[00:00:01] Luke: So it looks like Brigitte Macron is a man. What do you think of that as a Frenchman?

[00:00:09] Erwan: Not really concerned about that.

[00:00:12] Luke: Are you still in touch with people back in France?

[00:00:14] Erwan: A few, but not that I try to. Even though I've been living in the US for 16 years now, I never tried to hang out with French people. I don't care. I'm not interested in a particular background. It's more about who the person is. I want to hang out with them or not, regardless of whatever.

[00:00:32] Luke: I thought of that just because when I think of France, having not been there in probably 25 years, that's what I think of.

[00:00:39] Erwan: But you were there.

[00:00:40] Luke: The world we live in is so full of deceit and fallacy that I find it entertaining when things like that come to light. I don't care. It has no impact on me. But it's interesting over the past four or five years to see some of the veil dropping. You have independent journalists that start digging into different things that they question and very interesting things come to light.

[00:01:05] Erwan: I believe, and I'm saying that out of my intuition, and I could be totally wrong, actually, you care deeply. The thing is that--

[00:01:12] Luke: Well, I care about the truth.

[00:01:15] Erwan: Exactly. So when you say you don't care, I believe what you want to express is that you know the reality of the world, that there is a lot of deceit in the world, and therefore, somehow you are doing your best to not be overly sensitive about it. But your value system is based on integrity.

[00:01:35] Therefore, it bothers you just to know that deceit even exists in the world. So you do care, but you manage the level at which it impacts you. Because otherwise you can't be functional if you are always mad at the world for being untrue.

[00:01:49] Luke: I think when I say I don't care, I don't have an attachment to, if the truth is on the left side or the right side, or if it's number one or number two. I just want to know what the truth is. And what bothers me is that a misrepresentation of the truth is being propagated. But I'm not attached to which opinion is true. I'm interested in what the truth is, even if it's not the truth that I would prefer. You know what I mean?

[00:02:16] Erwan: I totally see what you mean. In fact, it's when you see lies that are elevated to the status of truth that you can't even question. Or most people are going to look at you like, "Really? You think this is not real or true?" And they're going to look at you weird because they're exposed to those lies presented as truth. That's what it bothers you. It's not just the existence of deceit. It's the fact that deceit is a substitute for truth that's even worse.

[00:02:46] Luke: Yeah. And in many cases, the deceit causes a lot of harm, causes a lot of suffering.

[00:02:51] Erwan: It does, including self-imposed deceit.

[00:02:55] Luke: Yeah. That one more than any. I know that one well. That's probably why I'm so obsessed with truth, is because I lived in allusion for so long. I had no capacity to be honest with myself or other people for much of my life. And once I discovered the value and truth, it became one of my primary values. I guess it's like when you've experienced a lot of suffering you have a really high capacity for empathy because you can feel what other people feel because you felt it. It's familiar.

[00:03:25] Erwan: Yeah.

[00:03:27] Luke: You'll be new to some people and some OG podcast listeners will know you as the creator of MovNat, and I know you're onto other things, and we're going to really talk about breath. We just had a really wild experience with breath practice a few minutes ago. So I'm trying to come back from that and be here on the mic.

[00:03:48] But for those that are unfamiliar with MovNat, I think many people now that are into wellness and stuff are familiar with the idea of natural movement, functional movement, etc. But you were the first guy I ever heard of many years ago to even be bringing these ideas of how does a natural human in a natural environment move, and how are we meant to move and things like that.

[00:04:10] So I've always been fascinated with your work, and it's always resonated just on a fundamental level. Like, "Oh yeah, duh, why are we going to a gym doing these repetitive movements that a human ape in the wild would never do? Why aren't we doing movements that are actually necessary to be in a body and travel about the earth and take care of yourself?" So yeah, you've been on my list of podcast guests for, I don't know, nine years.

[00:04:35] I think you're on my original list of 100 people I wanted to interview. So it took a while, but here we are. Yeah. But give us the breakdown on what is MovNat. How did that come to be for people that are unfamiliar?

[00:04:48] Erwan: Yes. MovNat is for moving naturally your movement in nature. It's that idea of we all universally have abilities to move that are vital to our species. So if you think about the so-called animal kingdom, dolphins move like dolphins and eagles move like eagles. So a dolphin cannot climb a tree, cannot fly in the sky. But an eagle cannot dive deep in the ocean and do things like that.

[00:05:20] Why? Because they have their own natural movement, and each species have them, and so do we. We human beings have a whole scope of skills, of natural movement abilities that we can turn into skills. So if we're impressed, say, by the agility of a tiger, of a wild animal, how do they become fit like that without a gym? Just by being themselves, by following the program that's in their DNA in the environment where that program evolved over time.

[00:05:57] So tigers get to do the tiger thing. You're tag a cub, and you start doing all these little things and sprinting and pouncing and climbing and playing. We do exactly the same. It doesn't matter that you were born in Africa, in Asia, in Europe, any continent, any place regardless of your background, what your parents are, [Inaudible], whatever, it doesn't matter.

[00:06:20] All kids, you look at them, they'll all move the same. What does that say? They are physically expressing that program, and by playing through those natural movements, they would normally end up being really physically capable. Physically capable for what? For the real world, which originally, long time ago, was nature. Means you would be able to hike, to climb, to balance, to jump and land, to lift and carry things. All real world, real life movements.

[00:06:57] And that program is being stopped. It's like you don't want the kids to do all these things. It's never the right time or the right place. Don't do that. It's going to be noisy. You're going to break things. You're going to hurt yourself. At some point, after being told that all the time, what do you do? You stop moving.

[00:07:19] But if it's left to you as a kid now, every kid, what do they do? They vault over the couch. They crawl under the table. They step on the chair and jump off of it. And they turn your nice apartment into a playground, a playground for their natural movement. They want it so bad because it's fun. It's challenging. It builds their confidence.

[00:07:44] It's that physical interaction with the world that's both practical and adaptable. It's directly useful, and it's instantly rewarding. Kids get instant gratification when they do it, and it's very, very hard to stop them. If we remember ourselves when we're kids, all those times where that drive was repressed and we were told no, not the right place, not the right time, it's never the right place, not the right time.

[00:08:14] So a big part of our instinct is being repressed and somehow oppressed. And then in the end, what happens is that a lot of people, they lose their innate taste for movement, for being physically active.

[00:08:29] So by one day, when they are grownups, they're told, okay, now you're going to learn proper fitness. It's time to exercise. And they're going to be brought to a gym, or you're going to have machines, exercise machines. They're going to basically dictate their movement patterns. The machine tells you exactly what to do.

[00:08:49] It's that movement. And that movement, it's not adaptable, it's not natural. It's complete artificial. Everything's artificial. The movements you do, very partial, very regimented. The environment where you are. So basically it's more work. It's a chore that you have to impose yourself because if I don't do it, then I'm lazy. I'm going to be out of shape and whatnot.

[00:09:11] So to me, the whole thing is messed up. We should just let the kids be and encourage them to keep doing what they instinctively do, which is the truth of their physicality. Until they become highly capable, they can jump and land and climb and run on divers’ terrains. They're not afraid. They're not reckless either. They're just adapted and adaptable. And this could be a reality for human beings, but it's not what our culture wants from us.

[00:09:44] Luke: Thinking about a baby goes from being born to a car seat to eating meals in a baby seat at the table. Maybe they're being held and swinging around if they're breastfeeding or something. But basically, from the moment we're born, we're just trained to be in one of these things.

[00:10:06] Erwan: Containers.

[00:10:07] Luke: Yeah. And then you go to school, you sit in a little-- I don't know if they have those little torture chambers called desks anymore. Because I haven't seen a school in a while. But I remember sitting in those things, just going nuts. And then you get older and you get your driver's license.

[00:10:21] You sit in a car. You drive to work. You go sit at work, depending on what you do. You come home. You sit on the couch. You watch TV. It's like the whole human life cycle is basically centered around sitting. It's fucking weird.

[00:10:35] Erwan: Seating is a form of containment. What you're talking about is the diversity of containers that we go through. We are constantly contained. So it can be in a car, in a car seat to begin with, a desk, like a mini version of a cubicle. And it can be a chair. It's about containment.

[00:11:00] And physical containment leads to behavioral containment. Means what you're taught by being told stay there in that one place, that container is yours, and you should not misbehave. You should not jump and vault and move at all. All you can do is to pay attention and talk when you're asked to. That's it. That's control. When it's pushed that much so systematically, to me, it's abuse.

[00:11:34] Because it takes away your enjoyment, your freedom to explore, to live, to be. And not that it is not important to also teach children to behave, to learn about the importance of context. You're in a restaurant. You're not supposed to yell and be wild. It's normal. But when it's always, all the time, everywhere, including at home, then the message is, you know what? You're not going to have any freedom.

[00:12:04] We're going to tell exactly how to be, who to be, and what to be and how, and it's going to happen in every single behavior that you're going to go through since little to until you're ready to go to work, get a job. So we learn to contain ourselves, to not be spontaneous or minimally. So you wonder why there is so much mental illness and psychological issues when people can never be really themselves. So it's a culture of containment. That's what it is.

[00:12:38] Luke: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I never made the correlation between the physical containment and the containment of emotional expression, creative thought, ingenuity. It's like we're sitting in boxes our whole life. It's like, no wonder so few of us think big. It's like you see the speed at which our civilization evolves is exceedingly slow, in terms of like quantum leaps.

[00:13:09] I don't know. I'm only 54. You're 53. A few things have changed. There's bee technological advances and stuff. But in terms of the system and the institutions by which we operate as a species are thousands of years old and haven't really changed.

[00:13:28] We were talking about ruling class and the hierarchical system and things like that earlier, and it's pretty much just different wrapping paper on the same box over and over and over again. And I bet that has a lot to do with the fact that we're so disembodied and just so locked down physically, that we're not expansive in mind and spirit.

[00:13:49] Erwan: There is an absolute, very strong correlation between the two, indeed. Absolutely.

[00:15:34] Luke: So MovNat is essentially a system of movement wherein somebody can train for their own wellbeing so that they can adopt more natural movement in their life or learn how to do it to instruct other people essentially.

[00:15:52] Erwan: All of that. But most importantly, because wellbeing through movement, there are many modalities that can bring you that. Yoga, being one of them. Tai Chi, qigong, dance. There are plenty of ways to express yourself physically that are going to bring you that wellbeing. Especially if you were born and raised in that culture of containment, all of a sudden you're given the opportunity to dance or to move your body, if you're going to enjoy that.

[00:16:26] So any movement is going to make you feel good. Why? Because typically, the baseline is no movement. Very little movement. When you think about it, what's the physical behavior of a typical human being from morning, moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed? They get off bed where they were lying all night, laying down for hours.

[00:16:48] And then they're going to stand maybe in the shower. Then they're going to sit in the kitchen, have some food, a drink, hot beverage, something. Then either they work from home. They're going to go to their office. They're going to sit for hours in front of their screen or on their phone, or they're going to commute, means they're going to sit in a car or public transportation.

[00:17:11] They're going to walk a few steps to the next seat, or they're going to work, or they're going to be standing or standing and sitting. Then the surfaces where they perform those super limited movements-- we're just talking about seating-- that's a position. Standing, walking a few steps to the next seat, that's pretty much what we do all day.

[00:17:34] Because we're not outside and we are on a super flat, stable, clean, linear, predictable, and therefore freaking boring surfaces, all artificial, plastic, whatever, that's the behavior. That's the physical behavior. So the question is, just think about it, where is the variety of movement? Do you squat? Do you balance?

[00:17:59] Do you jump? Do you roll? Do you do stretch? Do you reach out something, climb? You don't. There's absolutely almost zero variety of movement. So I call that movement poverty. You're living a movement poor lifestyle. It doesn't matter, by the way. You could be not very wealthy or very wealthy. Doesn't matter. It affects everybody the same.

[00:18:22] So there's no variety. There's no frequency. There's no variability, means how often you change from one movement pattern to the next movement pattern. All that wealth of movement, that richness is gone. It's been eliminated, eradicated from our lifestyle.

[00:18:39] And it's literally one of those elephants in the room in today's society because there's not just one. There are multiple. The room is freaking full of elephants, and that's one of them. It's like, do you even look at your day-to-day movement behavior and what it is made of? Because it's insanely repetitive and insanely limited.

[00:19:03] How do you expect to not be psychologically and emotionally impacted by that? Because it's a form of prison, except there are no visible physical shackles or bars. But your behavior has been contained by an invisible force, which is what? Pattern imposed to you. That way of behaving so nicely physically, like you sit properly, you walk properly, you don't run, you don't do crazy things with your body, you don't move it the way it's designed to at all. So it's not only a limitation, it's also a regression, basically. There's so much you're losing in their process.

[00:19:49] When I say you, that means millions of people who live at modern lifestyle. And you bet that kids are so exuberant in their-- they're fighting hard to maintain that freedom because it feels so good and they know the truth instinctively. They're like, "The moment I stop doing that, I'm dead. I'm going to die in spirit."

[00:20:09] They're taking something super precious in me, that freedom. Because freedom, if it doesn't start with freedom of movement, then what freedom am I talking about? So when you move less, you lose some of that freedom of movement. And you lose freedom of movement, you lose freedom. That's it.

[00:20:30] So to answer your original question, we have a potential. You do. I do. Everybody does. Everybody's born with it. Natural movement. It's a birthright. But it's a potential. Why? Because if you take a baby animal from their mother, and they're supposed to grow in nature, but you're going to plunk them in an artificial environment, when there are adults, try to plunk them back into nature, and it's going to be really awkward, because they have not evolved in that environment. They might die. They cannot survive because they don't know how to behave, how to hunt, how to procure food, how to interact with wild elements of their own species.

[00:21:15] When it comes to human natural movement, think of MovNat, the method that I've created and that now thousands of people around the world teach to others as the martial arts or the mixed martial arts of natural movement.

