Breathwork For Better Sleep

Your body can be exhausted while your mind keeps sprinting. That gap is where stress turns into insomnia, jaw clenching, doom thinking, and feeling disconnected from the people right in front of you. I’m Gary Wise, and I sit down with Tim Thomas, a veteran of the Australian Armed Forces who worked alongside special forces teams and spent time in the early underground era of mixed martial arts before stepping into a high tempo military career.

Tim shares what selection, deployment cycles, and military culture taught him about identity, belonging, and nervous system load, including the hidden cost of “speaking your truth” when a group rewards conformity. We talk candidly about how pain often morphs into loneliness before it becomes dangerous, and why that isolation flips on fight or flight, hijacks sleep, and drives people toward short term fixes like alcohol, pills, or checking out.

Then we get intensely practical. Tim walks me through simple breathwork techniques you can do in bed to downshift fast, including nasal breathing for nitric oxide, jaw and vagus nerve release, humming for vibration, and a quick “three breath” reset that changes your state in minutes. We also dig into his Breath Working Bed app and the idea of winning the five minutes before sleep and the five minutes after waking so better sleep becomes the foundation for better mood, recovery, focus, and resilience.

If you want calmer nights, steadier mornings, and tools you can use anywhere, hit play. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs better sleep, and leave a review with the one breathwork step you’re trying tonight.

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Transcript

Welcome And Tim’s Story

Gary Wise 0:28

Hello, everyone. Hop a day, Ohio. Good morning, good afternoon, good day. Because you know what? We have a very special guest today with me here on the Words from the Wise podcast. Per usual, I'm Gary Wise. I'm the host of this podcast. And today I've got a really exciting guest. I've got a veteran of the Australian Armed Forces. He spent some time working with their special force teams. He was a mixed martial artist and a piece of his life. He has uh spent his career post-military working in high-pressure environments and helping people figure out uh how they can best recover, recuperate, and uh find calm, right? Especially if they're living in the chaos. He goes by the name of uh Tim Tim Thomas and Tim, I want to introduce you to the show. Tim, how you doing, brother?

Tim Thomas 1:16

Yeah, big gaday from Dan Under.

Gary Wise 1:19

Man, thank you for that. And hey, Tim Thomas, and just so I understand this, you you're a mixed martial artist. Did you start doing MMA when you're in the military or after you got out of the military?

Tim Thomas 1:30

Yeah, so this was in the 90s when it was just starting. So in in Australia, it wasn't quite legal. So when we fought, it was in these kind of underground CD biker bars, and it was classed as no rules fighting. Right. And um, and you you could smoke in bars back then. So you you know, you're walking in the ring, coughing up half a lung from secondhand smoke. Uh, and uh, and I was more of a wrestler. I was the the the first people in Australia to get into Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and so but everyone in the bar, all these sort of tough biker-looking dudes, wanted to see a big knockout. So whenever

Underground MMA And Avoiding Regret

Tim Thomas 2:05

I took it to the ground, that'd boo and you know, throw stuff. Um, but uh that was the that was the pioneering days of mixed martial arts, which which then became mixed martial arts.

Gary Wise 2:16

Okay. Uh, I remember those days. I was a teenager during that time, but I remember watching like the first UFC uh fight match, right? When these guys were just various, there wasn't real weight classes, right? It was just anybody against everybody. Blood on the floor, and it was just getting started out. So I'm sure that was an interesting time. How old were you when you were doing that that level of fighting? Were you in your early 20s?

Tim Thomas 2:41

Uh no, no, uh 25. I had a bit of a uh a mid-20s kind of breakthrough. Um, and I uh without going too far into it, I basically projected forward because I thought, well, I'm I'm 25, I know what 25 years feels like if I and it didn't feel like it went that long. I felt like I clicked my fingers, and if I click my fingers again, I'm gonna be 50. So I had a conversation with my 50-year-old self, and it said, Tim, you can live with a lot of things without a lot of money, people thinking poorly of you, but you can't live with regret. What would you, what would the 50-year-old version of you regret not doing now? And for whatever reason, it was really commit to martial arts. So, so that's what we um that's what I did, and that was when all these other opportunities started happening in the in the early days of mixed martial arts.

Gary Wise 3:35

Do you think it was that? I'm just I'm gonna just dive down that hole real quick, right? Do you think it was just because you applied the discipline required to become a uh a mixed martial artist, the other opportunities started to manifest out of that?

Tim Thomas 3:52

I'll tell you what it gave me access to um was understanding that our bodies contain mass, like in Australia, I weigh we we weigh things in kilos. So I'm about 87 kilos. Okay, that's a measurement of mass that's probably 180 pounds in your measurement. Okay, and I and I know this sounds weird, right? But because we contain mass, our bodies do, we're stuck in this moment. So my body was training in martial arts, but our minds, my mind doesn't contain any mass, so I wasn't particularly in the moment, right? So I was training for years and I wasn't making great gains. So what I did was instead of just training, I sat on the sidelines and I stared where I was going to train and I focused and I and I and I had all these images on how I would train. And if the if the coach said something, I'd do it 100%. And so once my mind and my body started connecting, that discipline, it's like a gravity happens. Because I put it to everyone listening, when your mind and body are 100% in that moment, there's not a thing you can't handle. You know, everything in my life started coming to me that I wanted. All because um when I I noticed that I needed to be in a fight for me to be 100% connected, otherwise, my mind would be somewhere else. And that uh mind-body connection uh happens on the back of the disciplines needed to get you into that zone. Um, and and then when you're in that zone, it's like everything everything changes. Uh so that was my experience, and and I needed that kind of idea that I'm about to go into a fight, and if I can't change, I can't change the fact if my opponent's more skilled than me, but I can be in charge of the fact that I'm gonna train harder than him. Does that make sense?

Gary Wise 5:56

It does. And I what I also like about that is the alignment of recognizing my mind needs to be in this moment with my body in this exact moment, because we we just tend to always be thinking about a million things and not focused on the actual thing. I don't know how many times my wife has told me I wish you would be in the present, right? Right. I mean, it's just and it's because I've always got I've always not only did I all would naturally have so many different, like I would say maybe not even ideas, but uh I just keep getting pulled into a lot of different thinking

Mind Body Connection And Performance

Gary Wise 6:35

spaces and they're all inspiring, right? Or the ones that are unhealthy are the complication, right? That's another challenge. You get pulled into these toxic holes as well that can distract you. And I was talking to a young lady today that was one of my students, and she joined the she joined the Marine Corps, she's now Marine, and she told me that she just got to her new command and that there's like a reputation there that no one's happy. And I told her, I said, you know, one thing I learned in my years in the military is that people were very rarely happy where they're at. They're almost always talking about where they used to be or where they're gonna go to next. And I said, I learned how to how to be very successful where I'm currently at right now because that's where I needed to be the most, uh I would say productive, right? If I if you're not productive in the present, that future is not gonna be what you hope it's going to be because you didn't put the work in to get it to where it's got to go. And oh, by the way, you'll never go back and live the past again. It's just a memory, and we always remember it better than it really was, you know. But but then I can apply that same logic to damn near almost anything, and and so I it that really resonates with me. But then I also like where you said my body is a certain amount of weight and it's stuck in the present, but my mind doesn't have any weight and it's free to roam, it's free to go. And and I will tell you that that's a very uh I think colorful thought for me because it is it's liberating to think about that places your mind is free, are is free to go if even if your body's limited to certain things, right? And to have a strong mind is probably one of the most important things to have in this world, right?

Tim Thomas 8:16

Yeah, yeah. And when you were speaking, then um Gary, I want to offer you something because we just accept the fact that our mind has trouble staying in this body, right? If I could if I could offer you, like us humans, and I can see you especially, we're high stimuli. Your mind wants stimuli. And if it's not getting from this present moment, from this bag of meat that we're that's holding up our eyeballs, then it'll go, look, nothing holding me to this moment. I'm gonna go through space and time and find stimuli. And have you ever wondered why you can have a hundred good things happen and one bad thing, and you always remember the bad thing? Because the bad thing usually is the highest stimuli. And if we're not giving our mind the stimuli it needs from our body, it'll go, guess what? Nothing holding me here. I'm gonna go through space and time. So that's why I like to start my day with the disciplines that give my mind the stimuli it needs, so I can actually be in the moment and actually be with people. Because, you know, I can I can feel, you know, my my ex-wife, I call my then wife, used to say that to me all the time. You're not here, right? Um and if if I I noticed that if I gave my mind, my high stimuli mind, the the stimuli it needed from my body, then I'm in the moment with people. And I noticed if I didn't give my mind the stimuli I needed from within my body, I looked outside of my body. I ate more, I thought outside of the moment more. And and people can kind of tell when you're checked out, and I won't say anything, they'll just you know, well, not won't spoke to that, speak to that guy again, but when you're actually with somebody, there's a certain vitality and energy, and it almost doesn't matter what you say, if you can be fully present with that person, it's something happens that could never otherwise happen.

