Training To Chill Out: Nasal Breathing, Cold Plunges, & Why Less is More | Brian Mackenzie | Better Man Podcast Ep. 036

Dean Pohlman: Brian, welcome back to the Better Man podcast. Thanks for being here.

Brian Mackenzie: Thanks for having me, buddy.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, good to be back. I don’t know if I told you this. I think I did. But you were you were the most you were the most watched episode or the most listened to episode from season one. Um, yeah, I think the. Yeah. I don’t know what awards yet. Have to figure that out.

Brian Mackenzie: You win nothing, sir.

Dean Pohlman: You know, you win yoga mats. You won.

Brian Mackenzie: Yes. Yes, I did. Which are heavily used by Ryan, also heavily.

Dean Pohlman: That’s great. Yeah. So, yeah, I think it was the it was definitely the nasal breathing. I mean, we talked about a lot of stuff, but obviously that’s centered on the nasal breathing. And that has become like I would say, that’s like 30% of the focus in the Man FLow Yoga community right now and has been for the last couple of months. Has been nasal breathing and people asking questions like, how important is it that I breathe through my nose? Like some people have issues breathing through their nose so like, what do we, you know, what do they do? Or, you know, sometimes people get concerned because they they’re doing a routine and they’re feeling really relaxed and they let out a sigh through their mouth and like, OK, what was I supposed to do that? Or was like, what’s the. So anyways, nasal breathing has been huge, and I would assign a huge amount of responsibility for that to you. So thank you.

Brian Mackenzie: You’re welcome. Yeah. Yeah.

Dean Pohlman: So so this episode so last episode, by the way, guys, if you haven’t listened to the first episode I did with Brian, you should definitely go check that out. It was actually the first episode of this Better Man podcast. But this episode, I want to I want to go into some of the stuff that we talked about before, but I also want to I want to try and keep this more less technical, less scientific and more like more easily understandable Also, I also want to try and focus on guys who are you know, because, you know, I’ve read about you and if you’ve read about Brian, you know that he trains like some of the strongest, most athletic people in the world. And that’s not mainly who we’re working with in the Man Flow Yoga community. And probably if you’re listening to this podcast, maybe if you listen to this podcast, you’re not like the ultimate. So are the techniques different or.

Brian Mackenzie: Well, just to be clear, that’s very few of the people that I actually work with. Right? Even though I do work with some of these people, most of the people I work with we’re talking about general population.

Dean Pohlman: Gotcha. Does it? So I missed. Well, does it differ much for. No, it doesn’t. No, that’s cool to know.

Brian Mackenzie: Now because most people miss the fundamental. So we, including myself, have a propensity to skip over the fundamentals in order to get to a place that we are. How about how about our mindset set on our goal setting, which is largely based on from the philosophical approach, goals of scarcity. Which are not goals of abundance.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. OK, well, all right. Well, the other…

Brian Mackenzie: So it’s a very easy it’s a very easy thing to that that all simply means this is that if you actually take a few steps back and apply the fundamentals and breathing is the most fundamental thing you could do with any physical movement practice. I mean, quite literally, what I do is help people develop a hard line physical practice that encompasses not only lifestyle habits but work habits and relational relationship habits.

Brian Mackenzie: I come from it from a total holistic approach, because if what you are what I’m doing cannot apply broadly to everything, I’m really not that interested in it. And so taking a step back to actually understand how breathing is actually applicable to a fundamental movement practice such as yoga, which there’s a reason why they drove it home and it’s at the foundation of yoga is because it’s giving you an indication of where you’re at, whether that be from a movement, mechanical or a physiological and psychological state. And yeah, breathing through the nose, just so happens to be the thing you should be doing 90% of the time. But if you actually give out a physiological sigh you’re OK.

Dean Pohlman: OK. Yeah, I because I, you know, because in my workouts a lot of people are people will say, I noticed you’re breathing through your mouth. I’m like, Well, I’m talking as well as trying to do this. So it’s a little different for me. Um, you know, but then we’ve also had some people confused because they’re like, Should I be doing this when I’m, should I be doing this when I’m lifting weights? And I was, you know, I think we talked about that briefly. Yeah. At the end of the last podcast. And you said that you should practice doing that between sets. Yeah.