[00:21:35] What does that say? What does that mean? Can you jump and land? Can you run? Can you balance? If you ask that to anyone, they're going to be like, "Yes, but not so good." Maybe I can jump one foot, two feet, three feet forward. It's not going to be particularly competent, not particularly capable.

[00:21:57] Why? Because if you haven't trained that, then you're not good. It's just like if you show up to a MMA studio or MMA class. You may have a basic ability to throw a punch or to try to bury something that comes at you, but it's very limited because you don't have a technique.

[00:22:16] So if you understand that everybody can somehow defend themselves to a degree, but if you want to become a real fighter or able to defend yourself, you need to train consistently, first thing you do is you learn techniques.

[00:22:31] Apply that to the whole scope of natural movement, jumping and landing, hanging and climbing, lifting and carrying, throwing and catching, balancing, rolling, all these movements and little force, etc. Now you've got several skills, and within each skills you have dozens of techniques that you can practice and you can relearn, become really good at them.

[00:22:50] What does that make you eventually? Someone who's really, really capable of efficient movement in the real world. And that, to me, is what I call a physical duty. I believe that every human being should be equipped with this natural movement capability, to never find themselves helpless to themselves or unable to help others.

[00:23:22] I believe it should be part of physical education in every school. Every parent should teach that to their kids, or at least let them do it and encourage them to go outside and play and learn.

[00:22:35] Luke: Your boys are wild. It makes me feel bad because I'm like, I can't do that. They're jumping from one rock 12 feet over to another rock, and you're like, "Ah." I know they're not going to get hurt because you've trained them and obviously you're not going to post a video if they got hurt.

[00:23:50] But it's those moments you're like, "We're so unused to a natural life way that even just myself, if I'm looking at your boys, I go, "Oh." I feel myself getting tense. I'm afraid they're going to get hurt. And meanwhile I'm sitting on my ass on the couch. I'm actually being more hurt by sitting there watching a video of the kid jumping. I'm more likely to get hurt walking to my car because I haven't been moving like that for all these years.

[00:22:48] Erwan: Great point, Luke.

[00:24:23] Luke: It's less dangerous to do what they're doing than what the rest of us are doing by sitting on our ass.

[00:24:28] Erwan: People hurt themselves at home. They tweak their back. They bust their toes. They sprain their ankles at home. They have back pain because they sit hours a day. They're all stiff and somehow messed up and needing a physical therapy, not because they're doing something with their body, but because they're doing pretty much nothing with their body or not much.

[00:24:51] And that's a fact. It's not the judgment. It's an observation. We just look around. So can we potentially get slightly injured through physical activity? Which by the way could be not even natural movement or movement. It could be a sport. Obviously, yes. You go play soccer, you're going to get hurt. You're going to play basketball. You're going to get hurt. You're going to go to the gym. You're going to get hurt.

[00:25:16] You go trail running, and you could be hurt too, but at least you know why, you know how, and you know that it's a bit of a tradeoff for doing a lot of things with your body and for your body that actually builds up that body and also builds up that mind, by the way.

[00:25:35] So a little injury, it's not much. At least it's not an injury that has to do with degradation, because there's nothing that degrades you more and faster, that degrades you physically, than doing nothing with your body.

[00:25:52] Luke: This is very inspiring to me. This is no secret, but I've never been a really sporty, physically active-- I'm not drawn to fitness and working out and things like that. So even knowing about your work, and I was telling you about my brother Cody, who's quite an expert in functional movement, and they used to own a gym in LA.

[00:26:12] And it's like the only kind of movement that appeals to me is movement that has a purpose. If I'm out working in my yard and I could lift some heavy stuff, I enjoy it because I got to move these logs from here to there. And I go, "Ah." I get into it. But if you put me in a blue-lit, Wi-Fi, off-gassing, plastic gym and told me, go pick up that same weight of thing and carry it over there just for the fuck of it, I'm not doing it. You know what I mean?

[00:26:41] Erwan: I know totally what you mean because I've always been the same.

[00:26:43] Luke: There needs to be a purpose, or it needs to be fun for me. Otherwise, it feels like a chore. And because I live the life I do, I sit and talk on a mic. I'm on a computer a lot. My life doesn't call for the type of movement. So I have to-- we think of this word, recreation.

[00:27:01] It's like recreating something. So I got in the yard and do a little gardening. I'm so proud of myself because I moved some stuff around or dug a hole. But it's like I have to make myself go do that because it's something I'm interested in. So that movement happens.

[00:27:16] But if I wasn't doing that thing out there, that movement, even as little as I get of that wouldn't even happen. You know what I mean? So I envy people who are really sporty and they really like working out and they enjoy it. Because I would even do more of that.

[00:27:31] Erwan: It's a super valid point. It's a very healthy instinct because it's the natural movement instinct, basically what you're talking about, the purpose behind movement. Look, you could say a bodybuilder has a purpose behind their training. And if they're happy with it and the purpose is, "Hey, I want to build a massive muscles that has definition that looks good."

[00:27:57] If I do that, I feel good. Not just my body. I feel good. It's rewarding. What does that mean? It means that these people have built a dopaminergic system around that expectation and that experience, the expectation of looking a certain way and the experience of looking a certain way, and also the training that is required in discipline, including nutrition, all of that.

[00:28:24] It's a whole lifestyle. And who is to say that it is not valid or it's not valuable? Not me. However, again, originally and universally, we want movements. We pursue movements that are indeed purposeful. Means they show us the level of capability that we have or that we want to obtain.

[00:28:53] So look at kids. You're like, "They're just playing." They're not just playing. Are you kidding me? I've watched my sons when they were little, one, two years old, three years old. No instruction, no training by me. I never trained them. I would see them repeat the same movement over and over and over and over.

[00:29:19] They would discover a movement that they enjoy to do or that was challenging to them, and they would do it again. It was never about, oh, I'm targeting those muscles. My kids, two years old, three years old, they didn't care about their biceps or their shoulders or their pecs. They don't care. But they wanted to jump from there to there and stick it.

[00:29:40] Luke: Or there's something up on the counter that they want, so they learn how to climb. Because there's a purpose to it, right?

[00:29:45] Erwan: That's self-empowerment. They are developing capability, means practical movements, like you said, like get on top, whatever-- reach the pack of marshmallows up there that your parents have hidden and you want them and now you need to climb or whatever. You find a little place you want to crawl through or you jump off that thing, and you imagine that if you fall or if you don't land where it's supposed to be, you fall, and it's lava, or it's a pit full of deadly snakes and rock and glass or whatever it is that's dangerous.

[00:30:23] Means you're going to die. And you do die except you can keep dying and being alive again many, many times, just like in video games. Because it's not a video game. It's the reality of a little kid who is really seeking their empowerment by developing their physical capability. By doing what?

[00:30:47] Exploring various ways to move and practicing them until they get better-- sometimes in a fun way where they laugh and have fun, but you wouldn't think that it's all about laughter and fun because sometimes you can see them being afraid or hurt and cry, and they get back up on their feet, and they do it again.

[00:31:10] Is it just fun? No. Actually, if you were to ask adults to follow them through their physical, supposedly random and useless, just play, like this recording, dismiss it. It has no value. Try it. See how long you last. See how well you do. See how you will react when you bump your knee or your shoulder or fall 10 times until you finally manage to do that movement, to reach that level out of your persistence.

[00:31:45] That's what kids do. Again, they follow of a program. That program is called natural movement. It's innate in all of us. And so that's why I've developed MovNat, so that we would have a systematic technical way to do that, mostly for adults because adults don't just want to play around.

[00:32:04] They want to be taught stuff. They don't want to be left to trial and error. And as a matter of fact, if it was that simple to tell people, you know what? Oh, you want to move like a natural human, just go in the woods. Try things out. See how it works. Everybody has walked in the woods and then what happened? You do nothing. You just walk. We look at your phone. Nothing happens. So people need guidance. That's what MovNat is about. It's provide the guidance and instruction. Just like a martial art.

[00:33:57] Luke: I've been feeling guilty for not learning MovNat for probably 15 years. Here's the thing, dude. You look at, I don't know, Ben Greenfield, or someone who's like super fit. I go, "Man, that must feel good to feel strong in your body, to look good with your shirt off and stuff like that."

[00:34:17] That has never been motivating to me whatsoever, though. What's motivating to me is watching a two-year-old curl around and look at the mobility that they have. It's crazy. My little brother's kid who's, I think, one and a half, he crawls under the table, and the way he bends around. He falls on his ass.

[00:34:37] He can squat then stand up. To me, it just looks so liberating to exist in a physical body and to be able to have that kind of range of motion, flexibility, responsiveness. That's more of a motivator for me. Or even seeing an adult who's really skilled at natural movement and gymnast kind of types and things like that where you're just like, "Whoa." You can do a one-legged squat and hold your leg out there and then articulate your joints.

[00:35:05] I see people move like that. I go, "Now that I want." More so than, I guess, the aesthetic result of repetitive movements might give you. It's like little kids to me are so inspiring. But I think, well, I missed the boat kind of thing. It's too late to start to learn that. It seems like it would be so much work and take so many years of practice, so I just go back to sitting in a chair.

[00:35:32] Erwan: We find people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and they make progress. Absolutely. Because again, it's the program. I's in the DNA. It's cellular memory. It's what you're designed to do. So with just a bit of guidance and cues, and that's how we teach our certified trainers to train people so that indeed they don't find themselves trying out things and maybe just not knowing at all what to do, or not doing much, if anything.

[00:36:07] Or trying out things and maybe hurting themselves, or feeling just isolated and a little awkward, like, what am I doing? It can be that also. But if you make it a system, you make it a method, then we're going to deep squat. We're going to balance. And it's not just balancing like a slack lining.

[00:36:28] We're going to balance. We're going to lower our center of gravity. We're going to pivot. We're going to change orientation and direction. We're going to place our feet a certain way. We're going to place our hands certain way. There are different ways to balance. Balancing is not just walking in balance. Just giving one example.

[00:36:44] There's so much to learn and it's a matter of progressions. So we need to assess where you at, what's your basic mobility, your basic strength. Can you even just hang from your hands? For how long? Can you sustain some movement, some swinging movement?

[00:37:07] Depending on this assessment, then we understand what movements you are able to practice safely and what movements you need to do more. So the emphasis is also going to be important. In some people, the emphasis is going to be mostly mobility, which means natural movements that have a greater impact on improving your mobility.

[00:37:32] It can be natural movements that have a greater impact on increasing your strength, etc. And strength in what movement, in what application? The application is very important. So I think what you are saying, Luke, is it's the application that you're looking for. The purpose is like, how do you apply this?

[00:34:53] And you don't want to just exercise for the sake of endorphins or a cosmetic outcome, even though there is value in that. There's value in exercising in a way that makes your body looks strong and feel strong and actually be strong and look strong and be good. It's legit. It's a very legit expectation also to want to look physically good.

[00:38:15] It's even more important and legit expectation to want your body to feel good, to have energy, to have ability, to have confidence, to feel safe. To feel safe in your body, not just because you're shielding yourself from the world, but because you can interact physically through your movements in a way that's capable without hurting yourself.

[00:38:37] So I believe everybody should be equipped with that baseline of physical capability. It should be taught in school, purposeful movement, movement that make you capable in the real world, physically speaking. Because it's an indication that we should all receive and ultimately just maintain for the rest of our life as much as possible.

[00:38:59] I don't believe that anybody-- it's just observation. It's not good for anybody to be completely out of shape or to look like you're fit, but it's only the image of fitness and not the function, not the actual application. So some people look great because they go to the gym, but they go in nature, and they're destroyed.

[00:39:21] They're destroyed. They stumble, and they sprain their ankle, or they can't actually run. So they look like they have muscles and stuff. They can't even run. They can't even deep squat. What's up with that? So it's cosmetic. It's an image, but it's not a reality. The function is not there, or it's very limited.

[00:39:38] So you look strong, bro-- that's cool-- but you're not actually strong in the sense of capable in the big picture. So millions of kids go to school since they're little kids, until they're grownups. Then if they're not really literate, they don't really know how to read well. Their reading skills, the basic math, all that is not really great.

[00:40:03] Already people are like, "That's a shame." Because that's what school is for. So when they leave school, kids should be educated. Now, what's the other elephant in the room, is that millions of kids every year in every country leave school and they've never learned, ever learned how to operate their own body in any freaking meaningful way.

[00:40:27] And that's basically the whole mankind that goes to school generation after generation, and nobody says anything about that. It's not scandalous. It's not like, "What?" They go to school and they're physical weaklings. They're completely inept with the body. You can't run. They don't know how to pick up anything heavy.

[00:40:47] They could not carry a friend or somebody on their back, or they could not reach them if they were in trouble. They would be helpless in any situation that requires of that demands a physical response from you. You're helpless. You need to call 911. You need people to help you. That means that not only you're helpless to yourself, but you're complete helpless to others.

[00:40:07] So what I want to say is that the best way to learn to never become helpless to yourself physically, physically helpless to yourself, is to learn to become physically helpful to others. If you're not doing it for yourself, then do it for others. If anybody at any point needs your help in the sense of your physicality is required, you can deliver.

[00:41:33] Luke: Beautiful. What does your day look like at home? You're running businesses. You got some things online, some things that you do in person. You're writing books. You're telling me today you're doing some really interesting stuff with AI and all kinds of things. What does your day look like?

[00:41:49] Do you get up and have a practice, where you have some mats and you move around and do some things, when you're grinding on emails or doing whatever your work entails? Do you, hey, I got to go outside and take a break for 20 minutes and go move around? How do you integrate what you've learned and now teach people into your life?

[00:42:08] Erwan: Being 53, I'm more at the phase of maintenance than progression. In fact, that's also because I mostly dedicate time and energy practicing breath hold, breath hold work, steady breath holding. That's really my main thing at the moment. And I've always cultivated that generalist approach to movement and to physicality because natural movement is inherently very diverse.