Gary Wise 10:20

Yeah, I agree, and I think it's a skill, right? It's a skill. You have to train yourself to be a good listener, you have to train yourself to find interest in what the communication is gonna be about and to hopefully get to know the other human being. Because at the end of this whole experience, these uh these this is one of my favorite things about doing the podcast, right? Is I get to have a conversation with you this afternoon, this evening, right? Yeah, you're in the land down under, you're down there in Brisbane, Australia. I'm here in the great state of Florida and the southeastern United States of America, but we get to sit here and talk about things that we're both into, right? And so I'm a high school teacher now. I retired from the military, I did 25 years with the United States Navy, and now I teach high school kids in an ROTC classroom, which is like a military, paramilitary class, right? And I it's leadership development, it's citizenship development, and it's giving them options to prepare for life after high school, which is like you know, 15 through 18 years old is like the age bracket, right? And and they watch these videos, they listen to some of these videos, and they get the chance to hear some of this commentary, and it's some of the same things we talk about in the classroom, right? Because I want them to understand that they're on the beginning of what could be an amazing life, right? If it's not where you want it to be yet and you're 16 years old, well, congratulations, you got a whole lot of living to do, man. You can listen from people like you and myself, take some words of wisdom, and then go to work and make in the life the to the best of your ability that you hope that you're looking for. And I hope you like what you find, you know. Sometimes you reap what you sow, and not always do you really uh do you really want the consequences of the decisions you make? But it seems good

High Stimulus Minds Need Discipline

Gary Wise 12:10

at the time, right? Yeah, my guy. So, brother, so you're doing mixed martial arts in the 90s. When do you decide to go ahead and enter into the service, into the armed forces of Australia? When does that happen?

Tim Thomas 12:24

I tried to get in uh when I was 19, Gary, but the recruitment process was so disorganized, and they lost my paperwork and this, this, this. And then I'm like, if this is what it's like trying to get in, what's it going to be like on the inside? So I forgot about it for many years. But then in 2004, two interesting things happened. One, first time in Australia's military history, they started what's called a DRSF scheme, direct recruiting into special forces from the civilian population. Never done it before, right? Essentially, we figured it out. The government knew war was coming, and the most economical way to fight that was with special forces. So they had a budget, but they didn't have bums on seats. Because up until that point in Australia's military history, you'd have to spend two years in a regular battalion, which is no small thing, before you could even apply for special forces. So uh, and I was on the very first scheme, and they absolutely hated us. Resistance at every turn. And uh, we've got a um, so our school of infantry is at Singleton in Australia, right? And we've got a statistic there that still stands to this day: 300% more injuries than any other platoon that went through there because they would they deliberately tried to stop the scheme. Um and the other thing that happened to make me want to get in the military was I wanted to start a family. And I my skill set, you know, I could punch and kick and wrestle, but that didn't make any money, that wasn't paying the bills, that couldn't sort of give my family the kind of financial life that I wanted to give them. But the military, this particular scheme had uh a set of uh qualifications that were that I had, you know. And the other thing that prompted me to do it was the cutoff age was 30 and I was 29 and three-quarters, and I thought, well, if I don't do this, I might regret it. And so I joined at almost 30, and everyone's saying, you know, you're too old to get in the special forces, and being dyslexic, I I see things differently. And when I when I point them out, it'll be obvious. But when people everyone was saying you're too old, you're too old, and I thought, well, this is the first time I've ever actually aged. This is the first time I've I've been almost 30, right? So shouldn't it be me deciding what I can and can't do at this age, not not anyone else? And I, you know, went went for it, and there was guys sort of younger, fitter, faster, stronger, probably smarter than me on the course, but uh they didn't make it because um of a number of reasons, but I think growing up in the 70s and just getting beaten up every day at school, and it was just a thing. It wasn't you didn't even tell your parents, it was just it was just a thing, right? That that certain tactile toughness that you had, you know, from that sort of old school growing up, sort of served me well in those places, yeah.

Gary Wise 15:42

Well, yeah, I think you had, of course, your generational difference, right? You had probably maturity on your side. You'd done probably a little bit more living than some of them guys, especially as a martial artist. There's a lot of mental tenacity that comes into all of that. I I think it's interesting hearing about the resistance to change from the traditional special force guys that were probably like, hey, that would they why don't they got to do it the way that we did it, right? There's always gonna be that in life. People are always resistant to change because we as humans, it makes us uncomfortable. Um, but I think for those of us that learn to recognize positive change, that's a game. That that that's a very, very, very good thing. You know, now change just for the sake of change, not always, but like you said, there was a reason they were doing this, they needed more bums on the seat, right? To get more people in those positions that could pass the tests. I so I think a few of those, and then probably just you're you're you're just you were gonna be damned if you quit, probably, right? They're gonna have to break in. That never happened because whether you knew it or not, you were probably aligning your mind and your body to do the thing, right? So that that's that's an amazing feat, though. I will tell you, to come to this to come to the military service uh at almost 30 years old and and survive

Joining Special Forces Near Age 30

Gary Wise 17:05

through that is that that's that's that had to make you feel good when you got through and you graduated that course of training.

Tim Thomas 17:12

Well, it's funny you should mention that because you remember how I should have asked what the um the uh rating on this language rating. I'm we're keeping this PG today, or we it's up to you, brother.

Gary Wise 17:26

I'm not worried about it.

Tim Thomas 17:27

All right, look, there's no other way to say this. They fucking hated us. All right, so our beret ceremony, our beret ceremony was okay, those of you have passed selection, you've got you, and you had to get an insertion course before you could get beret qualified. They said, Okay, chuck your lids on, now go scrub out the shitters. And we cleaned these toilets that hadn't been cleaned since Vietnam with our berets on. Uh, it wasn't until Afghanistan kicked off that that they were like, Oh, these guys can do everything we can do. Oh, this is a really good thing. So, so um we sort of trampled down the thorns um as the first guys across the line. And then once you know we proved our worth, then it was like, oh, this is a really, really good scheme. Yeah. So that was that was sort of that's what made our sort of time unique. And and you know what it's like in the military, it's not just the job that's the thing, it's organizing everything else in your life because you're not you don't you don't have a normal life like other people have, you are immersed in this thing. Um and so fun but true story. In the first week of um my uh basic training in Australia, I found I got a letter back when they were writing letters and saying pregnant, you know. Uh and I did the math, and it worked out that my then wife was giving birth on selection, and that was hanging over my head the whole time. And you know, you you work incredibly hard to to do this, like yeah, I know you the seals of like a hell week, right? Well, we've got a we've got a hell month, 28 days is our selection course, and that's a that's a hell of a time for for a for an ass kicking. Um quantity has a certain quality to it, if you know what I mean. And right they said to me, look, this is this is special force of selection, Tim. You can see your son being born, um, or you can do selection, you can't do both. And that was bloody hard because I had to go, well, what does that kid need? I had to see it from his perspective. Does he need me there at his birth?