Brian Mackenzie: Right. Yeah, I mean, look, I would say yes, you should, but you should also be learning what it is you’re actually training for. You know, like it’s like, I’ll just use this kind of as an example. You know, you’re doing a 5×5. That’s a heavy, heavy duty set. If you’re doing a traditional 5×5 lifting set, right.

Brian Mackenzie: That is an 80% plus lift, which is going to require if we’re talking about a squatter deadlift, right, that that’s a huge, complex movement that requires a lot of force production, contraction, et cetera. Letting your breathing go from nose to mouth to understand that is the goal. You shouldn’t just necessarily and I just did a we just did a post on this with a strongman competition because there was a guy who used to be the world record holder who was actually hyperventilating with his mouth prior to the engagement of the event.

Brian Mackenzie: And while I don’t think it was the main cause of everything, I know that it definitely did not help him. And shot down heavily through that process. So being aware of what it is you’re doing is important. And that’s what you do. That’s what we use. The extreme in sport as a an example of versus like, hey, well, what about my basic yoga practice or my lifting?

Brian Mackenzie: Like, it’s like it’s just this thing I do well, I would actually answer, well, why are you doing it if it’s just this thing you do? Why isn’t it? Why aren’t you approaching this like a black belt? Mm hmm. Like, why are you thinking this is just I just work out, and that’s what I bring to people. It’s like, just stop doing this. If you’re not after a black belt, and that goes for yoga, like, if you’re getting involved in something like a yoga practice, why aren’t you doing this in with the concept of developing a black belt? Because I can bet you that if you were, it’d be a lot different than the way you actually are approaching things.

Brian Mackenzie: And when you do approach things like that, they end up wreaking havoc in a positive way into your life. Meaning because you’re learning something about yourself in the practice itself. And what you’re doing with energy and breathing is that thing that is connected to respiration. So respiration is what we do for energy, and breathing is how we actually provide respiration, the input for that.

Dean Pohlman: Got it. So, you know, as I’m listening to this, a lot of people, I think a lot of people who do Man Flow Yoga and a lot of people who exercise in general they do it because they’re interested in their their overall health and wellbeing. And it’s hard for everyone to get super excited about all of the workouts that they do.

Dean Pohlman: So what are some ways that, you know, if people are not, you know, let’s say they’re just not super psyched about their workouts what are some ways that they can develop interest or what are some ways that you can make yourself more excited instead of just, you know, gritting your teeth and saying, oh, I’ve got to do this because my knees hurt and I need to do this routine. And I don’t want to be, you know, I don’t want to be in pain. So what are some things, some aspects of fitness or aspect of practice that they can, you know, concentrate on to make it more enjoyable?

Brian Mackenzie: Yeah, I think first things first is like declutter decluttering one’s life first. A bit like if you’re very if you think you’re concerned with health. OK, great. What are some things that impact your health? Right. And then are in your life and what are things in your life that are impacting your health in a positive and a negative?

Brian Mackenzie: Start removing the things that are negative. All right. And if you can’t do that, then we’re getting closer to the root of the actual problem, right? I don’t know what that root is, but I do know that you’re involved in it. And when we can get to the focal point, we can get there, do some research on things like what is it out there that excite you?

Brian Mackenzie: I know what excites me. OK. And and I actually have to contain my excitement for that, because excitement can actually be a drug that actually means I have to fall off. Right. Like if I’m not doing it, I’m not I don’t feel good about things. Right. But it’s also like, what are things that motivate me about what I could be doing for my how could I go learn about myself from a physical standpoint?

Brian Mackenzie: Do the martial arts interest me? Does yoga interest me? Does lifting weights interest me? OK, so or is cardiovascular work is running interest me to cycling interest me like there are so many. There’s infinite things you can go look at to develop some sort of a movement practice and develop your workouts now. Take a fundamental understanding of what it is we actually do understand about practice and having a practice, something like, let’s just say yoga. Well, we do know that just doing yoga could be enhanced with something like a strength and conditioning program. Mm hmm. OK, OK. Well, so what about some sort of strength and conditioning work if it, like, gets me a little motivated that I could go learn about? You don’t need to think about becoming an expert, but even though I brought up the term black belt, it’s like you should have the mindset of a decade or more like ten years or more here.