[00:42:34] In fact, physically human beings are quite versatile, very versatile. There are few things we can do, like flying in the sky, but otherwise very few animals are able to do all the things we do. We can run. We can jump and climb and lift and throw things, and it's pretty amazing the diversity of movements we can do.

[00:42:59] So how do you not only develop techniques for all these movements, but then maintain them? So the way, I believe, it's done, the way I did it, is you start early. You start young. You've seen that with my boys, even though I'm not even teaching them anything. I'm not directly teaching them, even though I have done that a few times.

[00:43:20] Hey, if you place your feet like that, pay attention to your feet. Relax your arms more, few things like that. When they start to be more like 8, 9, 10. But otherwise, the way they were taught is, one, enable them. Let them do it. It's instinctive. A lot of the technique is instinctive if you let it be. Now, for adults, it's not instinctive.

[00:43:46] We've taught hundreds and thousands of people around the world, and most people just are always showing us the same movement patterns, the same behaviors of stiffness, of awkwardness, of lack of coordination. And also you can't expect them to be naturally, spontaneously more technical. But kids, much more like kids, they do perfect deep squat. When they start jumping, they typically start to really have good jumping techniques.

[00:44:13] That's if they're led to develop that instinctively. But otherwise, it's through mimicry. Mimicry means what? Means they've watched me. They've watched daddy jump off a rock, land on the other rock, and keep doing that, and train, and move on all fours.

[00:44:33] And then they're like, "Okay, rock and roll. That's life. That's what we're supposed to do. As a matter of fact, we do that. Daddy does it. It's normal. Let's keep doing it. Feels good. It's fun. We learn. We play. We sometimes compete a little. I got two sons. Brothers compete a little sometimes. One is better at climbing. The other one is better jumping and landing.

[00:44:54] So that's the way it goes. So as for me, I've developed all these techniques and all these abilities. So how much farther am I going to push that being 53, having two kids, now I'm going to have the third business? I have diversity of book projects and stuff. How can I do all of that plus the breath forward practice where I'm trying to break the CMAS US National record for the fourth time?

[00:45:22] At this level, it's some time and some energy. So I maintain. When I feel like I, need to go run, I'm going to go run. If I observe that, ooh, it's a little hard. Okay, I'm going to go maybe the next day or three days later. I'm going to do a bit of a cycle of running because I can feel that my level has lowered a little and I have my baseline. Things that I can observe, things that I can feel, and aspects that can measure to.

[00:45:51] So we can measure weight. You can measure, say, distance and time if you run. But you can also feel if you are fluid, if you are coordinated, if you are just feeling good. So I have got my baseline, and even though I know that I'm aging, I still pretty much maintain everything. I'll give you just one example, for instance,

[00:46:14] If I'm going to jump and grab a bar and hang from it cold start, no warmup, I got to be able to do what's called a muscle up. Means just pull and end up there like that in seconds. And if I'm not capable of doing that, I'm like, "Okay, what's going on?" But I'm always capable of doing with very little training.

[00:46:34] That's the good thing, is that if you put the work early in your life, then maintenance is very easy because you do not lose the neural circuit. You do not lose the movement patterns. It's like if you know how to ride a bike and you don't ride a bike for 20 years, you still know how to ride a bike. So skill wise, it's there.

[00:46:53] It can be a little not as comfortable as before because maybe it's been years, but otherwise, it's very easy to reignite. Because the neural pathways can be weakened a little, but they don't fully disappear. So either a bit dormant, you can reignite them quickly. Physiological adaptations is all different.

[00:47:13] But if you've pushed before in the past to a certain level of strength or certain level of conditioning, of metabolic conditioning, physiological adaptation, even though you've lost that, the way you're going to recover your past level is going to be three times faster, probably even faster than that, than somebody who's never reached that level in the first place. So that's why maintenance is much easier if you've built that--

[00:47:42] Luke: Yeah. Much easier than building it in the first place.

[00:47:45] Erwan: Yeah. And I want just specify something about that, is what is capability, physical capability? You have two major aspects of that. You have competency and then you have capacity. And they're not the same. Competency are your movement patterns, the techniques. And capacity is the physical conditioning, the metabolic conditioning, the energy systems.

[00:48:06] You need both. If you have both, then you are truly physically capable. If you're just gifted with your moves, but you don't really have a lot of strength, a lot of stamina, a lot of endurance, you're not really physically capable. To a degree, yes.

[00:48:19] If you're only strong or you can run a long time, that's great, great physical conditioning. But let's say if you run always on concrete flat surface and then you have to go now trail running and you're afraid because you're going to sprain your ankles, you're not really capable because the environment defeats you, just like that.

[00:48:37] So to be really physically capable, you need to expose yourself to that much variety of variables, of challenges to become adapted to each of them. And the more adaptation, specific adaptation you obtain, the more overall adaptable you become physically. Now, that is work that most people are not really willing to go through, and that's the reality. Why?

[00:49:05] Because being on a couch, opening a pack of some industrial food, and a drink, watching a show, having a remote control and doing that all night or online, scrolling or video games, if you have made this to become your dopaminergic system, this is the kind of results you're going to get. So be watchful and be wise about the activity or behavior or goals that you feed your dopaminergic system, what motivates you with.

[00:49:35] Luke: Yeah. That's interesting because without even knowing it, you'll be adapting to a deleterious reward system. If refreshing Twitter is the thing that gets you off, or for me it's watching survival shows of people starving and sitting there and eating a pint of ice cream and just going, "Man, poor guy." Wow.

[00:50:00] But that's interesting. It's like you're training your reward system to do something that's not only easy, but in many cases, counterproductive or unhealthy. That's really interesting. Is there a tipping point at which-- so say right now, I'm like, "All right, no more ice cream and reality shows."

[00:50:18] I'm going to commit to when I finish work every night at 8 o'clock, I'm going to go out in the yard and move X, Y, and Z, go climb my tree. Can you switch your adaptation if you have enough self-discipline to do so, where you start to re-adapt to a reward system that better serves you?

[00:50:35] Erwan: You can do that, but wait a minute, I need to clarify something. I missed it, I think. When you talked about eating the ice cream, I thought you were talking about the reward of the person who was starving eating ice cream. But you were talking about you were eating ice cream.

[00:50:48] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:50:51] Erwan: So you're not the one starving.

[00:50:53] Luke: No, no. I'm sitting there watching people, my favorite shows. Really, the only shows I watch are survival shows, Naked and Afraid, Alone, where people go out in the woods and I just go like, "Oh my God."

[00:51:03] Erwan: I watched that a long time ago.

[00:51:05] Luke: Yeah. It's actually very demoralizing because I realize how fragile I am. When I watch people go survive in the woods, I'm like, oh my God, I would last four hours and I would go home.

[00:51:17] Erwan: And the more you see that starver, the hungrier you get.

[00:51:20] Luke: Yeah. But it's also inspiring, I think too, because you get to see the limitless nature of the human spirit. In my own way, I've survived things. Maybe not in the wild, but I've been through some shit and I came out the other side. But watching the human spirit in its resiliency, and ingenuity, creativity, problem solving.

[00:51:42] I love watching humans figure shit out. And when they're in a situation like that in the wild, you really see what someone's made of. And also their mental game. Who can stay in the light? And you can see if someone's about to leave, they'll start getting negative, and they won't be able to stop it in time, and they'll spiral into a dark, sunken place, and they're out.

[00:52:04] And someone who has lesser skills and experience and just has a stronger mindset will outlast them solely because they're able to keep from going dark. It's fascinating. So it's like a whole human study, human nature study.

[00:52:18] Erwan: Completely, which is, by the way, the most important aspect of survival, is the mindset.

[00:52:23] Luke: Totally.

[00:52:24] Erwan: Is the mindset.

[00:52:24] Luke: I think I'd actually do pretty good on that side of it.

[00:52:26] Erwan: Yes. But I do believe that it's--

[00:52:28] Luke: I just don't have the skills. That's the part I'm like, "I have no idea how to light a fire worth of shit, for example."

[00:52:33] Erwan: You can learn everything. What is it that you cannot learn, really? If a human being can do it, any human being can do it, there's a path for you too, including survival. You know those people who go dark, like you said, and about to quit? That's only because they know that they have an alternative, which means that they can literally create a scenario, consciously or unconsciously, that justifies that they're going to quit.

[00:53:01] Means it's more than they can handle, which is understandable, and they just want to go back to comfort. Why? Because we are self-regulation machines. That's all we do all day. You get yourself a cup of coffee. You're regulating. You are going on a hike? You're regulating. You're sitting on a chair? You're regulating. Sometimes you need to activate. Sometimes you need to rest. Sometimes you need to feed yourself. Sometimes you need to digest something, etc.

[00:53:30] Sometimes you need loneliness. Sometimes you need social interaction. All of that is regulation. And we all regulate. We all have found ways to regulate ourselves in many ways, some that are pretty much universal to everybody and others that are more unique to ourselves. But back to the survival, the idea is that if you didn't have a choice, I'm telling you that even the people you would expect would not survive, they will all of a sudden have an ability to survive.

[00:54:00] Luke: Yeah, that's so true. Because that's what takes people out on those shows, is they get the thought, I think I want to leave. I think this is a little too much. And that thought is like an infection, and they can't let it go. And they start energizing that thought until it's to the point where they're quitting. And then you even see sometimes they're like, "Oh man, why did I leave? Maybe I could have made it a couple more days."

[00:54:23] Erwan: Yes.

[00:54:24] Luke: But the infection of that thought got to them because there is a way out. So to your point--

[00:54:28] Erwan: It's survival. There are options.

[00:54:30] Luke: Yeah. If there's no way out, then it's like the human spirit is going to rise to the occasion because you're not going lie down and die.

[00:54:37] Erwan: Comfort, that's what it is.

[00:54:39] Luke: Yeah. You can't. Literally, your body won't let you. You'll keep fighting until your last breath if you have no other choice.

[00:54:44] Erwan: Exactly.

[00:54:45] Luke: Yeah. Interesting. Speaking of breath, we just had a really cool-- I know it was the truncated beginner introduction to what you do with your breath technique, but it was super cool. And I've done all kinds of different breathing exercises and things like that, and that one was very unique.

[00:55:04] And I think, maybe it was 20 minutes or something like that, we didn't get too deep into it, but it was most interesting to me that my mind was so freaking quiet. It was nuts. Now, if you sit and meditate, if you've been meditating for a while, there are moments where there are no thoughts. And then over time, with practice, this has been my experience, maybe there's a millisecond where it's just spaciousness.

[00:55:34] And then a thought passes by. And to me, one of the main points of meditation is to learn how to be the observer of the phenomenon of thought and learn how to not grab it. It's just, oh, thought. Interesting. There goes another one. There goes another one.

[00:55:50] But there was long gaps there of no thought. And I'm just sitting there going-- because at one point you're like, "Okay, if there's a word, elongate the word. I did a couple of those." And I was like, "There's no words. I'm just in the void." It's fucking awesome.

[00:56:07] Erwan: Yeah.

[00:57:37] Luke: So I'm really excited to talk about all things breath with you because I think you have a very unique approach to it. And the world is full of a lot of different breathing techniques and breath work and things like that now. And some of them, I think, have been more helpful to me than others. But first thing I want to ask you is, what was the motivation for you to become the breath hold champion? Why breath holding was your thing, or is your thing?

[00:58:08] Erwan: Because I like to eat fish. I wanted to improve what's called bottom time, which means how long you can stay at the bottom of the ocean.

[00:58:20] Luke: In a free diving kind of scenario?

[00:58:22] Erwan: Spearfishing.

[00:58:22] Luke: Oh, spearfishing. Okay.

[00:58:26] Erwan: So I had already experimented with breath folding when I was a kid. I was born in 1971. I remember being maybe 6 or 7 years old and my brother telling me, "Oh, the world record in the Guinness World of Records is five minutes breath hold." I was like, "Five minutes without breathing. That's insane." Five minutes without breathing. So I would try to hold my breath.

[00:58:51] There are plenty of events in my life related to breath, including finding my face buried in the pillow at night and not being able to breathe because I would change my position while sleeping. And then I was so deeply asleep that I would semi wake up without actually waking up and try to change the position of my head so that I could be in a position where I could breathe better.

[00:59:21] And it felt like I was going to die, and I still could not find in me the strength to move. And I would have to use all my will while somehow being asleep, yet not fully asleep, to finally do the neck movement, the body movement that will liberate my face and my breath. I remember those events. They were like, ooh, I hated that, hated that.

[00:59:47] So that's during childhood. I remember on vacation in Britney and back then in France with my dad, and he would have me swim underneath his legs. He would go like this and I would swim, and do that again, or challenge me to dive deep enough, which would be just a few feet to touch the bottom.

[01:00:10] And the proof was you would emerge with a handful of sand to prove that you had swam. And what else? I remember almost dying in a public swimming pool because I had not been taught to swim, and I was just being able to swim a little, not so well. I was, I guess, eight years old, and I jumped off the side of the pool, and I realized that my feet did not even touch the bottom.

[01:00:40] And instead of just emerging and swimming back just a few feet, I started to panic. And fortunately a swimmer found me and grabbed me. Otherwise I could have died right there just a few feet away from the edge of the swimming pool. Then I remember being maybe 18 with my two older brothers, half-brothers.

[01:01:02] Anyways, we competed in nature, was a natural swimming pool in a beautiful rocky area. And I won the challenge. Thought, yeah, I'm not bad at that. I'm better than my older brothers. Then I remember I had two uncles on my mom's side, and I remember being maybe seven years old and being invited, and I remember against a lot of memories, them coming out of the ocean in Brittany with their black wetsuits and their belts were just full of fish, all the fish you can imagine.