Selection Course And A Birth Deadline

Tim Thomas 19:50

Or does he need a dad with a job? Um and so I got my then wife, all the support she needed, flu-in family, all that sort of stuff, and I did selection, and they let me have a phone on selection just so I could keep track of things, right? And I mean, every day's hard, but this one particular day was very hard. So um fire and movement, where you're just you're crawling, you're shooting, you're crawling, you're shooting. Um and we were crawling through these paddocks with these cactuses uh that had barbs like a an inch long, and they would go through your boot. And at the end of every uh fire and movement, we'd get our bayonets out, which is a uh, I'm sure you know what that is, and we'd have to pull out these um cactuses, right? And you got to be careful because if you flicked it too hard, it could often flick off and hit your mate. Um and and and it was just like the rough day, and I get this message from my then wife saying, It's all happening, water's broken, you know, the baby's coming. And I just looked up at this green tree, and I'm like, this is I'm gonna regret this day the rest of my life. And you know, later that day, we're in the night harbor, and I've just laid out a claymore and I'm walking backwards, you know, fly but you know, flying out the the line, and then out of nowhere, this officer turns up and goes, Oh, hey Tim, hey, no worries. Uh how's how's your wife going? And she's oh, it's all good, you know, the the water's broken, it's all happening. And then he says, Oh, do you want to go see her? And in that moment, my left foot foot goes forward, my right hand is in a fist behind my back, and I'm lining up this guy's chin. Because this is what they do in selection. They say, Okay, you want to drink water? and I'll tip water out in front of you. You know, just bring all these heavy logs to the truck. You go all the way to the truck, and then the truck drives off, and they just keep doing that right. And I'm like, okay, that's it. I'm going to jail. I'm knocking an officer out today, right now. And so I go quiet and serious. And this officer kind of senses this and he goes, No, no, Tim, I'm being serious. Do you want to go see her? And I kind of tilted my head a little bit. Yeah. And the good thing about the army is when an officer gets on the phone and starts swearing, things start happening really quickly. So, you know, uh, a truck came and grabbed all my you know, bombs and bullets. Another truck came and grabbed me and started racing. It was about a 45-minute drive to the hospital, and I am running down the aisle. I'm still in stinking, you know, cams, uh, been out in the bush for so long, still got cam grease all over my face. I'm running down the hospital and I and I make it to the room. I make I see my son being born, uh, and then um yeah, straight back out in the field.

Gary Wise 23:02

That's very cool. Like, that's number one, that you're within reach of getting home. That'd be even harder, you know, being 45 minutes away from the hospital and training. I mean, it's one thing where you're deployed, you know, three, four, five hours away or over a hop across some water or whatever it is, but you'll only be an hour or less away. You would have thought, like, I'm glad that guy finally put it together and took care of you. But you would have thought somebody would have figured that out ahead of time and given you a peace of mind, right? Like, hey Tim, we're gonna we could make this happen for three, four hours, bud. Like, you're kicking ass taking names. I'm glad that guy did it for you, but I'm sorry they're playing games with you the rest of the time, brother. That's crazy. And I'm glad you made it. I'm glad you made it. What a story! Oh my gosh. Yeah, go ahead.

Tim Thomas 23:51

Well, no, the funny thing was like I see my child being born, and I didn't know if it was going to be a girl or a boy, it's a boy. I was really happy. Uh, and um, and look, there was a few complications at at the at the birth, and you know, uh, you know, probably six hours later, I finally find out that everything's okay with you know my my partner at the time. And uh about 5 a.m. I go straight back out into the field, and that's when they start demarcation, which is three days, three nights, uh, no sleep, no food, but they let you drink water. Um, and as much as that was hard, I was kind of I had this boost having gone through that arduous experience. And I was later to find out that a lot of the other guys had gotten so much from me just going through that that they were saying, well, you know, I might be hurting, but look what look what Tom I went through, you know, just to be here. So um I was later to find out that that had a deep impact on other people, you know, doing the selection.

Gary Wise 25:00

Well, and I'm sure they cared about you, you know, which I'm which which is a big piece of it, right? That's one of my favorite parts about being in the service, is you really build some strong connections with people that you'll have for the rest of your life. And uh that camaraderie is one of the best things that we have that that that the whole organization really brings to the conversation is you really get to build some strong relationships, and I'm sure that they were happy for you because that suck was so bad, right? You guys are going through such horrible conditions that something that significant was probably a boost for a lot of them. Um, after you come graduated the school, how long did you end up spending in the armed forces with Australia? Did you do how long were you actually active duty?

Tim Thomas 25:46

Yeah, so I was in um the commandos for six years full-time, 2004 to 2010.

Gary Wise 25:55

So 2004-2010, special forces in Australia. And I you I heard you say earlier you went to Afghanistan. How much do you looking back on that six years? Uh how was

Afghanistan Rotations Become Routine

Gary Wise 26:10

that operational tempo, that op tempo? Were you pretty busy? Were you guys deploying a lot? Or were you how how was that looking back on that six years?

Tim Thomas 26:18

Yeah, yeah. So when Afghanistan first kicked off, that was Australia's first, you know, operational deployment since Vietnam. And people were jumping over their mothers' graves to get on that deployment, right? Because you know, when they come, they come, when they go, you never see them again. But but a few years in, like there's rotation after rotation after rotation, people just it became such a Afghanistan. Oh, okay, whatever. Guys would rock into the mess and say, um, does anyone here want to go to on the next rotation to Afghanistan? And guys would look at each other, do you want to go? Do you want to go? All right, if you go, I'll go. All right. And then, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, we'll go on this one. Uh, so it became it became a very common thing. It went from like this scarce thing to like happening all the time. Um and now I was almost shocked that in the unit currently there are a few Afghan vets still in there, but they're sort of referred to like the the Vietnam vets, which which shocked me. Uh, you know, because the the new crews come in and it's been you know 10 plus years since any kind of uh since any Afghan trips, you know.

Gary Wise 27:36

I do know we have a similar thing in the in America, and I I would think I was kind of I was kind of curious about that. And so for us, similar, uh there was a lot of deployments from 2001 until about 2000 and I would say 1312, right? And then the uh trying to come out of that operational tempo was hard for a lot of us because we had really gotten used to being forward and being aggressive, right? And like being uh, I would say kinetic, right? Doing the things that we did, whether it didn't matter if you were Navy, Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Special Forces, everybody was busy doing something. Plus, technology had been ramping up, so we were all just the busy cycle of life was just multiplied by a factor of like a hundred with technology on top of all of the operations that were getting thrown out toward everybody. And that at least for us, when you we started to draw that back down, it was really hard. It was really hard to unwind all of that that I would say anxiety that came with all of the things that was happening because you never got off that treadmill of life, right? And eventually it got to the point where the new generation was coming in and basically telling us that you know they're ready for us to get out of the way because we were always so, I would say, I don't want to say aggressive, but I would say assertive. I would say we we were built for leaning into things, vice, allowing them to play out a little bit. Um, and and there was a similarity, at least in my opinion, with the with the Vietnam vets and the generation that came after them. We call them here in America, we call them the global war on terror vets, right? The the veterans that have that global war on terror stink on them, right? They just kind of have that edge. And of course, when we watch the news and we see what's happening in the world, a lot of us are like, you're gonna want to reactivate a bunch of us because we're the ones that that was out there doing the thing. But of course, the fighting is actually different right now because technology has changed a lot of the game and strategies are different, right? Which is a good thing. I was showing my students uh in the 90s, we did a thing in Iraq called Desert Storm and Desert Shield, and I was showing my students how they were offloading all those trucks or whatnot. And I said, Now look at what's different about the Persian Gulf now. Now we're just bombing the hell out of them from the seas, we're not putting nobody over there on the ground, and that's great, that's amazing, you know, because it gets real bad, it gets real shitty real quick when people can't just get back on the boat and leave, right? So, uh but we could definitely relate. We

Speaking Up And Losing The Tribe

Gary Wise 30:20

can definitely relate now. When you got out of the service, when you stepped away from the commandos, what why did you do that? Because you had chose to do that because of the job, right? Like you said you wanted to do it because it was a good job for your family, but in Australia, is is it would it is it not just a career, or did you decide to not make it a career, or what happened there?