Brian Mackenzie: Like if you have the mindset, I just want to get healthy. I don’t think you understand health. Mm hmm. Health is actually it’s like it’s kind of like somebody who’s overweight right. Or fat, and they want to lose weight. Right? That’s the wrong goal. These are the wrong this the wrong thinking. You wouldn’t be in this position. If you actually cared about yourself in the ways that you fundamentally should care to understand about the things that you’re putting in or not doing in your life that would lead you towards something that would actually mean you wouldn’t be putting on excessive body fat in that way, shape or form.

Brian Mackenzie: Right? Yeah. So it’s really going after what it is might motivate you. And looking at that is what can I go learn about myself by doing this and how can I start on the ground floor to start to really understand that process? Yeah. And for me, breathing is that fundamental thing that is applied across the boards to any of us, whatever the practice is.

Brian Mackenzie: That doesn’t mean that you’re simply nasal breathing the whole time. But there it is, the vast majority of work you should be doing. And that means you need to probably take a step back from where it is you think you should be because your thinking is probably what’s getting you into trouble in the first place.

Dean Pohlman: So by what do you mean by getting into trouble? Do you mean overregulating yourself?

Brian Mackenzie: You’re stepping outside the lines of where your physiology and where your abilities actually meet.

Dean Pohlman: OK, got it. So, you know, so that’s really helpful. So developing an interest, finding, you know, finding the stuff that excites you. So, you know, and just because we didn’t mention it here, can you just briefly talk about the benefits of nasal breathing? Because, you know, we talked about last one, but it’s good together if you didn’t listen to the last one. And then also for me because people always ask me what are the benefits? And it’s I need to I need to memorize it. So so help me out, too.

Brian Mackenzie: Yeah. So I think the most important aspect to understand here is that the respiratory system was designed with the nose in mind, not the mouth. Mouth is a secondary option. And here’s why The mouth provides very little, if any, real filtration and defense against the air that we’re taking in now. It does provide us with a fast and effective way of providing ourself with offloading carbon dioxide and onloading excessive oxygen when needed. And that is needed when high, high metabolic output is happening. OK? And there should be a time and a place for every human being with that, OK, there is not a human being that doesn’t need that now. That does not mean they should be running around mouth, breathing every work out there. Doing that would be a problem. That being said, and the reason is, is because you’re just not using energy effectively in that sense from what it is we currently understand.

Brian Mackenzie: So the nose has a major filtration system set up with it inside of it, starting with the hair. Mm hmm. You have as much as many hair follicles in your nose as you do on your head. OK, Each of those hairs is coated in what’s in mucus. OK. That mucus is the first line of defense for your immune system as it can launch viral and bacterial attacks on the things that actually come in for upwards of ten years. After they’ve been detected. OK. You then have a terminate system which helps capture air and spin it so that it doesn’t just shoot in. Right. And there’s a there’s an importance for that because if that bacteria virus or whatever gets in there that is actually spinning it and collecting anything any particles that are necessary to do that. OK.

Brian Mackenzie: You then get move more into the sinus structures which humidify the air, which is important for the lungs as the lungs are defenseless diffusion monsters. Right. So the lungs are there as these huge sacks that are incredibly elastic, that the diaphragm has to actually create a reverse vacuum for them to work. And so the cage that surrounds your lungs, your rib cage, moves very little.

Brian Mackenzie: But when you engage with nasal breathing, you’re actually triggering through resistance the diaphragm, your primary breathing muscle and intercostals to engage in. And that rib cage in order to open it up correctly. OK. So that sets up for the most important process in why the respiratory system was designed with the nose. That is for respiration.

Brian Mackenzie: So respiration is probably why we exist. So through metabolism. And that is a huge, huge rabbit hole that I’m not going to go into. Mm hmm. But keep in mind, just consider the fact that cellular respiration and the head cycle itself do far more than just provide us with the energy that we use. They provide it’s the buildings building of proteins and nucleotides, which are the basic building blocks of life.