[01:01:44] And then we ate all that fish and it was so delicious. It was grilled like that on the beach. Amazing. And I thought to myself, I want to do that one day. So in my, I think, late 20s, early 30s, I remember starting to spearfish when I was in Brazil. That was after my years in China.

[01:02:04] I've been moving around doing diversity of things like sailing and rock climbing and Olympic lifting and jujitsu and whatnot. I've explored many modalities of movement. And just like you, I've always loved what felt useful, what felt like real and useful. And spearfishing obviously was one of those things.

[01:02:26] It's like hunting. You're hunting for fish. It's very physical. You have some equipment that you need to learn how to actually maintain and use your equipment. Then you are in an environment that's natural, so you need to understand currents and the specific physicality that you need.

[01:02:46] Spearfishing is very demanding because you don't have tanks. You don't have oxygen tanks except your natural ones, your lungs. That's all you got. And then you also need to understand fish behavior. So long story short, I find myself in Mexico in a little fisherman village in my late 40s. 

[01:03:03] I'm with my family there, and I started spearfishing again. And then I realized, you know what kills fish? Curiosity. Because they know you're there because they saw you or felt you or smelled you. They know you're there. And you're new kid on the block.

[01:03:23] What are you? Who are you? Are you a threat, or are you an opportunity? And they're dying to figure that out. So at some point, if you don't move at all, they'll come and check you out. The longer we can wait, the closer they come.

[01:03:39] Luke: Interesting.

[02:03:40] Erwan: And they go like this. And then you're just waiting like that, like a rock. You don't move. You don't even move in your mind, like, I'm going to get one. You don't even exist. Literally, it's like meditation. You have to forget about your agenda of catching fish because they feel that, they feel your intention. Even if you don't move, they feel it.

[01:04:02] So the more detached you are, the less signal they can read. And the longer we can wait, the closer they get, and more fish-- you can literally start to choose your fish. And then boom, you raise the trigger. You get a fish. Go back to the surface, put it in the boat. Go back. Then you can feed people. You can feed your family and all.

[01:04:23] But then I start to thinking, how do I increase my bottom time without-- I start to think sports, basically sports conditioning. I'm like, "What can I do outside of the sport itself to get better at the sport?" Which is what athletes do when they go to the gym basically.

[01:04:39] They're not practicing their sport. They're doing deadlifts and dip squats and heavy squats and things like that, all the functional movement, stretching all kind of things so that they become better at the actual sport.

[01:04:51] So I started to do that and hold my breath and walk on the beach as if I was swimming down. Then stay there, still holding my breath, come back the same distance, and I would try to increase the distance I was walking, holding my breath, and the time I was standing there holding my breath, imagining I was waiting for fish.

[01:05:14] Started to do that. Then what happened next is that I realized this is not just physical. Because if my mind is not engaged, I'm not even doing it. In fact, if you think about anything you do, what's the simulation for you being active in any way? It's an intention. You trigger yourself. You stimulate yourself. You order yourself, "Okay, I'm going to do that. I'm going to go on a run." Or I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to just stay on the couch. That's your intention. So in breath holding, it's all about intention.

[01:05:49] Why would you even stop breathing in the first place? Isn't it much easier to just keep breathing? Why would you go through that suffering? Well, you don't spearfish with oxygen tanks. It's not scuba diving and spearfishing. It's completely legal. It's not even fair. So we have to fully rely on your physicality.

[01:06:06] But it's not just physicality. It's the mind a lot. So I remember that one time where I was decided I would just sit on the beach and do a series of breath hold. And here's what came to my mind. The words exactly that came to my mind were like a mantra. Out of nowhere I start to repeat that one sentence.

[01:06:30] And it was, find the master in you. Find the master in you. And I will repeat that while holding my breath, find the master in you. Only the master can handle this. Find it. You can be that. You can be that master. Find that master in you. So it was all about mastery. I start to understand, okay, it's in a mastery.

[01:06:52] Why? Because you are the one making the conscious decision of doing something challenging, really challenging. Holding your breath, anybody who tries that, it's like, whoa. No, I don't even want to start. Or is going to last 10 seconds. I realize that if the mind is not in the right place to begin with, you can't do it right. You can't do it very long.

[01:07:13] You're going to quit the moment it starts to be uncomfortable. You are talking about survival, survival shows. When you hold your breath, it's instantly a survival situation. Because everybody knows that you run out of oxygen quickly and you die.

[01:07:28] So of course it's not going to happen. You're not going to die. You can stop anytime you want and just breathe again. But that's what you know consciously. That is not what your nervous system knows. Your nervous system has no clue whatsoever. It does not understand your language. It does not understand the conscious mind.

[01:07:45] It's just there to-- we're talking about the autonomic nervous system. It's the one that something falls on your shoulder, you go like this, and you flick it off. Oh, but let me laugh because that was nothing. It was just whatever, a leaf. Yeah, well, what if it was something venomous, something that would sting you like a black widow?

[01:08:05] So that part of you, that part of your brain that protects you, that prevents you from doing dumb things that could harm you or kill you, endanger you, that's the one that also tells you, breathe again. Breathe again. Breathe again. So you are consciously overriding something that you've been doing since you were born, 24/7, unquestioned.

[01:08:29] It's always there. Even when you're busy doing something complete different, you breathe all the time. And all of a sudden, Mr. Big Honcho decide that's a good idea to stop that. The autonomic nervous system is like, "What? No way. No, I'm going to show you how bad this idea is." If it could talk.

[01:08:53] And it wants to make you breathe. So it's going to try to override you. So you are overriding your autonomic nervous system. Your autonomic nervous system tries to override your consciousness, your conscious mind that makes the conscious decision of holding your breath. You have an internal conflict. How do you reconcile that?

[01:09:10] How can you make those two collaborate instead of fight each other? How do you make them to understand each other? That's the whole point. That's how you will be able to start better regulating yourself. So it's a form of inner mastery.

[01:09:27] Luke: The way you described that reminds me of my experience with cold plunging. I don't even remember the first time I did it because I was a little kid doing hot and cold in the hot springs and things like that. But when I, as an adult, started consciously doing it, the first impulse, when you get in there and you see-- every human being that does it the first time, what do they do?

[01:09:49] They get in and they go, and they start freaking out. So I started to see that, and the game for me became, how quickly can I totally surrender into the discomfort? And now, I won't say that I always enjoy it in the first few seconds, but I never come close to hyperventilating. I get in, I breathe, and my chest is a little tight for a second. Take one deep breath and I'm totally relaxed.

[01:10:15] And I've found over years of that practice that when there's threatening stimuli, whether real or imagined, in my day-to-day experience, I've become much more resilient to it. And I think a lot of it is because of learning how to self-regulate, getting in that fucking water.

[01:10:33] Because the nervous system, when you get in the water, is like you're dying. Panic, hyperventilate. When someone cuts me off in traffic or I have a disagreement with someone, or I get a scary letter from the IRS or anything that would normally be triggering, there's the initial and I go, "Uh-uh. No, no. Breathe back in the body."

[01:10:52] So it makes perfect sense to me. I never thought of it in terms of mastery, but it's like your spirit has a certain intention on the way you want to respond to the reality of your life. But we're in a body with a nervous system that's trying to keep us alive, and it shits bricks anytime it perceives anything dangerous.

[01:11:12] And we're in this constant tug of war with it unless we build practices and awareness around how to manage it ourselves. It's like you become the adult in the room and pat your nervous system, good job, good job. You can go chill out. We're safe, right?

[01:11:29] Erwan: Yes.

[01:11:30] Luke: That's super cool. So you started to discover this because you had an intention. You had a goal, and you want to be down there with the fish longer, and so on. At what point did you realize that this was a practice that could be applied as more of a spiritual discipline or something that could be taught in the context of the breath work trend, which seems like a new trend, but of course, in the yoga traditions and all through antiquity, probably in ways we don't even know, human beings have used their breaths to create different state changes and as a spiritual practice, and so on.

[01:12:08] At what point did you go, "Oh, wow, I'm really tapping into a deep place here. All these people out there are doing these breathing techniques, and I think I've found my own version of that? I'm going to actually build it into a modality."

[01:12:23] Erwan: Very quickly. Very quickly, I forgot about fishing. I was spearfishing. I left the fish alone. Very quickly, I start to investigate the science behind it. There is substantial amount of science behind it, but here's the thing. It doesn't matter whatever you're going to read about science in the end, when you hold your breath. The truth about your state of mind or your mental or emotional resiliency or lack thereof, shows up right away.

[01:12:57] Your willpower, your ability to commit, your self-discipline, your ability to pay attention, ability to keep a very impeccable intention, the ability to meditate, the ability to not think at all, or to think very specifically, all of that plays a part. So it is not a bad breath, even though I do teach breath work. But I teach it my own way.

[01:13:27] It's not hyperventilation. It's not traditional. It's not dogmatics. People say, "Oh, that's pranayama." I'm like, "I never learned pranayama." I've never taken a class. Actually, I've learned about breathing age seven when I took clarinet classes. The teacher asked me, "Do you know what's the most powerful muscle in your body?"

[01:13:47] I said, "I don't know. My legs maybe. I don't know." He says, "No, it's your diaphragm." It's actually not true. The most powerful muscles in your body are in your jaw. But diaphragm is certainly a very, very powerful muscle. So I do teach the basics. It's not just the basics, I actually teach advanced breathing techniques, but they're not those found in yoga.

[01:14:12] They're not explained the same energy and chakras. And I don't do any because it's not my background. I've never learned that. What I teach is diaphragmatic control, diaphragmatic strength, and I teach the slowness of breathing. So basically you want to reduce your respiratory rates, how many breaths you take per minute.

[01:14:36] But eventually, and all my students, witness that in themselves, is that their respiratory rate goes down reflexively. It means not because they intentionally slow down their breath, but both breathing exercises and breath holding exercises, it just naturally slows down. So breathing is very important.

[01:14:58] But in breath hold work, there's breath work without the hold, and then there's the breath work with the hold, which means it's actually not breath work. It's no breath work. It's the art of no breath.

[01:15:11] Luke: It's breathless work

[01:15:12] Erwan: Yeah. It's hold it.

[01:15:14] Luke: And you call what you've developed breath hold work, right?

[01:15:19] Erwan: Yeah.

[01:15:20] Luke: Rather than breath work.

[01:15:21] Erwan: Yes.

[01:15:21] Luke: Okay.

[01:15:22] Erwan: Interestingly, breath work is a term that was coined 50 years ago. And I coined breath hold work literally 50 years later.

[01:15:32] Luke: Wow, wow. So it's so interesting that, I don't know, oftentimes someone will, say in this case, get into holotropic breath work. Or as I was telling you earlier, I practiced Kundalini yoga for a number of years and many of the kriya involved in all of these really powerful breathing techniques. You have Wim Hof. You have all these different schools of ways to breathe that have various benefits and results.

[01:15:57] It's interesting that you weren't someone who dabbled in all of those and then went, "Eh, it's not really doing it for me. I'm going to find my own thing." You found your own thing and just never explored the other ways that people are doing this, is what I'm getting, right?

[01:11:08] Because I feel like if I right now was like, "You know what? I want to develop my own breath thing." I would probably borrow from the 15 or so different ways I've practiced and make an amalgamation of what I've felt to be useful. And then I would create my own thing out of that. But you just came in with a blank slate and just stumbled across it and was like, "Oh, wow."

[01:16:36] Erwan: Mostly. I can't say, for instance, what my clarinet teacher taught me was very important. In fact, then I practiced karate, where you also had a certain level of breath control. Not very extensive or sophisticated, but you still needed to control your breath. Actually, I've done long distance triathlon 2 as an amateur, but nonetheless, the management of breathing is where I'm born in to.

[01:17:02] And I remember actually, back then when I was trained for triathlon, I would often either swim and completely manage my breathing instead of breathing every other arm cycle. I would actually do that every six, every eight, every 10, every 12. No breath. And then finally take a breath.

[01:17:24] And I would sometimes also do laps underwater, 25 meters, then 50 meters. And then I was told, "No, we can't do that." So it's always been there. But in the end, and this is what I want to say, it's not at all about the breath. It's not about the breath. It's about consciousness.

[01:17:44] Breath is or can be a gateway to understanding one's own consciousness and then practicing one's own consciousness, and ideally mastering that consciousness. Or if mastery is not really possible in the sense that we could say perfection does not exist, but something that looks close to it. So what you said was so on point about cold plunging because it's about your ability to better self-regulate a response to stress.

[01:18:21] And if you can regulate your response to the cold plunging stress, that ability that you acquire through frequent exposure basically becomes neural pathways that are also not just useful when you expose yourself to the stress of cold water, but to almost any stress. So it gives you mental and emotional resiliency, which is something.

[01:18:52] It's a quality. It's an attribute that we can cultivate through practice, basically. Being chill is a skill. Being composed is a skill. Being relaxed, relaxation is a skill. It's not just a state that you hope you could be in if you take the right medication or the right treatment, or the right massage, or you go to the right spa. Yeah, that can help.

[01:19:19] It's external. It's like an external environment that's going to give you that relaxation. But how about developing the ability to generate that relaxation out of your pure, impeccable intention, and to develop an ability to delve into that relaxation quickly? This is what I have to do whenever I hold my breath for minutes at a time, up to eight minutes at the time.

[01:19:44] Luke: You've held your breath for eight minutes?

[01:19:45] Erwan: A few times, yes. Not yet officially the record--

[01:19:49] Luke: What was the official recorded one?

[01:19:51] Erwan: CMAS because-- so it's 7-minute 29, in front of a judge--

[01:19:58] Luke: Meaning you had witnesses that verified.

[01:20:00] Erwan: Two judges. A judge and an assistant judge. It's all official. There's a whole protocol. It's not like somebody watches you and then you say, "Yeah, yeah, you did it." They say, "No, anybody could--"

[01:20:09] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:20:09] Erwan: Could say I've held my breath for 15 minutes.