Tim Thomas 30:45

Okay, so after um my trip to Afghanistan in 2009, um I'm like uh this is a job for life. I've got my brothers around me, they know me, I know them. Um and I was a private and I was working my way up through I was in a in a in a company of commandos, right? And I'm not a regimented soldier, like on base, it's I'm not the guy that looks the regimented, you know, and I ask too many questions. There's a few things about military culture that took me a while to figure out, and so that made me kind of the odd guy out. And I wasn't a drinker, you know, I was a family guy. Um and but but after 2009, um we had a hell of a trip. Um and then something happened which changed everything, and it was uh strangely enough, around an end of deployment party. So it'd been a big deployment, we were successful, we'd lost guys, and we're gonna have a uh uh all get on a on a boat in Sydney Harbor and have a few beers, and you know, it was like a hundred US dollars, I paid my money, and I didn't organize it, but someone had organized strippers, right? Now, my promise to my then wife is I'll never do anything away from you that I wouldn't do right next to you. And and she knew this and she could trust me. And I'm not a fan of strippers, but um, you know, if the boys want them, whatever. If they're at one end of the boat, I'll be at the other end of the boat. But then word gets out amongst the wives that they're gonna have strippers at this party, and it gets to the um head of the poll commanders, the CO, commanding officer. Shit rolls downhill, and then our major at the time was super pissed that someone had interfered with his plans, and he brought out the whole company. And the thing about uh special forces guys, you don't actually have to give them orders, the commander shows his intent. Here's my intention, I trust you to do it, and it was very clear that this guy's intent, he was super pissed that someone had messed with his plans, and then after it sort of torn strips off everybody, he had he has he he sort of he yells at everywhere, right? Raise your hand now if you've got a problem with strippers. Right? And and I literally had an existential sort of moment, this this kind of almost like a you know, like a jester, like that mate that always uh prods you at the wrong time. I literally had a version of me tap me on the shoulder say, Hey Tim, there's never a convenient time to be yourself, right? And you got like three seconds to act on this, and I'm like, shit, and I stuck my hand up, and no crap. It was like Moses going through the Red Sea, every head turned. And this major kind of took a step back. What what what you do, you know, and I'm and I'm just there with my hand up, right? Right, and within a few short weeks, my ass gets transferred to another company. And when I get to that new company, because that the the new company was about to deploy, I'm like, oh great, I proved myself on on deployment, right? But when I get there, the officer comes up and says, We've fucking heard about you. And I had all the corporals and sergeants standing around me, kind of chest poking me. And I'm like, shit. Look, I ain't scared to die, but I know what's gonna happen on this deployment. They'll send all the all the guys that aren't in the inner circle through the door first. Okay, so a big job of the commandos is going through doors and securing areas, so they're gonna make me the number one bullet catcher, and when I if I get shot up, yeah, they'll write me a really great, lovely letter. He's the greatest soldier ever. But I'm like, fuck dying for these cunts. You know, if I stay here, that means I agree with their with with their sense of my worth. Right. So I went from career for life, job for life, I'm in here, to if I stay here, that's me agreeing with their sense of my self-worth. I didn't know where I was gonna go, I didn't know what I was gonna do. But within 24 hours of that conversation, um, I handed in um my notice and uh kind of left without any sort of clear plan. Um, you know, my wife at the time was very supportive. Um she could she could see what was going on. Uh but yeah, I think it was my reactive state, there would have been an amount of undiagnosed PDSD in that. Um what nobody tells you, you know, oh be yourself, right? Speak your truth. No one tells you about them the freaking massive cost of that. The reason why a lot of people aren't truthful, the reason why a lot of people aren't authentic is when they have been, it seems like you get punished. Okay, there's a whole loss of a whole lot of things that you're familiar with. And me simply speaking that truth in that moment set me on a path that probably four years later, and this is four years after I got out, was pretty crappy times. Lots of alcohol, lots of pills. Um but when I started coming out of it, I realized there's a lot of other veterans in the same space stuck in the same thing. So I started creating these programs with no training, only lived experience. And the goal here was to save lives from suicide. And I thought my lifetime goal was to save 40 veteran lives from suicide. Um, I chose that number because that's how many the Australian forces have lost in Afghanistan. I would have died happy if I achieved that, but that was achieved within 12 months. One or two guys a week would come up to me and say, Do you remember that conversation? Do you remember that program? Well, I had everything ready in the car to kill myself, and that one thing stopped it. And I never would have been in that situation if I hadn't, you know, four or five years earlier, actually spoken my truth, lost everything that was important to me, and then been put in a position where I could actually, you know, save more lives than I ever could have in the in the in the battle space.

Gary Wise 38:37

Yeah. Well, I mean, it sounds like you know, any commander, you know, my job in the Navy towards the end of my career, my last uh seven years or so, seven or eight years, I was the senior enlisted advisor to the commander, right? That's what I did. I was a firefighter for the first 16 years, and then I converted over to being like the senior enlisted, like the sergeant major to the CO. And I would I would have cautioned the CO

Alcohol Pills And A New Mission

Gary Wise 39:05

from making a statement like that to a large group of people because I would have said, and what are you gonna do, sir? If somebody says yes, right, if you go out there and you ask this flippant, because it was it was it was it was a rhetorical question, right? He didn't think anyone was gonna have the courage to say something, and so I think I think that not only is it super courageous, but it's just like you said earlier, I undiagnosed PTSD, like you just have this defiance, and you're like, I'm you were probably already upset that you were felt like you were compromising this deal you had made with your current, your then partner, right? And you were already felt some type of way about that. And then here is this guy who is a brother of yours, you don't care about the rank, you guys are all commandos in this organization, and he's asking you what you believe to be an authentic question, and I'm gonna answer authentically, and then when you look around the room and you realize, well, it's not authentic, and nobody else is being authentic, and now you're unique, and then of course it becomes like zombie land that they all want to start eating you because you're not a zombie, right? Um, but I think that in those moments where your intuition and your instinct is giving you that prompt, uh, that you gotta jump, right? You gotta jump on those moments, and when you don't, you're gonna struggle with that in the future because you're gonna be like, Man, I did I why did I not was I was I lacking courage, was I lacking whatever it was. But then, of course, all those consequences that came after that, which I think you're spot on, right? Unfortunately, is if they didn't feel like they could trust you, or if they didn't feel like just whatever the unfortunately their biases were was going to be in that space, it was probably the best thing for you to do to just call it and leave. And I will tell you, in my own personal career, one of the things everyone knew about me was that I was going to speak the truth, I was going to say what I thought, and I that was it. But all it takes is one or two people in key positions of seniority that can make your life a living hell, and you can either choose to continue to try to deal with that, or you can just go do something else with your life, right? And that's what I did. I just chose to go ahead and retire and go move on with my life and go do something else because if I didn't do that, I was probably gonna take their life, right? And I can't do that, that's bad, and and I and I was thinking about taking my own life, and that's bad, right? But I was struggling because people in positions of I would say privilege were really, really, really affecting me and my family, and that was making me be almost frantic, right? Trying to figure out how to manage that, and then so you have to do what you can do for yourself, and then what's I'm happy to hear that you recognize that so many other veterans are in that same space because they are right, so many veterans are going through the process of trying to understand their their experience because I don't think very few people separate from the service fully happy with what their experience was, right? It's just it's hard, it's hard to just be like, oh my god, everything was great all the time, right? Unfortunately, that's just not realistic. And and then they're trying to process what this new normal is going to be. Like I was in the I was in the office talking this morning with my lieutenant commander, he's retired as well, and he's getting ready to retire from the teaching job, and he's been doing it for like 22 years, you know, teaching. And he has a little store that he sells like candy bars and sodas or whatnot to the kids. And he's like, I'm busy running the store. And I was like, you know, once upon a time, we were war fighters. Now you're busy selling candy bars to kids, and I'm busy teaching kids about whatever, you know, and teaching them not to eat too much candy, right? Right, right. But it's just one of these things trying to come to terms with where you're at in this life. Another analogy is I told my wife one time, it's like knowing you are really good at something and you'll never do it again, right? Once upon a time, I was really good at you know, going to sea, going to sea with sailors, leading people, damage, crisis, fires, whatever. Really good in that moment, but I'll never I'll never have to use that part of me ever again. So there's almost like a uh it's it's almost it's it's painful, right? It's painful.

Tim Thomas 43:37

Well, you they get you to be Superman and you fly, right? You have all these unlocked superpowers within your own body, and then you're told, No, you're never gonna put that on again. You have to be Clark Kent the rest of your life. Yeah, it's pretty amazing what you find out about yourself when you're in those environments, you know.

