on a mat doing nothing and generating ‘ohm chants’. That is not necessarily the definition of rest & digest. It’s about choices. And that’s also the case in professional life.
If you say you have a busy job and you’re dealing with customers all day, often angry customers on the line.. Even then, you can perfectly regulate yourself and breathe more calmly, apply one-two breathing, the 4-6 breathing - and still stay calm while an angry customer is venting. You don’t have to get into that adrenaline. That is also a choice. If you take control of yourself and know the tools & tricks that help you do that, you can handle much more. You can increase your capacity that way. And by making choices, you can reduce the load. And regarding your job: I sometimes ask people to make a conscious choice about that. Do you really enjoy this? Is this your thing? Does it make you happy? Then you’re doing well. Sometimes it happens that people say after a training or after following a course with me that they no longer fit in their job. Is that a loss for the employer or is it a gain? Because an unhappy, unmotivated employee doesn’t really contribute to the success of your company either. Those are often things we need to dare to mention and make choices about. And that’s why I make the link to why it makes sense to give this kind of training in a company. By becoming more in touch with yourself, calming down, you will also be much more tolerant of others and radiate calm. And I think that is a very clear thing, especially for managers, for employers. If you come into a heated situation and can radiate calm, you get a very different energy.
We also give such training to first responders, paramedics, police officers, firefighters. If you get into a heated situation as a police officer in a bar fight, for example, and you come in as a calm, balanced person, you radiate calm and can communicate and connect much faster and negotiate or mediate. And if you come in with high adrenaline and a high heart rate..: people sense that and situations escalate.
So I hear you saying that responding calmly and staying calm is something we all desire in every circumstance in our lives. Whether it is professionally in a managerial or non-managerial role or in our private lives at home with the kids, with the partner - you name it. And the incredibly powerful thing is that breathing can help enormously with that. And we always have that breathing with us, we don’t need to buy anything for it. We don’t need to take medication for it. We don’t need to take anything with us. We just need to be aware of it and know how to use it well. And then it can sometimes work wonders as it did for you.
It can be truly spectacular.
I had a nurse with me just after the first corona wave. Diagnosis: chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, insomnia, accompanied by overweight. I let her do that test, and she could hold her breath for 13 seconds before gasping for air. So that whole basic breathing pattern is disturbed. By using the right exercises - including a form of the 4-7-8 but also reprogramming the autopilot to breathe less – we had the effect that she felt much better, had much less pain, much more energy, and could sleep much better within 3 weeks.
And what you just said that we don’t need anything for that might also be a bit of the downfall of all knowledge about breathing. It’s a very poor business model. If I can sell you a subscription for some fitness, I can bind you to a revenue model for 10 years. If I can keep you on medication, I can also make good money from you. But if I teach you to breathe properly in two sessions and give you the skills to use it, you can use that for free for a lifetime without special clothing, without aids, and without subscriptions. You have everything with you.
I’m making a leap to what you said earlier. Apparently, we have also forgotten in our medical education how important breathing is. Is there a possible link that there is too little revenue model in good breathing?
That is a very dangerous statement for me. We are super happy with our modern medicine. What we have developed and built up in terms of knowledge over the last 150 years is enormous. If I step outside right now and break my hip on the sidewalk, I am super happy that they can immediately operate on me, put in a new hip, stitch it together, whatever you want. My mother had 5 bypass operations. I am super happy that all that is possible. But I think we have lost the whole basis of how our system works a bit in the medical world.
This spring, I gave a workshop for 14 people over 80 years old who have been doing something together every month for 40 years, and they came to take a breathing course. My whole explanation about what happens with CO2, oxygen levels, impact on pain perception.. There was one man who kept confirming it: ‘ah yes that’s right’ ‘yes of course..’ That was a doctor. But that man was trained 55 years ago and it was a very different setting. They had to experiment much more, search much more, and were much more concerned with the holistic, with the person as a whole. And now we are mainly dealing with symptom control in the medical world and for every symptom, there is a remedy to suppress that symptom. But it doesn’t take away the cause.
And when I talk about breath coaching, the things we’ve discussed now: it’s a very nice package of tools you can use. But when we talk about breathwork, it’s about a technique to breathe to address old pains, old emotions, traumas – any disturbance of your autonomic nervous system, especially at a young age, remains stuck in your subconscious.
And if you then use the right breathing techniques like conscious connected breathing, which we called ‘rebirthing’ in the 70s – you can go very deep into your subconscious and feel things we are not good at anymore. We no longer learn to feel. That’s a big problem, and those are things I do together with my girlfriend Sonja Blommaart. She has done a two-year training purely in this field in rebirthing.
We organize breathing circles where we lay people down on a mat and let them breathe for an hour. And within 10 minutes, you go out of your neocortex, your modern thinking brain, and come into your mammalian brain and encounter all kinds of old things without being able to name or really know what it’s about. People start shaking because of muscle tension they’ve been carrying for a long time - really built-up physical tension. Or people start crying spontaneously, often it’s really a cry to let things go.
I did it once, and it had been 40 years since I last cried, and then I started crying indeed.
We have more and more psychologists coming to us and then referring people because they realize it’s so deep in your subconscious that you can’t reach it with words. And then it’s nice that you can make such journeys with breathing and let that energy flow again. Because that’s what it’s about: it’s blocked energy stuck in your system that can cause blockages. That has been deregulated. That’s also a form of breathwork.
Bodywork, breathwork.. That’s almost therapeutic what you’re doing there.
Absolutely.
And in that sense, it’s different from breath coaching that you first explained, where with a few relatively simple tips or sometimes even very simple tips, we can already significantly improve the quality of our lives and our health.
Tom. Thank you very much for giving us this brief and powerful introduction to the fascinating world of our breathing. I’m convinced it will offer many people new insights and hopefully help them. And if they have further questions or need support, they can certainly contact you.
Absolutely.
Thank you for being here.
[outro]
>>>You listened to an episode of ‘Let’s Talk About Work’, the podcast of the group WEB-Blenders. Our conversations are about work, the path to work, well-being at work, and everything that comes with it. You can find us on your favorite podcast platform and on www.blenders.be/podcast. On social media, you can follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. You can also stay up to date via the Blenders newsletter. Were you intrigued? Did this conversation make you think? Would you like to be one of our next guests? Let us know via info@blenders.be and who knows, you might soon be joining us at the table.