Brian Mackenzie: And how well you work with that is dependent is has a big part in how well you actually breathe. And so the modulation of air that you pull in is dependent on the biochemistry that’s going on in your bloodstream. And the nose sets that up perfectly. Think of it as like a yin and yang in that the carbon dioxide mixture and the oxygen mixture are perfect so that the oxygen is actually getting to the mitochondria to be used when we nasal breathe.

Brian Mackenzie: So as I’m talking here, I’m not really efficiently doing things, but I can get away with this because I’m fairly healthy. And like the flip side of this is that I will revert when I shut up the nasal breathing, which then everything kind of normalizes and moves back towards a very efficient process of using oxygen and ultimately how I’m using glucose and fat for energy.

Dean Pohlman: OK, so as you were saying, that’s something that I was thinking about is sinus rinsing. Yeah, yeah. Allergies. And so yeah. So I live in Austin, which has often been called the the allergy capital of the United States. Mm hmm. Because it just never ends So I. I got cedar. Have you heard of Cedar Fever now? Cedar Fever is this really cool time of year from November through February, where everyone just has mild cold symptoms for three months?

Dean Pohlman: And I didn’t notice it was happening for the first few years. And then last year, like, it hit me like a sack of bricks, and I couldn’t breathe through my nose. Sinus rinsing didn’t help. Flonase didn’t help. Like, nothing helped. And so this year, I’ve resolved to do more sinus rinsing because that seems to be helpful. Is that do you have knowledge on that as sinus rinsing?

Dean Pohlman: Is that like.

Brian Mackenzie: Yeah. Yeah, a little. I would say, careful.

Dean Pohlman: OK.

Brian Mackenzie: Because your system, your biol G is actually trying to work. Now they’re Western medicine and Eastern medicines all provide ways back to that. But allergies are really a symptom of stress. Right. And so ultimately, there was a stressor in the system that inevitably the chain in the immune system became a little dysfunctional. And we all have this in some capacities. In some ways, right. But it ultimately comes back to taking steps back in order to combat the the problem. Right. So doing too many sinus washes is going to clear out that nose. And your immune mucosal system will stop working the way that it should, meaning developing the white blood cells and things that are responsible for combating the problems that are actually going on.

Brian Mackenzie: So consider that I mean, I’ve observed this with a few people in and it’s in the process of observing over a few years but cold exposure and stress appropriately delivered can help with immune system response and how our allergies work. Like I had my my pet, my old pit bull, we used to have pretty bad skin allergies and I hated putting her on the medications, even though it was really the only thing that was helping her.

Brian Mackenzie: And that was until I discovered cold plunges. And then I started picking up on clients who were like, Dude, my allergies aren’t that bad this year. It’s just really strange. And so I started exposing her to the cold. Right. And so I would put her in the cold plunge for like 30 seconds to say, wow. And then we got her up to roughly like a minute, 90 seconds before she really would get pissed.

Brian Mackenzie: But it was interesting because allergies, the days she did that, were non-existent. Wow. If you look at that, like, look I’m not solving the problem here. If you think about it, what what is allergy? You know, it’s if I’m having an allergic reaction to something. Well, what happens if somebody goes into anaphylactic shock in an extreme case? What do they do?

Brian Mackenzie: They get somebody. An EpiPen. What’s an EpiPen? Adrenaline. What are you doing with somebody when you stick them in a cold plunge, you’re getting an adrenaline response. OK, so learning how to use stress as a means for getting yourself back to things. But also, don’t take that too far in the oh, if I just continue to stress myself all day, I’ll come back this thing.

Brian Mackenzie: And it’s like, no, no, no. Now you need to actually teach your system to come off of that stressor so that it can rebuild itself. And that’s part of our problem. A big problem is that nobody ever needed any training at being busy. Mm hmm. But we certainly all need training. From what I’ve gathered, especially myself and how to chill out and take a step back and look at what you really want to be doing versus, oh, I’ll just take on another client. Ooh, I’ll just pick on that. Right. I’ll just stack on it. Hey, we’ll have a kid. Hey, let’s get a puppy.