Gary Wise 43:55

And and you have to really look for other ways to find validation. Find satisfaction. So I could see where you could connect with other with veterans in particular. And I also appreciate that you recognized that you were, I think how you were able to save so many is probably because you could you could empathize, you can connect with their experience because of what you went through. Right. Um I mean, part of when I retired from the service, it was I was thinking about taking my own life, right? And I would, I actually talked to one of my peers about that. And he basically just said, you know, um, well, just please don't do that. But they didn't take me off the job, they didn't get me, you know, like they just don't do that. But there was not really any other additional conversation for that. And thank God I went and got help. But when I look back on that conversation, it's because they didn't really take it serious, right? They just, and unfortunately, that happens too many times out there. So do you continue to operate in that space where you're working with people that are troubled

When Pain Turns Into Loneliness

Gary Wise 45:05

and trying trying to help them from get back off that cliff? Is are you still operating operating there?

Tim Thomas 45:11

Yeah. So this is what I was taught by veterans who are in extreme states of um fatigue, nervous system strung out. You could you could observe, I could observe myself and I saw patterns. All right. And the thing that made me super powerful in that space, the thing that helped me, you know, save those 40 lives within 12 months, was understanding how pain worked. And it doesn't matter if you're a veteran or anybody, right? And it doesn't matter if it's physical or emotional. There's a certain universal pattern here. Pain turns into loneliness before it turns dangerous. So when you're on the job connected to your mates, there's not a goddamn thing we can't handle. Bring on the pain, bring on the hard days, it just makes us closer. But pain gets to a certain duration or intensity where it transforms without the person knowing into loneliness. And that is super dangerous for humans who are very social. And when you feel like you're all alone in this, no one understands, no one's got my back, so I have to be hyper-vigilant. And if I'm trying to sleep at night, that means I have to tell myself I'm safe. But my hyper-vigilance says no, you drop your guard for a second, something bad's gonna happen. So I'm gonna give you all these crappy thoughts to think as you're trying to get to sleep. And as you're trying to get out of bed in the morning, it'll ambush you again with all these things in your head. So the this is what the the spreadsheet doesn't see is the first thing that needs to happen is addressing the loneliness that uh the people feel. And I'm gonna ask everybody listening, everybody's up against something right now. Okay, the space I came to this with was the veteran space, but everyone's up against something. It could be a relationship, it could be a disease, it could be whatever, could be a work thing. But ask yourself the question how many other people do you think are in the same situation as you right now on this planet? And give it a real number. Don't just leave it as a lot. So, you know, when I was low, I'm thinking at least a couple of million. All right, so picture this whatever you're up against, and you've got that number in your head, it could be 10, 20, however many, put half of them on your left, put half them on your right. And they're all looking in saying, you know, hey, if you can find a way forward for you, you can find a way forward for us. And in that moment, when you're up against it, uh it's really hard to make progress because it's not just loneliness that that I discovered was the problem, and you had to break that loneliness, and I'll share how to do that in a second, but the resultant fatigue. So loneliness turns on our fight or flight. I'm the only one who's got my back, and that that ambushes you in uh the five minutes trying to go to sleep, and especially in the five minutes waking up. And if you can say, look, uh it might take me a week, a month, a year to make an inch of progress, but that's actually a million inches of progress. And if you can, if you can have those people willing you on, at some point in the future, you're gonna meet those people and they're gonna say, you know what, we're so glad, we're so glad you chose what you did before you met me, because man, one conversation with you, you've just saved me 10 years. And I'll I'll I'll speak to because I don't like to speak you know theoretically, I'll speak to how exactly it happens. Those people stuck up against whatever you're stuck up against. There's things they want to say, but they can't say them. There's truth they want to speak, but they can't speak it. And those unspoken words become like rocks around your heart. And the world we currently live in loves giving us alcohol to pour over it, loves giving us pills to pour over it. And I'm not, you know, uh against either, but uh here's what I know to be true. When we if if you can speak to your experience, all right, and I came to this from the veteran space. When we had a veteran speaking their truth about what they were up against and what they were getting through, in the audience, people's jaw used to pop open like that, right? And they'd say, fuck. I thought I was the only one.

Gary Wise 50:20

Right.

Tim Thomas 50:21

And and that was the watershed moment, and this is the qualification we have with whatever we're up against. Once we get through that, we can break the isolation. I can't break the isolation of someone up against cancer. I've never had cancer, but if you're up against that, that's your qualification. You can do the most powerful thing that no one else can do that one human only one human can do for another. And then my specialty these days is to help people get out of that fatigue by targeting those two golden five-minute periods of five minutes going to sleep and five minutes waking up. Because I can't do what you do, Gary, or anyone who's listening. But if I can have you access your peace, your power, your connection, your stillness, your safety going to sleep, you're not just going to be sleeping better, you're not just going to be healing better. Okay, you're going to be waking up feeling a bit better. And in that five-minute period of waking up, I've also got ways to help people start their day with that peace, power, connection. And when their feet swing over the edge, they've won the first five minutes of the day. So it was from that really dark place that I learned these tools that give people an easy win. Most everybody can focus on a little bit of breath work going to sleep, because we're doing it anyway. And most people can focus on a little bit of breath work waking up. Very easy thing to do, massive state change. Massive state change. Because here's the thing when we connect powerfully to ourselves, that increases the likelihood of connecting powerfully outside of ourselves, and we are we respond so powerfully to connecting to others outside of ourselves.

Win The Five Minutes Before Sleep

Tim Thomas 52:21

But if we're not sleeping, if we're low on energy, then the world occurs very differently. I'm flat, I'm low, shut up. I need a coffee, shut up, I need an energy drink. Um everything's always in my way. And uh geez, I'm gonna try and go to sleep now. I'm not looking forward to it. You know what? I'll just drink a bunch of alcohol, you know. Um so you know, I stand before everybody today, wanting them to get their peace, power, connection back within within themselves from a natural and organic way inside of themselves. Um, and I've I that's been the the winning formula breaking isolation and getting people out of fatigue.

Gary Wise 53:18

And so I because you're the app you created or that you work with is it's called breathworks, right?

Tim Thomas 53:25

Uh breath working bed.

Gary Wise 53:27

Breath work in bed. And so the idea behind the app is it's going to lead you through those five-minute periods of time to do certain kind of breathing techniques.

Tim Thomas 53:38

Well, the idea behind it is all you have to do is tell it when you want to sleep and when you want to wake up, then it falls out of your phone exactly when you need it. Because when people are tired, they just want to go, uh, look, here's what I want, take care of it for me. They don't want to remember six things and they want an easy win. And and look, every every dollar you invest in breath work will give you a thousand back. Um, and the whole intention behind me creating the app was uh permanency. Permanency is very important to me because we can have a great conversation, but if we care about people, we want them to have access to this power, not just when we're here, but tomorrow, the next day, when they're going to sleep, when they're waking up. So I don't like phones and I don't like tech, but I threw myself into that space knowing that everyone's got a phone and everyone's got lungs, and the most powerful part of this equation isn't, you know, my breathworking bed app, it's discovering what your own lungs can do. And once you discover just how powerful your own lungs are, and that before you leave the house, you can give yourself the peace, power connection. You don't need to chase things outside of your skin for you know the car, the relationship, the money. If we can give that to ourselves organically, um life becomes more of a victory lap than a I've got to claw something that I don't have, if that makes sense.

Gary Wise 55:12

It does. You know, when I've when I was going through uh that challenging part of my life, when I was originally coming to terms with the fact that I had mental health challenges, because I didn't want to hear that diagnosis, right? I thought for sure I had a heart problem. I thought for sure there was some other medical ailment because why I was trembling all the time, or I was always looking, you know, I was an alcoholic, and I was always looking for something to. I thought I was hungry all the time. I thought I was becoming diabetic because I was always shaking, right? And uh going finally to get help. And the late, the the therapist was just like, no, you you just I think you got some challenges. And I hate being on medications that unfortunately they call it, I call it now, I call it my don't have a panic attack medication, right? Because it helps me to hold it off. But I will tell you, breathing, not so much meditation for me, but just deep breathing uh is a significant thing for me to do, and I do that. And so when I first heard about your program, I thought that just made so much sense because I do do that in bed. I do do take deep breaths in bed at night, and I try to calm myself down because I'm recovering from the day of all the things and I'm thinking about everything I'm gonna need to do tomorrow. And it's not, it's not even that it's bad, it's just there's so much going on in my mind all the time. Yeah, and it's trying to just regulate it all, and you kind of don't pay attention to it during the day because you're running. But when you get to bed, it kind of like you said, it just kind of hits you in that five minutes before you go to bed.