[01:20:13] Luke: I could slip someone 100 and go, "Here, stop the timer."

[01:20:17] Erwan: No, exactly. So you have a regulation, it's an official federation. It's an international federation. The CMAs federation. And by the way, you could see sometimes people say, "Hey, what about Kit Winslet?" I'm like, "What?" She held her breath for seven minutes.

[01:20:35] Okay, so let me talk about that. What the media doesn't tell you is that she breathed pure oxygen for 20 minutes or half hour or more before she held her breath. And what it does is that it's going to saturate all your tissues with oxygen. By the time you hold your breath, you will multiply your breath hold time by 2.5.

[01:21:01] So if she had trained to do three minutes, which is a basic. Anybody is capable to hold the breath for three minutes with some training after-- in my case, when I train people, I can have them do that in just two or three hours of practice, sometimes less than that. So you multiply three by 2.5 is seven, seven minutes. But it's artificial.

[01:21:27] So that's why you have the top, top, top world elite of static breath holders who have passed the 10 minutes mark. Multiply by two by 2.5, gets you 24 minutes. So some people have held their breath 24 minutes recorded, all official, but that's by breathing pure oxygen. But without that, the times are very different.

[01:21:55] And by the way, just the fact that you can hold your breath much longer when you breathe pure oxygen completely destroys the CO2 tolerance theory, which is everybody pairs that, like, "Oh, CO2 tolerance, CO2 tolerance. It's all about CO2 tolerance." Is it? They says, "Yeah, yeah. It's proven, science proven."

[01:22:19] The real reason why you want to breathe is not because you lack oxygen, it's because you have too much CO2 in your bloodstream. So CO2 buildups makes you want to breathe. Okay. Then how do you explain to me that, let's say, you hold your breath for three minutes, you start to be uncomfortable at the two minutes mark. And then for one minute you're going to fight. Really fight. Why?

[01:22:43] Because the CO2 buildup is so high that-- you actually still have oxygen, but the CO2 buildup is intolerable. Now you breathe oxygen, pure oxygen with a mask your tank and all for a half hour, and then you go hold your breath.

[01:22:59] Now you hold your breath for seven minutes. When do you start to become uncomfortable? It should be at the two minutes mark. Why? Because that's your CO2 tolerance threshold. Why would it change just because you breathed pure oxygen? It shouldn't change, shouldn't budge. CO2 tolerance, that's a physiological adaptation.

[01:23:16] You can't just change it like that, in seconds, or just because you breathe extra oxygen. So what happens? Happens that you can actually handle seven minutes worth of CO2 buildup because your metabolism doesn't change. So you keep producing CO2, CO2, CO2 because even if you don't move, all your cells in your body needs oxygen, burn oxygen. It turns into CO2, and then it builds up. Now you will become uncomfortable only around the fourth minute. So you have multiply your CO2 tolerance by two, 2.5. How? By breathing oxygen? Makes no sense.

[01:23:56] Luke: And this is not something I've looked into at all, but is it possible that if you're hyper oxygenated that it'll take longer to be producing that CO2?

[01:24:06] Erwan: It would take exactly the same amount of time because your metabolic rate doesn't change. It's metabolic rate at rest. So if you're not doing anything but just floating face down the water because you're super lazy, you're just holding your breath doing nothing, that's actually very hard.

[01:24:27] And then you do that without breathing oxygen or after breathing oxygen, your metabolic rate doesn't change. So here's what change, is your O2 reserve. And your body is able to measure how much oxygen you've got overall in your body and how long you can actually wait before it's time to agitate and to try to do something about-- the lack of oxygen intake means your autonomy nerve system start to be like, "Okay, that was cool, cool experience. We had so much oxygen. That was fun. We felt super relaxed. But now the fourth minute mark, it's time to do something about it. So I'm going to start to make you feel uncomfortable."

[01:25:12] It's subtle at first, and then it's going to be really, really, in your face. You're going to really start to feel the burn, feel the anxiety, whatever it is, depending on how you handle that, the experience. Why? Well, because it's time. I've been computing all of that, and we've got about three minutes left now. All right, so you can stay there a little longer, that's okay. But soon, I'm really going to remind you more frequently, and I'm going to remind you in a way that is not really pleasant.

[01:25:41] Why? Because if it's left to just your mind, you're going to be like, "So good at this. I don't feel nothing." Until, poof, you die. So you have a viral safeguard system. It's called the atomic nerve system in your brainstem to begin with. So it starts with the sensors in your brainstem at the top of the spine, basically.

[01:26:03] Then it goes into the midbrain, the limbic brain that makes you emotional. Then you become mental. So first is the signals from the brainstem. Then it's the emotional agitation. It's another form of signal. Then it becomes a mental signal. Then you have thoughts all over the place. Oh, I don't know if I can. Yes, I want to do it. Whatever.

[01:26:23] That's the story you tell yourself in your mind. But your autonomic nervous system has a completely different goal and function. It just wants you to breathe again so that you stay alive. So all of a sudden your CO2 tolerance is multiplied by 2.5. No, it is not. It's just your auto-reserve. Your oxygen reserve is increased so you can last longer and you can postpone the signals of discomfort. So you are increasing your comfort zone, means how long that comfort zone lasts for. That's what happens.

[01:27:00] Luke: So in different breath work practices that I've tried, I'm trying to think of like breath holds. I'll use this example. So taking big slow breath in, slow breath out, not hyperventilating, just full lungs, full chest, all the way out. Do that for an hour without stopping. Exhale all the way out. Hold it as long as you can. And there's been times where I'm shocked. I'm like, "I can't believe I'm not fucking breathing or gasping for air." And then there's like the tingly stuff. The T-Rex hands will start to happen.

[01:27:37] Erwan: That's because of hyperventilation.

[01:27:40] Luke: Yeah. And so there's this long, long hold. I just thought, well, the reason I'm able to hold the exhale so long is because I have so much oxygen in my body because I've been breathing for a freaking hour, taking deep breaths. Because when we did ours, and I'm sure you have levels to your game, but when we did the version of your technique here today, it was deep breath in, deep breath out, and then in, and then holding the in breath until it gets relatively uncomfortable.

[01:28:12] But you don't want to have to double up on the breath is what you were telling me. You don't want to have to cheat. It's like one breath in, one breath out, holding the in. But I felt like I was holding the ins quite a long time for me without pre-oxygenating myself. You know what I mean?

[01:28:28] It's like I'm just taking fairly normal breath. They're deep and full breasts, but I'm not hyperventilating by any means. Yet I felt like I could have even held some of those longer and not have to have a cheat breath.

[01:28:41] Erwan: The hyperventilation is completely unnecessary. 

[01:28:44] Luke: And that's what cause the muscle contractions and all this stuff?

[01:28:47] Erwan: Yes. Yeah, that's hypoxia at a cellular level. So your cells at your extremities start to really lack oxygen, so you feel that tingling and you feel like you're cramping or getting tight and stuff. Because your extremities are not oxygenated.

[01:29:06] Why? Because when you hold your breath, you start to have vaso-- even we were talking about vasodilation or constriction. It doesn't matter. What happens is that your bloodstreams start to go more to your brain and your heart, not to the extremities. Why? Because they're used less.

[01:29:24] Your heart can never stop, and your brain can never stop. Those are the two most noble organs in the body. So when having to make the decision of where the oxygen that's left in your body should go, it's not going to go to your toes.

[01:29:45] Luke: Sure.

[01:29:46] Erwan: It's not going to go to your calves or your biceps.

[01:29:50] Luke: It's like when you're cold. Same kind of deal, right?

[01:29:53] Erwan: Exactly.

[01:29:54] Luke: All the blood goes to the core.

[01:29:55] Erwan: So again, autonomic survival responses.

[01:31:29] Luke: Why do does one get so high from some of those hyperventilating techniques? I remember in the early days of Kundalini yoga, some of those kriya would be 20 or 30 minutes of laying on your back or deep breathing, moving around.

[01:31:43] You'd hold a breath in and all of a sudden there's psychedelic visuals and seeing shit from your childhood. An old trauma emerges or something. You're crying. You're laughing your ass off. Those were some of my first experiences, and I was like, "I like altered states."

[01:32:02] Erwan: Yes. Oh, there's a lot to unpack about that, Luke.

[01:32:06] Luke: Yeah. I think that's what draws a lot of people toward different breath work practices, is like, wow, I didn't have to take any exogenous substance, and I'm getting high on my own supply here in a really, sometimes quite meaningful and powerful ways.

[01:32:21] Erwan: All right, so you are asking why does that happen. And also the question could be why are we seeking those states? And so those are two different questions and answers. Which one do you want me to answer first?

[01:32:37] Luke: Why and how does breath have the capacity to have that mind-altering effect? Even in Joe Dispenza's work, which is very just, I think fairly traditional yogic stuff, but you're breathing up through your energy centers. You're holding it. You're squeezing it at the brain. His theory is that you're putting pressure on the pineal gland and it's releasing DMT ultimately. But I've been at his events, and it's like, you have--

[01:33:04] Erwan: That's unproven, by the way, DMT release and stuff.

[01:33:07] Luke: Oh, okay. But you have normal people that don't look like they use psychedelics and they're sitting there tripping balls, screaming and crying, and all this wild shit is happening just from them breathing. I always think, what is going on? Why does breathing--

[01:33:22] Erwan: So there are two reasons. One is physiological and one is psychological. So the physiological reason is that when you hyperventilate, basically you're going to dump a lot of CO2 and you're going to create vasoconstriction, which means your blood vessels are going to tighten, including the blood vessels that feed the brain with oxygen.

[01:33:53] So now you have less oxygen to the brain. So what's called a cerebral blood flow is reduced to begin with. It's not dangerous in itself because, again, the brain's still receiving a lot of oxygen, but then the tissues are going to start also becoming more alkaline.

[01:34:16] So it's called blood alkalosis, but it's also tissue alkalosis. What does that mean? It's that the pH is altered in a way that even the presence of oxygen-- the currency for the cells to obtain and utilize that oxygen is CO2. So if the environment is poor in CO2, even though you may have oxygen molecules going around, they cannot be delivered.

[01:34:42] They're not going to slide off the little wagons that are that [Inaudible] shape, like a little vessel that's your red blood cells or hemoglobin-- is holding those countless molecules of oxygen, and they're supposed to slide off and then go back to the heart and lungs and just refill with oxygen.

[01:35:09] And now they can't do that. So what do you think happens when basically your brain has less oxygen? Every single day we are awake and alert and conscious and thinking, and that's a very conventional, very typical, very regular way of exercising the consciousness that we are.

[01:35:34] We think. We analyze. We project. We abstract. We compute. We anticipate. We memorize. We remember, all of those incredible variety of cognitive functions that our conscious brain, the prefrontal cortex can do. While the autonomic nervous system takes care of our digestion, repair of cells that are damaged or all of that.

[01:36:01] The prefrontal cortex is part of the brain that receives the most oxygen. It consumes the most oxygen, but now all of a sudden there's less of that. Where do you think that the oxygen should go in the brain? You think that the brain is harmoniously nourished by oxygen at all times, and in the same way? Not at all.

[01:36:23] It's just like the muscles. If you do biceps curls, the blood is not getting into your calves because your calves are inert. We're not doing anything. They don't need oxygen. So same with different areas of your brain. So different areas of the brain activate at different times for different reasons, different functions, including brainwaves-- also can change-- but now all of a sudden you have less oxygen.

[01:36:48] So where should the oxygen go? And it's going to go deeper. It's going to go in the limbic brain. So your filter, your day-to-day screen that you live with, that is your regular sense of self that's always controlling, always dominating, that does not let you look into your inner truths, does not let you look at your real, real feelings, including those that come from your story, your history and your story.

[01:37:16] What matters to you, what hurts you, what you remember was good, what you remember wasn't, what hurts you, what you have not reconciled with, what you're still in conflict with-- things you normally don't pay attention to because you're too busy managing the day-to-day task-- all of a sudden, the peripheral cortex cannot redo that anymore.

[01:37:35] So it's just doing and taking psychedelics. What does that do when you take psychedelics? That screen that normally processes your reality, it's still there, but it's not powerful anymore. So now through breathing, you create a physiological change in your brain that becomes a neurophysiological change that's going to alter not just the function of your brain, but how you experience yourself in consciousness.

[01:38:10] And it's going to remove the block that prevents you from accessing your dream world, which is your-- when we talk about shadow work and all these things, it's all about what's under the hood that most people don't want to look at. Why? Because if they were to it, they would become unsettled.

[01:38:32] They would become angry, upset, sad, depressed, afraid, or go wild in some ways. Basically, they would see that as uncontrolled behavior. And you remember we started the podcast talking about containment. Now all that containment is gone. It can be a beautiful thing that feels just like a high, permission to be high without taking a drug.

[01:38:59] Oh my God, I would never touch any drug. But if it's all natural, give it to me. I want a break from my overthinking self that always needs to think and think and think and think and think and think and think. And all you can do is think because it's the only operating mode it knows. It's just such a deeply ingrained habit to process the whole world and itself through thinking. We're going to talk later about what thinking really is, by the way.

[01:39:29] But for a moment that thinking goes away. So what's left? Emotions. Emotions. The most important part of who we are, truly. Our emotional self that is so repressed and oppressed normally. And all of a sudden it's free to-- it's like if you prevent a kid from moving all the time, all of a sudden you say, "You know what? Have fun. Do whatever you want in the house or outside."

[01:39:54] So all of a sudden your inner self is free to feel. And it can be laughter. It can laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing that we call life is. But it can be also memories that hurt you, all of that. And this is why people love to do that. It's they're getting a high without the substance, without the molecules, even though it's all happening molecularly in the sense of-- anyways, already what we call reality is a cocktail. It's a mix of hormone cocktail and electromagnetism and all that.