Dean Pohlman: Let’s let’s do it all at once.

Brian Mackenzie: Let’s do it all at once. And it’s like. I mean, that was basically how we started, and it was like, I’ve been there math, and I watch it with everybody who I work with. And then it’s like my goal without trying, without pissing somebody off. The first time I meet them is to get them to understand that they’re not actually they’re not actually doing the things they truly want to be doing because they’re not actually looking at what they actually want.

Brian Mackenzie: They’re looking what they think they want. Yeah. Because of what they see.

Dean Pohlman: I think that’s let’s come back to that training to chill out. I think this could that could be the entire title of this podcast episode.

Brian Mackenzie: But that’s where that’s exactly what separates a professional athlete from an amateur or average, quite literally, is a professional athletes ability to shut it off and down after they’ve trained and before they train and calm like a bomb before they get there and calm like a bomb and dropping out afterwards OK, they spent millions of dollars for this stuff.

Dean Pohlman: Wow. Yeah. It’s a good area of opportunity for me. I realized that I took my I thought about this yesterday, but I realized I was taking I mean, I’ve done this for years and years. This is how I live my life. But I take the intensity with which I approach workouts and training into my home life. So I’m like and like running around doing all my morning things like I got to get this smoothie.

Dean Pohlman: What’s the most efficient way to get that smoothie right now? I got into coffee. OK, now get the dog food ready. Now I got to run up here and then I get it all done in 15 minutes. I’m like, Oh, yeah, new PR woo. Oh, but my home life is like, it’s, it’s so stressful because I’m like, I’m just looking at everything. Like, I can prove that that’s dirty. Let me go pick that up. It’s just like a constant. There’s no, like a it’s hard to turn it off. So I wonder, are you I know it’s.

Brian Mackenzie: I’m having flashbacks right now. I being I don’t have, I don’t have the kid, but I’m having flashbacks yeah.

Dean Pohlman: You know, one day I will either I’ll figure it out or like, I’ll have this. Mental breakdown.

Brian Mackenzie: It no, I mean, yes, but maybe but like it’s nothing to figure out if you just, you know, like you either learn or you don’t yeah.

Dean Pohlman: We’re going to come back to that in like 30 seconds. But I want to talk about cold exposure because that’s something that’s like so intriguing and it looks so cool that people.

Brian Mackenzie: Are getting.

Dean Pohlman: In ice baths and staying and and I had a I think I told you this last time, but I found an old freezer on Craigslist from a yes. From an ice cream seller. It was 100 bucks. So I bought that fill it up with ice cold water and I would just keep the same ice in there for like two weeks at a time.

Dean Pohlman: And then once it started to get kind of gross and warm, I’d swap it out and do it again. But the way that I did the plunges was I would typically do them after workouts, which I learned is the wrong way to do it, because that can that will.

Brian Mackenzie: Yes.

Dean Pohlman: Yes and no.

Brian Mackenzie: OK.

Dean Pohlman: So like, what’s the best way to I don’t think I would do it again at my house because I got rid of the the chest freezer. I don’t think I would do it again unless one of those plunge companies sent me one of their units for free because they’re like $5,000. Maybe I’ll put it on my Christmas list for next year, but if I were to start doing it again, what’s the what’s the best time of day to do it? And also, how do you know if you’re doing too much? Because sometimes I would do like I wasn’t like I was doing that much. I was doing maybe like a minute or 2 minutes, up to 4 minutes, but then I’d have cold symptoms the next day and I’d be tired. I’m like, OK, I think I overdid it because I’m like, I’m actually sick.

Brian Mackenzie: I’m yeah, that’s loaded. That it depends on what you want out of it. All too often. I it’s people going after a time frame versus understanding what it is that they like, like they might. All these benefits of the cold might be giving them. And the cold is about adapting ocean and making an adaptation to it. And most people go right by that, looking to achieve a timeframe and I understand that, you know, I’ve got a client right now who insists on doing like 4 minutes and I’ve told him repeatedly that if he just concentrated on his breathing and giving himself ten breaths, he’d make the ten, he’d make that four minute mark more impactful.