Tim Thomas 56:51

All our imbalances show up at nighttime. We can say we're killing it, but you know, at nighttime that's when the imbalances show, you know, and that's where um unfortunately our nervous system is always listening. You know, we can kid ourselves and our mind living a life without a balance because everyone's doing it, but ultimately there is a deeper truth that lives in all of us, and the reason why I'm very confident in recommending breath work to people is uh breath outranks the thinking mind, but people don't experience that until they really need to dial into it. So if you think of us as humans evolving before we were sentient and putting paintings on rock walls, before

Why The App Prioritizes Permanency

Tim Thomas 57:40

we were speaking, we were breathing. And that deep ancient wiring lives inside of us, and it's actually much more powerful than our thoughts. If you've ever been sort of punched in the stomach, everything just goes quiet up here, and it's just I don't have the air, right? And when I was a martial artist, um, I used to exploit that. I was sort of the guy that was known to beat black belts, guys more skillful, uh, more experienced than me, because I didn't try and punch them in the head, I tried to take out their lungs because I noticed there'd be a time in the fight, once their lungs were gone, they went from black belt to white belt. And I was still at my skill level, not classically higher than them, but they didn't have the breath. And I noticed if you could take the breath away, the brain goes to mush and you can you can do what you want to do. Um but then when it comes to to downregulating the nervous system, I'd love to show you something that's super simple. You can show your students, but it's my kind of party trick. Um, that within within three breaths you can completely relax your body.

Gary Wise 58:48

Okay, let's do it.

Tim Thomas 58:50

Can we now we're we're just on the hour? Is it possible to hit pause? I just gotta go to the bathroom myself.

Gary Wise 58:56

Yep, hold on one second. All right, Tim. What's what are you gonna show me here? What we're gonna do just to breathe in.

Tim Thomas 59:08

So this is uh my favorite party trick how to completely relax your body, sometimes your mind as well. And I always everything's an invitation, and breathing is easy, but because we've been breathing our whole life, I always ask for permission. So, you know, Gary and anyone listening that wants to do this and have a enjoyable experience with your very own breath, is do you give permission to your very own breath to make every single cell in your body feel really, really good?

Gary Wise 59:45

Yes, I do.

Tim Thomas 59:47

Awesome. That was easy. Two more questions. Do you give permission to your very own breath to make your conscious thinking mind feel really, really good? Yes. Great. Last question Do you give permission to your very own breath to make your unconscious mind feel really, really good?

Three Breath Reset For Relaxation

Gary Wise 1:00:10

Yes.

Tim Thomas 1:00:11

Awesome. Now, Gary, are you standing right now? I am. Okay, no worries. Um, this is ideally done seated, but as long as you've got do you have a desk in front of you that you can hold on to if needed? Yep, I got it. All right, so Gary, all we're gonna do right now is breathe in, then breathe in more, more, more, more, more, more, more. Just give that a try. Breathe in, breathe in more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more. And once you're in more, bit more, and then just wriggle your shoulders, wriggle your shoulders, wriggle your spine, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle it around the place like you're like you're wriggling in bed. Wriggle your shoulders, wriggle your spine, feel that chest opening up. And I want you to let out a really nice, big, loud sigh. And just let that energy go through your system. That's your energy. You did that for you. I did not do that. Okay, that's you.

Gary Wise 1:01:16

Okay, good.

Tim Thomas 1:01:18

Oh, yeah. And we're we're just dipping our toe into the shallow end of this. All right, we're gonna go, we're gonna go comfortably a little deeper. Now, we you might have noticed when you breathed in more your top third filled up a bit more, yeah? Yeah. Okay. Now, uh, a lot of people don't know this, but in their two fingers and thumbs, they have a power button that if they pinch, they will inflate two fingers, two fingers and thumbs. So two fingers and thumbs. That's right. Okay. Um, and when we pinch them together, we help inflate this top third. So we're gonna do exactly the same thing, but halfway through our inhale, I want you to pinch those things and notice how they help inflate your top third. Okay, all right. So we're just gonna blow it out.

Gary Wise 1:02:15

Are you breathing in through your nose only?

Tim Thomas 1:02:16

Are you breathing, ideally through your nose? Yes. There's a reason for that. We'll talk about it later. But I invite you to have your have these little power buttons ready and just blow it out. Out, out, out, out, out, out, out. And then when you're all the way out, breathe in and then halfway through, hit those power buttons as well. In, in, in, in, in. Now hold it and wriggle. Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle it, wriggle your spine, feel that movement up and down your spine, wriggle and shake. Feel that chest opening, feel the chest opening like a flower. Feel that chest opening like a flower, and the warm sun's coming into it. And I want you to let out the loudest sigh ever.

Gary Wise 1:03:14

It definitely makes you lightheaded. Definitely makes you lightheaded. At least I'm getting lightheaded. Yeah, from my holding onto the table.

Tim Thomas 1:03:23

Yeah, so yeah, you ideally you want to be seated, you know, not doing operating heavy machinery or driving, um, and uh not cutting up carrots.

Gary Wise 1:03:34

Not cutting up carrots. Very good. It reminds what's the third one? That's that was two, right? Is there one more, or is that is that what we're doing, those two breaths?

Tim Thomas 1:03:43

So, what we're gonna do now is this exactly what we did, but we're gonna breathe in through our nose as fast as we can. Okay.

Gary Wise 1:03:53

So is it better to be seated doing this, or can you do this laying down as well?

Tim Thomas 1:03:57

Well, you can do this laying down, seated is fine. Um, okay. But but like I said, this the first few times you do this, you want to be supported in an area where you're not gonna fall over or impact anybody. Um, but what I'm gonna show you now is everyone's got a nose, and behind the nose, we have sinuses. And uh when we breathe through our nose, we produce a particular gas. Okay, and that gas isn't produced when we breathe through our mouth. This particular gas has a lot of uh medicinal qualities to our bodies, it improves your immune response, it improves your performance, improves recovery, improves mood, mental clarity, and the list goes on. And if you went to a chemist and said, Hey, I want pills that do all these things for me, you know, you'd be paying hundreds of dollars every week. But the gas our nose produces is called nitric oxide, it's a vasodilator. They gave it to athletes to help help uh increase their performance. It's also a key indicator for sexual health as well, all right? And us men, we need to uh keep that in check as much as we don't talk about it because our longevity is relative to our sexual health. Okay, nitric oxide is a key ingredient in Viagra, all right, because they gave that to athletes, and then the athletes reported all these other benefits, right? Right. So I'm gonna invite you to breathe through your nose on this one, but I want you to breathe through as quickly as possible, like you're really trying to snort air over your sinuses straight into your brain. Okay, according to my coach, when I was fighting, he said, Tim, before you do a combination, do a big snort through your nose, because that will oxygenate your brain and you'll have that mental clarity. Okay, okay. So as we do this one, same. As we did before, but we're gonna really try and suck that air over our nose into our brain, if that makes sense.

Gary Wise 1:06:08

Okay, so not doing one long deliberate pull, but just rapid rapid inhale.

Tim Thomas 1:06:15

And my recommendation for you is with your power buttons, have them on the have them on the bench that you're hanging on to, right? I got them right here, right here, but just have them near the bench so you can grab onto something if needed. In fact, I if I was you, I'd be I'd be actually like grabbing onto the bench like that, you know, and pinching and pinching, you know, those ones. And you did you did well too with before you naturally looked up to open up that top third. All right. So that's that's what we're gonna do this time. All right. So blow it out, shake it out, blow it out, shake it out, blow it out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out. When you're all the way out, mouth closed, rapid inhale and look up. Okay, again, wriggle your spine, wriggle your spine, wriggle your spine, wriggle your spine, feel your chest opening, feel your chest opening, feel like the warm sun is opening your chest. And I want you to I want you to cover your mouth and let out a really big yawn. Cover your mouth and oh good, good, good.

Gary Wise 1:07:33

Wow, very how did you get into breathing, brother? Like, how did you st how did you get into all of this? Um, was this did you learn this in the service, or is this just no no your journey after the service?