[01:40:33] It's all a mix of energy systems within an energy system. That's what creates reality or a sense of reality. And you can alter that. You can alter that through breathing, breathing slowly, or hyperventilating as well. But you've seen that breathing slowly did something really, really unique and good for you too.

[01:40:54] Luke: Which is very counterintuitive, having had most deep experiences in the realm of the holotropic breath work, more of the hyperventilating, what you just described. Prefrontal cortex goes to sleep, default mode network chills. Now I'm in dream space.

[01:41:12] Erwan: Speaking tech now.

[01:41:15] Luke: But yeah, this was--

[01:41:17] Erwan: Your operating system.

[01:41:18] Luke: This was different in the sense because it was like-- hmm, how do I describe it? Okay, say like in a really deep psychedelic experience. The context changes, the context of your reality. The container of your experienced reality changes. But most of the time, depending on the medicine and the experience and where you are, there's a lot of content. There's a lot of things going on within that context-- colors, visuals, realizations, thoughts, downloads, God talking to you, whatever.

[01:41:49] Erwan: Why not?

[01:41:49] Luke: But in what we experienced, which I've also experienced with different medicines, like Wachuma for example, recently, there's a broadening of the context and a spaciousness, but there's no content in there. It's just quiet. There's no bells and whistles, no visuals, no real downloads. There's no cognition, thinking. When we were done, I think the first word I said, I was like, "Spacious."

[01:42:17] Erwan: Mm-hmm. I remember that.

[01:42:18] Luke: It was just like, whoa, something opened up. But it was, at least in this particular-- it was my first and only time, and it was short-- but there wasn't a lot of that content, which for me was really nice because I just felt so much peace. It's just like, oh my God. It's like somebody just turned off the TV. You know what I mean? The TV's been on. You didn't know it was on. It's on really loud and someone turns it off, and you go, "Oh God, wow, this feels nice." It was like that.

[01:42:46] It was very interesting. So if the more aggressive hyperventilating type of breath work that is pretty popular these days in different forms, if that's taking us to a place where it might be more emotional and chaotic, but still beneficial in some ways, even if it's just an escape from your normal reality--

[01:43:07] Erwan: It's like lifting up the lid and all that steam--

[01:43:10] Luke: Right. So what have you found with the more deliberate, slow breathing, and particularly the holds that takes you to a different place or has different results?

[01:43:22] Erwan: Yes. It's a very good question. But you see, your experience, the practice I had you do, and there was also words, so I guided you through it, which is called mood induction, which is something that we can do to ourselves, by the way, which is in fact, something that we do all the time, every day to ourselves.

[01:43:42] We're always placing ourselves in a mood. And most people think that, oh, I cannot be relaxed. I cannot be relaxed. Huh? How come? Because you can be upset like that. Ah, because getting upset is your skill. That's something you've practiced. You always feel completely entitled to become upset or to become depressed, but not to become relaxed. Or confident or composed, which are equally important, if not more important states of mind, states of the heart, like mindset, heart set, soul set.

[01:44:18] You can become upset, but you cannot set yourself to really experience deep relaxation just because you want it, just because you want it, because you need it, or because you enjoy it, and because you're able of it. So we're constantly, but unconsciously, most people, are practicing mood induction by their own suggestion, by their own suggestion.

[01:44:45] And then they practice-- it doesn't look like it's a practice, but it's a practice because it's something you do repetitively. And then the patterns become so deeply ingrained, clearly in the flesh of your brain through neuro pathways that are reinforced. It's called myelination.

[01:45:03] It's like the difference between copper fiber and optic fiber basically. It's like your ability to become upset fires very quickly and very intensely. Well, you could develop the same ability of speed and intensity, but reverse into relaxation, into composure, without having to try to force yourself.

[01:45:25] It basically becomes second nature. It becomes what you are, not something you need to do. So before that practice, did I tell you what to expect? I didn't tell you, with that exercise, you're going to feel like this. You're going to feel like that. No. Why? Because I wanted you to experience for yourself without any preconception of what it was supposed to do to you.

[01:45:50] I never suggested you any particular outcome because that's authenticity, that's integrity. I'm not implanting any your mind what you're supposed to get from the experience. I'm just having you do the practice and see what comes out. What came out was a deep, deep feeling of relaxation, where thinking was not necessary anymore, and yet you felt good about it.

[01:46:17] Normally, your thinking enables you to maintain a sense of control about your conscious reality. So you need to produce thoughts all the time. Why? Because what is thinking? What do we do when we think? We're messaging ourselves. Because the thinker is actually a talker. It's a speech that only you can hear. It's completely silent.

[01:46:46] Luke: We're sending ourself a DM.

[01:46:46] Erwan: Yes. It's silent, totally, but you can hear it. But others can't. If you are to talk, you would verbalize what? Your thoughts. So speech is a verbalized, vocalized thinking, and thinking is a silent speech. So when we think we're talking to ourselves, who's the talker? You are. And who's the listener? You are.

[01:47:18] So what's the whole point? What's the story? What's up? What's the news? What are you messaging to yourself and why? What representations of the world or of your experience of yourself are you entertaining and then practicing and then made to become your reality? That's the question.

[01:47:42] So when I introduced you to that exercise, I didn't want to put ideas in your mind of what to expect because that's your sovereignty. That's not for me to say, "Oh, you're going to be relaxed, or this is going to happen." When Wim Hof introduced people to that-- it's called a method.

[01:48:04] But actually, when you think about the breathing thing, it's one single exercise, not a method. It's one exercise. It's hyperventilation followed by a breath hold and an exhale. The hyperventilation thing is a super old, cheap trick that's old-school spear fisher, or even early free divers have used.

[01:48:24] They would hyperventilate thinking they would hold their breath longer. The problem is that many of them have died in the water as a result because it delays the urge to breathe. And then by the time you realize that you lack oxygen, actually you don't. So poof, consciousness, blackout.

[01:48:44] And if you're alone and nobody sees you, you die. It's nothing new, and you don't need to hyperventilate to hold your breath longer. How do I know? Well, because I don't hold my breath longer if I hyperventilate. And as a matter of fact, some of my friends are elite free divers, world champion, world record holder in other disciplines of free diving.

[01:49:10] None of them ever does that exercise. Not because they're not aware of it, but because it does nothing to them. It's actually counterproductive. Actually, they avoid it. What does that say? Because free divers are people who like hold their breath for minutes at the time and can go very, very, very, very deep into the ocean.

[01:49:30] You don't think that they would be interested in anything that gives them an edge? Except they don't do that exercise because actually it messes up with your performance, and it's actually dangerous. So the reality is that you do not need hyperventilation. Actually, you should avoid it if you want to hold your breath for a long time. You can do some mild ventilation, means accelerate ventilation, but it's not hyper.

[01:49:57] It's just a little more than what's called normal ventilation or normal ventilation. All right, so back to the expectation, the reason why I was mentioning that is that originally when people started to do the Wim Hof exercise, nobody was going like, "Oh my god, my childhood or my life." And I'm crying and I'm having an episcopal moment on the floor rolling and speaking tongues. Nobody did that. But now they do. Why? What changed?

[01:50:27] Luke: Suggestion.

[01:50:28] Erwan: Suggestion. That's the way we discussed before. Suggestion. Suggestion is extremely important. So before you did the breath hold, you did the hyperventilation, then you did the breath hold, and nothing emotional happened. Maybe to some people it did, but that's not what people were looking for.

[01:50:48] They were looking for their health, for their oxygenation, maybe for their mind, maybe trying just to get the high that hyperventilation gives you. By the way, speaking of, when I was 13 years old, I was doing hyperventilation. And you know what I was doing then? Hyperventilation.

[01:51:06] And then I would take a large breath, and then I will hold myself like that and compress everything. And I'm telling you, if you do that, you pass out. And I've actually passed out sometimes. I did that silly, from standing, and my mom find myself on the floor. I collapsed.

[01:51:25] Luke: I've done that as an adult.

[01:51:26] Erwan: Yeah, completely.

[01:51:29] Luke: I've been doing-- this is years ago-- doing breath work and like, I don't want to lose the breath, but I want to get something out of the kitchen. Find myself on the floor. What happened? It's crazy.

[01:51:39] Erwan: And sometimes people have that spontaneously.

[01:51:40] Luke: Thankfully, knock on wood, I didn't hurt myself. But yeah.

[01:51:43] Erwan: Yeah. You got to be very cautious. You want to do that on the coach or on the bed, if you're going to do that.

[01:51:47] Luke: Eventually I learned if I'm going to do that type of breath work, I would be somewhere seated where I can't hit my head on anything. And I've passed out a bunch of times.

[01:51:55] Erwan: Have you ever stood up so quickly that you get super dizzy? You have to hold something?

[01:52:00] Luke: Yeah.

[01:52:01] Erwan: It's the same. It's the same idea. But all of a sudden something messes up with the ability of your peripheral cortex to oxygenate. So all of a sudden you have more control issues. You have reasoning issues. You can't talk. You have tunnel vision. All these things happen because it's a physiological process that happens.

[01:52:20] But again, we talked about the physiology and how it's going to impact your brain, but then there is the suggestion. It's so powerful. So now if you tell people you're going to hyperventilate, and as a result you may have a catharsis. You may have an emotional breakdown. You're going to cry and everything.

[01:52:39] People expect that now. They want that now. They're going to make it happen no matter what. Except the skeptical ones who, no, it's not going to happen. They're very skeptical. Anyways, they're not suggestible people. They're the people who cannot hypnotize, basically.

[01:52:54] But those, most people are very-- we all are, by nature, very suggestible, very malleable, but suggestible. And most importantly, self-suggestible. Means we suggest ourselves constantly through thinking. So now you're like, "Okay, I'm going to experience that. I'm going to cry, whatever. I'm going to get angry."

[01:53:15] Depending on what you have to deal with inside that you never deal with because you've learned to repress, you've learned to contain your emotional self because your emotional self is deemed dangerous. So that's why some people use that for what they call somatic release.

[01:53:31] And in some ways, maybe it works. Maybe some people are going to cry, are going to have maybe some dreamlike imagery. Why? Because their consciousness is still there. Just because your regular, normal, reasonable, sensible consciousness is just drunk or gone for a moment doesn't mean that other areas, other ways of being conscious actually do not appear. And that's what they do.

[01:54:01] So from the limbic brain, you have dream-like images. You have memories, and most importantly, you have things that bother you, what you've not dealt with that you psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, have to deal with. You just do not give yourself the permission to. You don't know how to tap into that. What I want to say is that it can also happen. You can make it to happen without the hyperventilation. That's how the mother whale came to me, that I mentioned earlier.

[01:54:37] Luke: We were talking earlier, and you were explaining that you had quite a bit of experience with plant medicines, ayahuasca and mushrooms and whatnot, and then you said that you've experienced more profound change or realizations holding your breath than you had on any of those medicines. Could you elaborate on that?

[01:54:59] Because we're moving from, okay, the hyperventilating type of breath work. Just to generalize it, we're getting an understanding, at least from your perspective of why it causes these reactions and these experiences. Which I would put sometimes in the realm, very similar to psychedelics, but you are talking about these long breath holds and it's taking you to some deep places without hyperventilating. Just holding your breath. So where's the connection there, you think?

[01:55:27] Erwan: It's consciousness. It's consciousness. Consciousness is not just the surface consciousness. In fact, when you look at your screen of a phone or a laptop, a desktop, you just look at the screen. But you need a whole hardware and all the apps and everything to make whatever you see or hear on the screen to appear.

[01:55:52] There are deep layers of computing happening. So it's a metaphor for also how our conscious consciousness works. Means that when you have an idea of a thought or an intuition, where does that come from? How many words, how many experiences, how many layers of cognition did you have to go through since you were born to elaborate the state or level of consciousness you're at today?

[01:56:18] So to form a thought, where does that thought even originate from? Well, it originates from those deeper layers of recognition. So when you take psychedelics, because that's what it is about, you drink a glass of wine. Oh, I'm not taking psychedelics. Oh, you're not. No. You drink your chamomile tea, it's not psychedelics. No, it's just relaxing me.

[01:56:46] Oh, why do you need to be relaxed? Why do you need to alter your consciousness? You're basically trying to alter your consciousness. Even sugar. You want a sugar high? Oh, it's not about the sugar. It's about what it does to your brain. It's about what it does to your experience of yourself.

[01:57:06] You want to feel hyped? Take some energy drink or something, or more coffee. Or you want to feel more relaxed. So in the morning you want coffee because you need to be active. You got to work. You get stuff to do. At the end of the day, you want beer, two beers, three beers, 12 beers, and some bourbon or something else.

[01:57:27] Maybe a joint. Maybe something. Maybe some medication because you don't do drugs. You don't do drugs, but you do Valium. It's not a drug. It's not? You want the molecules. You want the alteration of your mind. Why? Why do you want it? Is it good? Is it bad? It's not the question. The question is that you're seeking an alteration of your mind because you need it.

[01:57:51] It's a form of regulation. Is it going to lower you? Is it going to elevate you? Is it going to degrade you? Or is it going to optimize to make you better? That is the question. But everybody does it in some ways. So when you go into what's called plant medicine, and I've done that for many years, and I've done that hundreds of times, obviously my brain is completely destroyed as a result.

[01:58:22] No. The point is you are on a quest of consciousness, of understanding self, because know thy self, and you will know the universe and the gods. It's a perfect line, except there is a huge mistake, and it's that s at the end. Because there aren't gods. There's only one. So know thyself, and you will know the universe that is God through you, through your own experience, your unique experience.

[01:58:54] So consciousness is everything. So should you alter it through some molecules that is from a plant? Grapes is a plant. Makes wine. You can make all the types of liquors that are called what? Spirits. Interesting. Spirits. Spirits, spiritual. Why would you do that? Well, because it's the name of the game.