Tim Thomas 1:07:46

Um, I'm I'm happy to get into that, but I do want to stay with people so they can have this as a as something that they can use. So if our goal here is permanency, if people can have this, um and and if they walk away from this with this little push your fingers together and snort your nose, um, to bring yourself back to center. So this is a little centering breath that we're doing. Yeah. Where we so when I'm in public and you know, I'm human, things annoy me. So if something's bothering me, I will discreetly breathe it in, shake it, come back to my center, come back to the version of me that is centered, mature, powerful, peaceful, confident. Because there is a there is a version of me that's off-centered, immature, doesn't have power, very reactive. And I can tolerate things during the daytime, but at nighttime I never knew why I had to drink so much. Because that was me trying to create balance. So if I can if I can go through the day and if I can bring myself back to who I know I'm supposed to be, and you know, makes me happy, then um, and and people can access that because if you don't access it underneath your own skin, you could end up like me, and that's trying to self-regulate with more pharmaceuticals than I needed. So I didn't just have pills in my medicine cabinet, I had them by my bed, in my car, in the fruit bowl, in my wallet, in most of my jacket pockets. Because when something bothered me, I didn't know that breathing could help. I just thought a pill would help. And nothing wrong with pills, but no one tells you that they're kind of like short-term energy loans, and you've got to pay pay back that money with a whole lot of interest. Um, so happy to share about how I got to this, but let's um but let's just stay here for a minute because you you you're discovering something. So I noticed when you yawned and you opened your jaw, there was a lot of tension coming out of that. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Okay, so veteran, see the the vagus nerve, the nerve in our body that holds our stress, has two big attachment joints behind the jaw. And a lot of uh stressed people suffer what's called bruxism,

Jaw Release And Vagus Nerve Stress

Tim Thomas 1:10:10

where they're grinding their teeth at nighttime and they've got to wear mouth guards because your nervous system is backed up, right? So opening that jaw, you know, is like a it's like a I call it a psychic spew. All right. So when you and push that jaw further open manually, it kind of feels like a bunch of stuff is purging out. As much as that looks ridiculous, it it to me, it's not as ridiculous looking as having pills in your jacket pocket and in the fruit bowl.

Gary Wise 1:10:42

Right.

Tim Thomas 1:10:44

Um, so so what we're gonna do now is exactly what we did. But this time, when we wriggle, I want you to wriggle up a yawn. Feel like there's I call it yawn juice coming up your neck. And when you can't stop that yawn, I want you to cover your mouth and resist it as much as possible, as in push the hand against your mouth, go okay. So let's let's practice this now. I want you to blow into your hand and I want your hand to stop most of the air. So take a deep breath in and go and really stop the air coming out with your hand. You feel that?

Gary Wise 1:11:29

Now, are you also where does that sound come from for you? Does it come from your throat or come from your lungs?

Tim Thomas 1:11:35

Well, the yawn comes from probably your throat, but if you do it right, you kind of go into the same position almost like you're throwing up because we're literally purging, we're throwing up stuck energy. So, what I'm showing you right now is you know, when there's something stuck in your stomach, you tickle the back of your throat and you throw it up, right?

Gary Wise 1:11:55

Right.

Tim Thomas 1:11:55

When this when there's something stuck in your vagus nerve, I'm showing you how to essentially throw that up. Okay, okay, and and to get a little bit of clearance, all right. So just practice that and notice how much you can resist the air coming out by pushing that hand on your face. All right, you got that? I got it. So we're gonna do that after we did the deep breath in, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle. We're gonna wriggle up a yawn, and when that yawn cannot be stopped, we're just gonna let out the loudest, biggest jaw opening for as long as possible. Cool, cool.

Gary Wise 1:12:32

I'm gonna try my best. There we go.

Tim Thomas 1:12:34

All right, I'll be with you the whole time and I'll talk you through it. So with your power buttons ready, blow it out, shake it out, blow it out, shake it out, blow it out, shake it out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out. And when you're all the way out, when you're all the way out, rapid inhale through your nose, pinch your fingers, open, open, open, in, in, in, look up, look up, look up. Now wriggle up that yawn, wriggle up that yawn, wriggle up that yawn. Feel that yawn juice going up the side of your neck. Feel that yawn juice coming up. It's coming up, you can't stop it, you can't stop it. And when you can't stop it, loudest yawn ever, big mud mouth. Loud, loud, loud. You can do more, you can do more. Out, out, out, out, you can do more. Out, out, out, out, out. Woo.

Gary Wise 1:13:28

I like it. It reminds me of uh I did some breathing exercises one time, and they would talk about having to breathe it out and going, oh, and like really exhaling, getting that air out. But what is it about the having the hand over the mouth to help uh suppress or stifle, or just is it it's because it's different, it feels different than just breathing in and blowing out, right? Oh, yeah, interesting. And and I'm feeling it, the the it's it's like um it's hard to even explain the feeling. I just feel uh warm and warm and just like like a warm liquid running over me.

Tim Thomas 1:14:07

Yeah, yeah, there's there's a whole lot of power that you've just tapped into, then right? So essentially definitely we are we are powerful people, but we and we connect naturally, but what we also seem to do naturally is hold on to blockages. So what we did right then was remove blockages so we could naturally return back to who we are, okay, which is powerful connected people connecting inside of yourself. So what we did right then, so think of electricity, it has a frequency, right? Right, sound has a frequency, your vagus nerve, our our connective system, uh certain blockages get released when we create a frequency. So when we're making that noise, we're extending the amount of time we create that sound. There's a reason we create a sound when we go, okay. And when I'm working with high school students, I'll get them to make it really low and then medium, and then their yawns at a really high pitch. Ah, okay, because those different frequencies access different uh blockages in the vagus nerve. All right. So, so you know, these things aren't thought through, they're embodied. The body keeps the score as they say, and what we're doing right now is using our breath to unlock those blockages so we can just have that little bit of distance, little bit of peace, a little bit of standoff, chance to go from your fight or flight into your uh executive function where you can see it all, be with it all, and and I know I'm good. Um, so the the reason why I get people to put their hand over their mouth, it's threefold. Firstly, you can extend the sound. If I just go, ah, that's pretty quick, right? But if I stifle it and go, I can I can quadruple the amount of time I can stay in that frequency. But also, my hand is pushing on my jaw, so I can open my mouth more. Okay, the more I open my mouth, there's a reason why lions yawn. There's a reason why animals, after they've been chased, they shake. Okay. And so so simply massaging that jaw, and this you can't stop it once you've sort of cracked, taken the skin off the milk, so to speak, it it just or breaks the ice, it just it just it just keeps coming through. So I invite you right now, just just with your fingers, just rub and tap your jaw. Okay, as as comfortable as you feel like it. And then grab your jaw and just pull it down and let it open a little bit more. And just hold that position and allow that stuff to fall out. It's like stuff starts falling out. Obviously, keep breathing, and when you sort of let it go, just note this you kind of feel a little bit lighter.

Gary Wise 1:17:40

Yeah, I had this thing where my ears never unclog, and I'm always trying to unclog my ears, you know. And I think it's attached to my jaw, and the fact that I have that bruxism and I have that jaw clenching, and I have teeth cracking because oh man, because I carry so much stress on my jaw, you know.

Tim Thomas 1:18:01

I I okay, I wasn't gonna do this, but I want to show you something, all

Humming Nitric Oxide And Clear Ears

Tim Thomas 1:18:05

right. So you know what humming is, right? You just go, mmm, all right, yeah, yeah. What I want you to do, what I want you to do is take a deep breath in, like you did, but then with your right thumb, close your right nostril, and then gently pinch your left nostril so you can still hum, but the air's resisting. And I want you to hum with that it's a bit like you know, when you're in your hand when you're slowing down the air. I want you to do the same thing with your finger stopping the uh slowing down the hum. Okay.

Gary Wise 1:18:48

Okay, so give it a shot.

Tim Thomas 1:18:51

Let's just give this a try. Just you know, blow it out, breathe in, and then thumb, and then and notice how you can feel that vibration, feel that vibration, feel the vibration, feel the vibration, okay. Now, just so you know, humming increases nitric oxide uptake by like two thousand percent. So sitting there humming through your nose, you're it's a it's a big uptake in nitric oxide. Now, what I'm gonna get you to do is as you're humming and resisting the air, and I need you to keep it consistent, not like pop, pop, pop, but uh consistent where you're sort of blowing against it. And now I want you to push your jaw forward. Okay, feel like your ears are popping, and then when you do that, you'll notice the sound will go through your estation tubes, I think they're called. Okay, and you feel it going into your ears. So pushing your jaw forward and then humming and see if you can sort of position your jaw so you actually can feel it going almost inside your head through your through your ear canals.