[01:59:14] Some people say, "Oh, I'm not spiritual." Are you not? Everybody is. Because it's like, do you have a soul? That question, do you have a soul? And people are like, "Yeah, I guess I have a soul." Okay, where is your soul? Is it in your backpack? Is it in a drawer at home? Where do you put it? On a coffee table? That's because you don't have a soul. You are one. And if you are a soul, a spiritual. There is no switch off.

[01:59:42] Nobody can ever be not spiritual. What we typically call spiritual means the idea of being conscious of one's consciousness. That's metacognition, is the consciousness that we are being able to elevate itself somehow above itself or away from itself to look at itself and to realize, oh, I am. I exist. And I realize that instead of just being and being constantly drawn and distracted by everything that is external.

[02:00:02] So all of a sudden you turn that awareness inwardly, and then you realize that you are. Now, is that enough? Because you have a life to live, and that's going to put you through a number of situation and contexts where that consciousness that you are will have to manage not just things outside of you or people, but itself. And there's going to be fluctuation.

[02:00:38] So we're talking about mastery. We're talking about that consciousness, realizing, hmm, I could do something about the way that I express myself, the way that I unfold that potential, the way that I generate it, create it. And that is what we call spirituality, is the awareness that we can choose, in many ways, the way that we express that potential-- through thoughts, through desires, through intention, through deeds, through emotions, through imagery, visualization, all these different tools, cognitive tools that we're equipped with.

[02:01:26] What do we do with that potential? How do we express it? That's spirituality. Which means either we're unconscious about our spiritual nature. That doesn't mean we're not spiritual. It just means we're unconsciously so, but you can become consciously spiritual. That means that then you can shift the experience that you are. Again, there is no switch off. You're always in the game.

[02:01:52] But you can start shifting the experience that you are in a desirable way. And what is desirable, typically and universally? What does everybody want? Is to feel good to, to have pleasantness, not just of the environment where we are, which is by the way, here, it's like beautiful place, very safe, very comfortable, very warm and classy, creative.

[02:02:18] I see all the contrast. It's nourishing the mind and the psyche the same way it's nourishing to look at a beautiful sunset in the horizon. What about the inner horizon? What about the inner space that we are? What does it look like? What's the energy there? And that's a big question because we live with that inner self all the time.

[02:02:46] That's actually the most important home. That's the most important space. That's the most important place. And when we commit to exploit, to investigate it, and then to start to fashion it from within, then we start to master our inner experience. We can decide literally the mood we're going to be into.

[02:03:14] We can self-induce a mood, which is a certain frequency, certain state, certain emotion, certain way of being that we choose independently of what the world is, what's going on. It's that interaction with self that matters. Because in the end, we are our own company and can decide what company is the best company ever.

[02:03:43] Luke: That's good. I like that.

[02:03:45] Erwan: Or if you are shooting yourself in the foot, being your own enemy and working against you, insulting yourself. Some people insult themselves. They treat themselves so bad. It makes me emotional to think about that

[02:03:57] Luke: Yeah, I've been there.

[02:03:59] Erwan: Because you are ruining the gift. And not that you want to blame yourself because you're doing that. I just want to say, there's a way to change that. It's not something that cannot be changed. There's hope. There is a way, not out, because it's about being out of yourself or from yourself. It's not about escaping yourself.

[02:04:26] It's about reconciling with yourself, understanding the gift that you are, starting with consciousness, and learning instead of being in that entropy. The constant confusion and anxiety and somehow dysfunction of your psychological, emotional self. You could really learn also to regulate that.

[02:04:46] Imagine people make their car very clean and their house very clean and orderly and everything. What about the mind? What about the mind? That should be the most spotless place. That should be the safest place. We talk about safe space. Are you one for yourself? Are you a safe space for yourself? Is it a place of love? Is it a place of compassion? Is it a place of support?

[02:05:16] Is it a place of understanding? Is it a place of reconciliation? Is it a place of insight? Is it a place of appreciation, contentment, and even gratefulness? Is it a place of deep connection with yourself? Is it a place of deep connection with the one that your soul comes from? Because the soul did not create itself. So know thyself, and you will know the universe and God-- not plural. Not pearl. That s is a major mistake, I must say.

[02:05:47] Luke: that's funny. Yeah.

[02:05:50] Erwan: Under ancient wisdom, but no, it's okay. It's a simple tweak. You just remove it later and then all of a sudden everything clears up and then you can already see whole picture.

[02:06:02] Luke: Beautiful, man. All right. For people that want to learn how to teach what you do, or for people that just want to learn it, you can go to lukestorey.com/breathholdwork, which we'll put in the show notes. And today's show notes are lukestorey.com/erwan. That's E-R-W-A-N.

[02:06:24] But give us a little bit of understanding if someone's interested in exploring consciousness in the way that you just described with the techniques of breath that you've developed. What does that look like from someone who's deeply committed to someone that just wants to check it out to someone who's like, "Wow, I'm going to be so into this? I want to actually teach other people the method."

[02:06:46] Erwan: Yes. Okay. So on breathwork.com, there are, I believe, three exercises that you can do. They are very introductory. Actually, the one that I had you do is part of that. So anybody can go there and just learn how to do this. But it's also true that I have what's called a Breath of Work Meditation master class.

[02:07:09] Now that's over 100 hours of insight and dozens of very specific exercises. Four modules if you take the deep dive. In the first module, you don't even really learn or do any breath holding. It's all about breathing because you need to master the breath. 

[02:07:34] So breath control, and we start to also address the mind. What is the mind? What is thinking? Some important questions. When I ask people in my retreats, what is thinking? I never get an answer about that. So it's interesting because people, everybody, me included, we've been thinking, since we've learned language, then we're thinking. They say, was it the 10 hours theory about learning a skill? You do 10 hours of practice, you're really good. By the way, it's been completely--

[02:08:12] Luke: Are you talking about the 10,000 hours?

[02:08:14] Erwan: 10,000 hours. That theory has been destroyed. It can be much less than that. But the point is, you would imagine how many hours of thinking you think you've done. So you would think that with all those decades of day-to-day practice, you would become a world expert in thinking.

[02:08:33] Luke: And also be able to define it.

[02:08:35] Erwan: Yes. I don't know. So you've been thinking your whole life, but don't know what thinking is. All right, so let's put it very simply. It's about you messaging yourself. So basically you're telling yourself a story. We are storytellers. Life is a story. Anyway, so module one, then module two, and we advance and advance and advance with more insights into the physiology, the science or physiology, the neurology, the psychology.

[02:09:05] And eventually it becomes just a little spiritual, but I'm not really pressing on that side. But in the end, clearly with this episode, you understand that, to me, that's really where it is all about. So ultimately you learn to hold your breath very long time. And people have multiplied their breath hold by 3, 4, 5.

[02:09:28] I've had some students do six minutes breath holds. People who are not even athletes that discover that ability that they have. So we are really talking about untapped potential. But again, it's not physiological. It's not mostly physiological. It's really all about the mind, how you set your mind.

[02:09:47] So it's a practice of the mind by itself. And what do we want through practice? Any practice we do, what is the point, is improvement. So if you practice tennis, you want to be better at playing tennis. If you practice Olympic weight lifting, you want to be better at lifting weight overhead. If you practice the mind, you want to be big. Become better at mind.

[02:10:12] And better at mind does not mean thinking more because you've been doing that a lot. It's more about thinking less or not at all if you want to, or being able to actually consciously choose the kind of thoughts that you want, those that support your wellbeing. Because again, that's the universal desire, is to feel good. It's not to suffer. It's to feel good, to have a pleasant experience. Not just to survive, but to enjoy the gift of life.

[02:10:42] So it can be a practice. That's why yoga or meditation has been existing for thousands of years, and I am teaching it too. And I'm teaching it from a different perspective, different background, different ways. I have different exercises, like the slowing of the thinking instead of trying to prevent the thinking, and many of the tools like that.

[02:11:06] Luke: It's interesting. It just occurred to me, I think one thing that's unique about your practice is it's a breathing technique, but it's also a meditation at the same time, where oftentimes you might do some breathing techniques and get yourself into a certain state, and then you move on to part two, which is now you're going to meditate in that state. But it seems like yours is one continuum, at least in the short experience that I had.

[02:11:34] Erwan: Okay, so first off, you're not holding your breath. You're not even changing the way you breathe to begin with unless you have the intention to. Why do you have that intention? What is an intention about? An intention is a desire.

[02:11:47] So despite what your enlightened guru told you, desire is not bad. Desire is actually a profound experience. What is a desire about or an intention? Let's call it an intention because desire is bad. It's about the outcome that you seek. It's what about what you want. Oh, I intend to do this. I intend to not do this. I intend to.

[02:12:14] Okay, so you want something. What do you want? I want that thing, or I want that person, or I want that situation. I want that job. I want that money. No, you don't. It's not what you really want. What you want is the experience that you will feel that you will experience.

[02:12:30] The experience that you will experience. Because what we are is experience nonstop. Life is all the game of experience. When you start looking at things that way, it changes everything. So, for instance, people who are mean to you, you realize, oh, they want to ruin my experience. People who are jealous of you, oh, they want my experience.

[02:12:53] People who are kind to you, oh, they want to make my experience good. People who are depressed, oh, they don't see any value in the experience that they are. People who always want more, okay, you are unsatisfied with your experience, etc.

[02:13:14] So it's all a management of expectations. So intentions lead to expectation. Expectation leads to outcome. What's the outcomes? It's the experience. So it's always a regulation of your experience. That's what it's about. Because spirituality or consciousness is not just an experience, it's the experience. So once you understand that, you can also learn a few tips, a few techniques that are going to help you on that path, because it doesn't stop.

[02:13:48] Tomorrow you're going to wake up, and there again. What are you going to do with the precious experience that you are? How are you going to unfold it? How are you going to manifest it? We hear a lot about manifestation those days. And some people, again, the same way, they say, "Oh, I'm not spiritual," they're going to say, "Oh, I don't know anything about manifestation. I don't manifest."

[02:14:08] You don't? Everything you are is a manifestation. The way you dress, the way you talk, the people you hang out with, the show you watch, the type of food you want and eat and all, you manifest all of that. Who does that? Nobody does that for you. You don't have a manager. You're not a slave. You're not forced to be that.

[02:14:28] So meditation is not just observing thoughts, and it's certainly not necessarily stopping thoughts. Meditation is metacognition. Meditation is you take a break, means the mind that you are takes a break from its constant pursuit and obsession with everything external and finally dedicate sometimes some energy to observe itself, to interact also with itself, but not just to observe what's there.

[02:15:03] And here's why. If you realize you observe that you are constantly thinking, so basically you won't stop yapping in your mind, and it's all negative, it means you feel burdened by your own mind. The mind burden itself. Now you've made that observation. Wow, good job. And then what? And then what? What do you do next? What's the point?

[02:15:28] It's like if you look at a situation, you're like, "Ooh, we've got a big problem here. This is like-- oof." And then so what? Now, what's the solution? Do you want to keep it like that and keep observing, oh yeah, that's really pretty messed up, huh? Yeah. It's like, ooh, I don't even want to look there. I would prefer even somebody slaps me in the face so I don't have to look at the inside of me, of my mind.

[02:15:55] What scares you? What troubles you? What unsettles you? Why is it not comfortable or clear or positive and nice and welcoming and warm in there? Why? And do you want to keep it that way? Do you just want to look away and ignore it and keep distracting yourself continuously, or even dumbing yourself, numbing yourself with drugs, with wine, with medication, with constant shows, with masturbation, whatever it is, all kind of super cheap, very fast, very convenient coping mechanisms that never teach you anything about yourself?

[02:16:33] So dependent on those to feel somehow good and you don't really, never, ever actually feel good. So meditation, metacognition, the ability to look at yourself, but not just to look at yourself, but to alter yourself. What is a life coach? What is a priest or a rabbi or an imam or a spiritual guide or a psychotherapist? What do they do to you? What's the point?

[02:17:02] Luke: Objectivity.

[02:17:04] Erwan: But what is the point?

[02:17:06] Luke: Well, if one lacks that objectivity that you described from a meditation practice, for example, you would have to outsource the objectivity because one's not developed the ability to look within with that same objectivity and clarity.

[02:17:23] Erwan: You need-- your consciousness needs support, needs guidance because it has blind spots. Or it has parts that are very clear but doesn't know what to do about those spots, and they're not pleasant spots. Can be about oneself, within your own mind. Can be about a situation in your life, somebody you're dealing with, all kind of things.

[02:17:45] But you are indeed seeking feedback, like you said, objective feedback with the hope of what? With the hope of changing your consciousness, altering consciousness so that you can better handle the situation or improve. But it's about improving what you want. What you expect from that feedback or from that guidance, it can be from a very good friend, is a solution, an improvement.

[02:18:11] So improving self is possible. That's the point of personal development or self-growth. And there are many tools to do that. Breath hold work is one of them. And why? Well, because you are generating a stress, temporary, harmless, actually very beneficial for your physiological health.

[02:18:34] We don't have time to go into all that, but I explained that in my master class, why it's beneficial just for your health to begin with. But then it's about creating a stress that then you can handle, just like what you said about cold plunging. Except when you cold plunge, the stress is still external. It's cold water outside of you. When you hold your breath, the stress is all internal.

[02:18:57] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[02:18:58] Erwan: The cold is not to going to kill you unless you stay there for 24 hours. You die of severe hypothermia. You lose all your heat, body heat, and you die. But you're not going to get there. But when you hold your breath, you know that within minutes you could pass out, even though you won't because you have so many survival mechanisms that will force you anyways to reach what's called the breaking point, the point where you breathe again.

[02:19:24] But what happens is that the stress, you can see it as a problem. But if you see it as a problem, why even hold your breath in the first place or cold plunge or go on a hard run or do anything hard? Why do you want to do that? Because in the end, that discomfort, you will regain through self-regulation, comfort, and that alone will feel amazing.