Gary Wise 1:20:10

Okay, okay, here we go.

Tim Thomas 1:20:12

So blow it out, shake it out, blow it out, shake it out, blow it out, shake it out, and when you're ready, breathe in. Thumb, start humming, find that space now. Push your jaw forward, push your jaw forward, and notice it going into your head. Feel that vibration going into your brain. Doing really well. Wow. That's very cool. Did you actually feel it going through into your brain? Like it goes inside of you?

Gary Wise 1:21:06

Well, I felt it coming across the top of my cheeks, right? Yeah, yes, the brain, I guess as well. I guess you could think, but I can feel it coming through, like you said, those Eustacean tubes. Wow.

Tim Thomas 1:21:18

So if you can hum and put nitric oxide through those tubes, and you know, your your you know, there's gonna be a whole lot more access to an unblocked system doing things like that, if that makes sense.

Gary Wise 1:21:38

That does make sense, it feels great. I feel very uh, I would say clear headed right now. Like uh, I don't I mean, look, it's the end of my day, right? I had a long day of teaching, I was surrounded by kids all day, and so they were doing this in the evening. I was I feel very alert right now, though. Very good, very good stuff, bro. Thank you for sharing that with me.

Tim Thomas 1:22:04

Wow, like how many breaths did we actually take? Less than 10, right? Yeah, and the state you have right now, let's not step over this. You know how many pills are out there that do what we just did naturally? You know how many products are out there that that do what you just did naturally, and this is the thing, you don't discover this stuff until you have authentic conversation with the people with usually skin in the game.

Gary Wise 1:22:32

Yeah, very cool. No, it's uh very enlightening, very enlightening.

Tim Thomas 1:22:43

Well, I'm I'm happy now because Gary, you've got that for life. Okay, that is that is you being able to self-medicate now because people discover it's not a set of lungs we were given, it's a medicine cabinet with a lot of different shelves. And you breathe a certain way, you can elicit a certain response. So, guess what? We're in charge of our state now. And uh there is an a whole range of breathwork techniques that elicit a certain response. The ones I've shown you now give you quick access to

28 Day Challenge And Where To Connect

Tim Thomas 1:23:20

blockage removal. The ones that can help you drop into a really deep state going to sleep. Um obviously I've got them. You can you can look for them on Spotify, or I mean, I've got my app which is specifically there to fall out of your phone when you need it, as well as getting out of bed. That can be quite a game changer for people because a lot of people wake up and they're like, What the hell is going on? Why am I here on this planet again? So if you can have, yeah, if you can, if you can have access to that breath work in the first five minutes, uh you know, massive, massive game change.

Gary Wise 1:23:57

Very impressive, very cool. No, no, I am into it. I'm definitely different.

Tim Thomas 1:24:02

Actually, you look kind of relaxed and more confident now. Before I could see you were you were uh you were really um you're wanting it to work and you were in kind of work mode. You look a lot softer now.

Gary Wise 1:24:15

And I'm not just saying the no, the that second phase. So the first two or three, I was kind of struggling with it, but I'll tell you the one with the nostrils, that one really did something for me. That one really, I think but I think the first three loosened it all up, right? And then, of course, learning I'm into the vibration thing, right? Just so you know, part of my own personal life philosophy is I believe in that, I believe in vibration, I believe in resonance, I believe in uh the universe in that space, right? And so I believe in those things, and so a lot of the things you're saying, I'm super interested in that, and I'm interested in how to best leverage uh you know, natural healing instead of having to take all these damn pills every day or how to use my. Um, so no, I'm interested in I think this is just the beginning of me looking into this kind of stuff. Uh, but very cool. I've never done I've done I have done deep breathing exercises. I have done uh, of course, you know, people trying to teach me how to meditate or whatever it is and praying and all these other things, but I will say those breathing techniques, in particular the the nostril one for whatever the reason that really loosened up something in my head. So very cool, very cool, Tim. Thank you.

Tim Thomas 1:25:39

Well, Gary, I'd love to you know offer you the the breathworking bed 28-day challenge. Okay. So my my my my app has a 28-day free free period that once you tell it when you want to sleep, when you want to wake up, it'll just fall out exactly when you need it. And you can actually have access to those spaces. And it's not just the sort of the once or twice thing. When you have those little reminders that make it easy and effortless, you notice it compounding over time. So if you're up for it, I'd love to offer you the challenge.

Gary Wise 1:26:20

Yeah, I'm into it. So do I just download the app on my cell phone and then it just kicks off?

Tim Thomas 1:26:26

Yeah, download the app, choose a 28-day free option. I mean, like all apps on the app store, you do have to go through a paywall, as they say, you know, they do need your details, etc. Um, but if it's not working for you within those 28 days, you know, just cancel it. But I'm, you know, um, I know like it costs like maybe less than a cup of coffee a month for this thing, and I know it saved me on so many occasions, I would have certainly paid a lot more than a cup of coffee uh for a good night's sleep.

Gary Wise 1:26:59

No, no, I'm looking for I'm gonna give it a shot tonight. I'm gonna give it a try. And uh, because I will tell you, you know, I got sleep apnea. I have to I wear a CPAP machine at night while I'm sleeping, and I have since uh 2000 and I think 10, right? So it's just sleep is a challenge for me, and then add into all of that the all the other challenges, right? And then the gritting my teeth, and there's just sleep is and I and I know how important sleep is. So I'm definitely gonna look into it. And I really appreciate your time and you sharing all of this uh with the listeners with me, and and I appreciate your time, Tim. Thank you very much for it. Uh, is there anywhere else you would like people that are listening to the sound of your voice, to my voice, to this conversation? Is there anywhere else you would like them to go to either to look at, look you up, or look up any more information you would point them to or me to when it comes to like learning how to work your breath?

Tim Thomas 1:27:58

Sure. If you want one-on-one with me, look me up through LinkedIn. Tim Thomas, Breath Working Bed. Corporates kind of love what I do because once sleep improves, sick days get cut in half. Sleep poor people take twice as many sick days, and the data represents that. For people who would just want a good night's sleep tonight, literally tonight, it's natural and immediate. Download the Breath Working Bed app. Feel free to choose a 28-day option and see what your world is like when you're in charge of the five minutes going to sleep and the five minutes waking up. Of course, Breath Working Bed is across all socials, but my the whole reason I'm here is I can't do what you do, Gary. I can't do what your listeners do. But if I can ensure that every night you're getting an amazing night's sleep, then you're going to be bringing your gifts into the world

Sleep As The Soil For Growth

Tim Thomas 1:28:55

so much better. That's what that's what gets me super excited. Seeing what happens to people when their sleep is improved. All these incredible things start flourishing. It's a bit like um sleep is the soil from which everything grows. And people have these dormant seeds of greatness, seeds of uniqueness, just waiting for that soil quality to improve. And once the sleep improves, all these things that are inside of a person start coming out, and it's and it's genuinely amazing. So, yes, you know, we're talking about sleep right now and practical ways to go about it. Okay, I've created a practical way for people to give it an give it a go, right? But it's really about you flourishing, you being able to rest, restore, heal, so you can bring your gifts into the world generously.

Gary Wise 1:29:55

I like it. I'm into it, man. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I'm looking forward to trying out the app. I'm gonna I'm gonna give it a shot tonight, to be honest. It's gonna happen. Well, hey, Tim, I appreciate you. Everybody listening to the sounds of my voice. Hopefully, I'll make sure I put all of your information on the video when I post this, and of course, in all the podcast description and episodes. And I think we're connected on LinkedIn already, so I look forward to letting you know how it goes. All right, everybody. Well, Tim, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate you, brother. You have a good day out there, okay?

Tim Thomas 1:30:33

You too, Gary.

Gary Wise 1:30:35

I will. Thank you very much. Bye, everybody. Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining us. Y'all get some good breath out there. That's that's a big deal.