[02:19:48] You fast, then you eat. Amazing. You run hard, then you go to bed. Amazing. You get in the cold, then you get warm again. You get in the heat, and then you get just normal again, etc. The regulation of extreme can be so rewarding because you go through a bout of stress.

[02:20:05] Now when you go through the stress of breath holding, it's not just the physical stress, it becomes an emotional and mental stress. So either you be, "Okay, that's complete useless. Why should I even do that?" Or you're going to be like, "This is a phenomenal opportunity that I can create anytime I want to look at how I respond, see how I think and feel through that, and through my intention, to alter that, to practice a conscious, deliberate, intentional alteration of my patterns, of my responses, of my inner behaviors, through thought, through image, through emotion, so that I improve it."

[02:20:53] And then it becomes what? Second nature. Means it becomes a new version of who I am. Isn't it what we want? Whenever you read a self-help book, what do you want from that book? You want the insights that hopefully will change your life for what? For the better. Not to mess with it, but to make it better.

[02:21:16] So the thing is that if you read the whole book and you place it back on the shelf, what have you learned? An insight. An insight is intellectual, conceptual knowledge. It is not experiential knowledge. You have no experiential knowledge of what you read about. And until you do, reading that book has only potential value, but not realized value.

[02:21:41] The value is not realized, means you have not made it become real. It's an abstract notion. Yeah, if I do this, if I meditate, then it's going to be good for me. Cool. Meditate. And now become the version of the experience that you are, that you truly desire. That's the name of the game. It's a spiritual event. The whole thing is a spiritual event. And there's no in and out. It's always in. It's always on. Always. So how do you play the game? That's the question.

[02:22:17] Luke: Amazing. All right, last question for you, and we'll get out of here.

[02:22:21] Erwan: Oh, wow. Let's go.

[02:22:24] Luke: I'm having a lot of fun, but I'm sitting here going, dude, we leave tomorrow morning for a trip, and I have not packed. So I could go on and on, but I'm going to regret tomorrow morning.

[02:22:34] Erwan: That was me yesterday before I flew this morning.

[02:22:37] Luke: Before you flew here? Well, thank you for coming all the way out here from New Mexico. I appreciate it. It's been a long time coming. Last question is this: drum roll please-- who have been three teachers or teachings that have influenced you and your life and made you who you are today?

[02:22:54] Erwan: Wow. Three teachers. Ooh, okay. Human ones?

[02:22:58] Luke: Anything. Anything and everything. Concept, book, philosophy, person, anything.

[02:23:05] Erwan: Okay. One was a canary example. It was some guru persona. Somebody that I followed starting age 19 and who I've learned a lot, not thanks to, partly thanks to, but mostly because of. Since 19, so age 19 to 26, seven years of following this guy in Paris. And we did some crazy things, man, like climbing the Notre-Dame Cathedral, training barefoot all night in the cold, doing kickboxing, Krav Maga style of stuff underground, jumping off bridges in the same river.

[02:23:55] And we got into the Louvre Museum also. It was very acidic, not acidic, [Inaudible], like a [Inaudible] lifestyle where it was basically everything that people have rediscovered in the last, let's say, 15 years. Because I arrived in the United States in 2009, so it's been 16 years, and people know me as like the OG of natural lifestyle.

[02:24:25] So just anything that's bio hacking today or whatever it's called, I did it. The fasting, we did not call it intermittent fasting. Why? Because hopefully it's intermittent, because if you keep fasting then you die. So it's just fasting, and you don't eat. You just prolong that. So it was 24, 48 hours every week.

[02:24:48] Going barefoot, going in nature, grounding, you name it, all of it. The natural movement, climbing trees, running, and all of that. But the breath work, we did hyperventilation and some short breath holds and stuff like that. By the way, that guru I had trained with the same guy that Wim Hof trained that he never talks about, which is a French man who taught tummo long before anybody knew it today.

[02:25:22] And still, most people don't know what tummo is, but the hyperventilation breath of fire comes from tummo, and they have learned from the same guy who happened to live in the Alps, which is where Wim Hof also lived at some point. And so they had the same instructor because in those alternative [Inaudible], alternative worlds back then, it's a very, very, very small circle.

[02:25:49] So the going barefoot, the breath work, hyperventilation-based breath work, cold exposure, I did all of that before Wim Hof got known. Why? Because my teacher learned from the same teacher, and they had that teacher in common. Don't remember exactly. It's this very old man now. He's probably in the late 80s, actually probably more in his 90s, if he's still alive.

[02:26:15] So yeah, seven years of that super dedicated lifestyle. Fully vegetarian, no sugar, no alcohol, no TV, no computers, just not buying into the consumerism and having a completely different lifestyle. And that was a great influence in my life for sure.

[02:26:35] Then Jesus. Very personal. Just came to me. That's it. You know who I am? Yes, I know. Telling me it's time. Huh? Say, yeah. Is it? I started crying and everything was amazing. That's why I'm not-- first off, I don't have the religious education at all, so I'm not going to preach for anything. It's not in my hands to decide who is visited and who is not or when or why. Just happened to me.

[02:27:07] It's the most important. And cantor is the most important life coach you could ever encounter or ever have in your life. And then it's also the way to the source. See how unorthodox all that is, is that you said three people. The third person is an animal that I have not physically met, whale.

[02:27:29] It's a mother whale. And that mother whale taught me the basics of breath holding while I was in Mexico in that little fisherman village. And so it was after that like find the master in you episode that I really realized, okay, this is all really, really psychological, spiritual stuff.

[02:27:52] I'm not just holding my breath. It's not just the sport. It's not just the physiological adaptation. It goes way, way, way beyond, way deeper, way higher on that. And then I'm trying to just hold my breath longer and longer and longer, and I'm trying to get to that five minutes mark. I have not yet achieved that repeatedly.

[02:28:11] And in that fisherman village, you have whales sometimes that come around. I've actually seen a mama whale giving birth to a calf in that little bay. And when you go swimming sometimes you can hear, [Inaudible], their typical sounds. Anyways, no whale in sight. I'm just in a room on the bed holding my breath. We talked about the limbic brain.

[02:28:38] What happens is that you have less oxygen for the peripheral cortex. You have more oxygen that goes in the limbic brain, the mid brain. So it's like where you have your memory, your dream world, your emotional self, all of that, the non-rational, non-linear, the whole storytelling thing that is deeply linked to your emotions.

[02:28:57] And then it creates a friction in there. It creates an agitation. And so you can have memories of your past, the real past, real things you went through, or you can have visions. In that case, it was clear vision. So all of a sudden, poof. I'm deep in the ocean. My eyes are closed. That's what I see.

[02:29:14] And the whale, humpback whale-- not the blue whale, not the gray whale-- humpback, beautiful with white belly and those long-- I hear talk to me. What can I say? I don't know. Maybe the audience is going to be like, "Who is this guy?"

[02:29:28] Luke: I don't think you have fazed most of the listeners if they've made it this far in the conversation.

[02:29:32] Erwan: True, true. He's out there. Look, it's my experience. And also, remember I've done a lot of medicine. I've been in the jungle of Peru. I've done apprenticeship. We're talking about not three ayahuasca ceremonies. We're talking about hundreds of them with shamans in the jungle and icaros and all of that. So it does open doors. Not always the good ones, by the way.

[02:30:01] So that's why at this time of my life, I stay completely away from any of this. I don't touch it anymore because I don't need it. Because now I have breath hold work. And to me, it's a spiritual alignment with what I believe are the highest laws, the heavenly laws of just goodness. Just practice the goodness to begin within you.

[02:30:21] It's not just about the deeds you do. Of course, it's more important, but you have to experience goodness within all the time. The peace that you experienced with that breath and breath holding practice. Very slow, very intentional, and then all of a sudden you experience peace. Not because I told you. "Look, with that, you're going to become very peaceful." No.

[02:30:46] What happened is that you became free of concern. Whereas what is anxiety? Preoccupation, preoccupation. You occupy yourself with things before they even happen. Sometimes they won't even ever happen. But you are already preoccupying yourself. Means that you are full of concerns. Who create those concerns? You do.

[02:31:06] And because it becomes chronic, you are in a constant state of anxiety because you're trying to manage things that have not even happened yet. You transpose yourself into the future that is actually unknown because the now is not enough. Whereas actually even now is right there. It's complete predictable.

[02:31:24] Why do you want to handle everything that's not predictable? Well, because you're concerned that maybe it's not going to turn out the way you want. You are not pro-know yet. You are not just feeling trust and faith in the good outcome of the future, and therefore you cannot experience it in the present time already.

[02:31:46] So you're dealing with that, and it's like you set certain mode, like you set a thermostat and a certain temperature. And then you're set like that. You don't even know you're set like that.

[02:31:56] Luke: Set the dial to shit show.

[02:31:58] Erwan: Exactly. So that's why in the Bible it says, don't fear, don't fear, don't fear. What does that mean? It means just have faith. And what is faith? Is another word for trust. And what is trust? Is the opposite of fear. Because it doesn't matter if you say, "Oh, I'm not afraid." You're not. Well, here's the thing. Every little concern is just like the tiny elements of fear. It's like the low spectrum, low intensity type of fear.

[02:32:29] That's just a petty concern. And then becomes a worry, and then becomes a preoccupation or worry, and then becomes anxiety, and then becomes fear, and then becomes-- and the most intense is like you're about to die. You know it, and you are spooked, or you're afraid. You're terrified. You are petrified. You are all these words. So many words in the vocabulary have to do with different levels or different types of fear.

[02:32:54] But trust, you can say confidence, trust, faith. You don't have that many. But that's the point. If you can trust, if you can trust life, if you can trust, then you feel good. You're free of concern. When are we free of concern? Most people never are.

[02:33:12] But the truth is, you can be not because all the circumstances around you have been taken care of and managed. Not because some fortune teller or your horoscope or some computing or your AI told you, "Oh, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. It's all good. Don't worry. So now you can trust." No.

[02:33:29] Just because you choose to trust. You just choose it. And you have developed an ability to be in full trust. That's what I train and practice all the time when I hold my breath because my autonomic nervous system says, "You could die." But my conscious mind is like, "I'm good. I'm good. I'm good."

[02:33:52] And therefore, my autonomic nervous system has been trained to also accept that reality to be like, "We're chill. We're chill. We're chill. We're good. We're good. We're good for a long time." You think that if I hold my breath seven minutes or eight minutes, that I'm half dying in my mind and in complete agony in my mind the whole time?"

[02:34:12] No, I'm fighting less than 20% of the time in what's called the fight zone. The place where it's hard. You got to push. You got to use, let's say, a more stronger hot type of willpower. Otherwise, the willpower is more like soft. Willpower is not actually trying to be strong like, "Let's do it." No.

[02:34:34] If you do that, you're going to agitate. You defeat yourself. It's going to be very, very, very composed. It's almost like nothing is happening at all. And that's what you want. So that's luxury in today's time because people are constantly stimulated and stimulating themselves. So it's like they're training themselves to get stimulated all the time.

[02:34:55] So when they're not, they go on the screen, they go on TV, video games, internet whatnot, to get that stimulation, and they need that stimulations hours a day. Why? Because when they're on their own, that stimulation from themselves is not satisfactory. Because if it was, they will need to go get stimulated by all the rest.

[02:35:17] Social interaction. It can also be that interaction that stimulates, and it can be wonderful to have friends and to have social interactions. Obviously, hopefully not everybody's a hermit. But if that is something you do because you cannot stand yourself and you cannot stand being on your own, then you know that there's a truth about yourself that you are not willing to face. So again, back to meditation, back to maybe prayer, back to contemplation, back to looking at yourself. I've not finished the story, by the way, about the whale.

[02:35:52] Luke: You got about two minutes.

[02:35:53] Erwan: Oh my God. Okay. I got to finish that story.

[02:35:56] Luke: It sounds like a good [Inaudible]. I want to hear.

[02:35:58] Erwan: So it told me, "Look, okay, you want to do this, huh?" I'm like, "Yeah." "Okay. I'm going to teach you. So now I'm going to be your mother." Yeah. A whale it going to be-- I'm going to be your mother. You're going to be my calf.

[02:36:12] So this is what we're going to do. We're going to dive deep, and we're going to come back to the surface. When we dive deep, that means we go to half of the breath hold, and I always go first. So you follow me so that you're not afraid by the depth and the darkness. And it gets darker and colder away from the sun, away from the surface.

[02:36:33] When we come back up, it's the opposite. You go first, and I'm behind you, and I push you back up until the moment where you see the surface and the sun again, which is when you breathe again and you experience relief. That's what we do. So now you're a calf. You're designed to hold your breath.

[02:36:50] That's what you do. It's natural to you. It's your new nature. You have to look at this as something natural to you. You are part of us now. You're part of the spirit of the whale. We heard you. That's what you want to do. Now let me explain to you what is this based on? First off, it's training. It's like strength training. Progressive over overload.

[02:37:12] So it means you need to do it a little harder, a little harder, a little harder, like a calf who is becoming an adult whale. But you will never be asked to do something that you cannot sustain. It means you're not going to die at the depth of the ocean because your mama forgot that you had limited ability, number one.

[02:37:33] And number two, it tells me the most important, it says, "It's all about trust, trust, trust. Always trust. Trust me, follow me, and trust. Two, patience. Be patient, be patience. It's a game of patience. Because you got to be patient until you can reach back the surface and breathe again."

[02:37:58] And then the conclusion was, "In the end, it's all about love. It's all about love. That's the way whales live. We're at the surface. We dive deep. We travel through the ocean. We come back. We dive again. We come back. We go eat. We visit far relatives and all. That's our lifestyle in the ocean. It's life. And life, it's all love. It's all about love. Learn to do it well. Learn to dive well." Every breath hold is a dive. It's a dive within yourself.

[02:38:23] Luke: I love it. I love it. Yeah, really, really good stuff.