Brian Mackenzie: By the time he learns to lower his breathing of ten breaths in 4 minutes, then he would otherwise, you know, he’s probably doing like 30 or 35 breaths in 44 minutes, which isn’t that bad. But the fact of the matter is, is you’re learning to control your autonomic nervous systems response to the cold so that you can actually get the exposure to the cold that you want. And there’s a high stress response immediately from getting in, regardless of if you’re Wim Hof or you’re a newbie and then being in the cold long enough to just get those adaptation, those adaptations that you want or those stressors that you want which they don’t last much longer after 90 seconds. But it’s perfectly fine to stay in there for 5 minutes if you can if you can actually regulate when you get out of.

Brian Mackenzie: The problem is, is that most people don’t know how to do that, which is the point of why I give most people just ten breaths and then you get out is that, you know, you, you learn really quickly how to get your body to start to respond to the cold. And when I’m when I haven’t done the cold in months and I go jump in the cold I still get myself in breaths and it takes me about 3 minutes, right? When I am fully adapted, I’m close or I’m up upwards of 7 minutes for ten breaths. So that’s really just slowing things down to like one breath every 30 to 45 seconds.

Brian Mackenzie: And, you know, it’s a very different game when you can do that and keep your system that calm. But the cold still cold. Right. And then I can get out and I don’t need it now. I need it to be I need to be able to put on clothes, whatever, or be in the sunlight. But I can, I can get warm fairly quickly. The most optimal time of the day depends on what it is you’re trying to do.

Dean Pohlman: What just general? General wellness. If that is a goal.

Brian Mackenzie: I mean generally general wellness, like I would be looking at the morning time, but then warming yourself back up prior to actually engaging in anything. And if that requires you to get in a sauna or getting a hot shower or a Jacuzzi, then do so on. But I would I would get yourself out and allow yourself to regulate without any heat for a few minutes so that you can get the your physiology to move a little bit further a lot of people are pretty hot on this shiver response, which is fine if they want to do that.

Brian Mackenzie: I am not a proponent of it, even though one of my closest friends is a big, big promoter of it. You know, non shiver thermogenesis is just effective with brown fat burning as sugar, if not more. And what I’m what we’re trying to get people to do is to learn how to handle the cold and be able to utilize get the body system to actually regulate easier so that when you actually go do go train, you come down off that mountain real quick as soon as the training is over versus staying up high.

Brian Mackenzie: But if I’m not willing to like get off my phone the moment I go, you know, finish training and like jump on calls after I’m done working out, there’s no amount of fucking cold exposure or any of that stuff that’s really going to help you. And this is part of the problem is everybody’s trying to stacking and everything, trying to do so many things and it’s like, what’s really important here?

Brian Mackenzie: What do we really want to do? And if we’re just starting to apply cold training to things, then you know, I think the morning time is very effective place. But pay attention to the end of your day. If you’re applying something new and still doing a lot of your other stuff, if you’re a little more cooked at the end of the day, OK, maybe do a little less the days you’re going to do some cold exposure and slowly introduce it. Maybe not every day, maybe every other day or three days a week, and then start to get to a point where, you know, I mean, I get the points where I could do it every day and do heat every day and do my training every day. But there’s a work up into that and understanding. Right.

Dean Pohlman: And so it’s not.

Brian Mackenzie: Just jumping into the deep end.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So so the main benefit of the cold plunge is after or what’s that? What’s the main, I guess, I’m trying to figure out like what’s you know, I think I want to ask you about what are the benefits right after this. But yeah, I want to like what’s the what should you be focusing on? Because it sounds like the important part of that is is being able to down regulate afterwards. Is is that the most important part or are there multiple…?

Brian Mackenzie: In my work in what I do, I think the most important part of anything that we are actively engaging in a stress response is our ability to respond appropriately to that stress response. That is a very simple way of saying how well you can regulate and and and most people do not. And I’ve learned this the hard way. Most people do not regulate real well. They regulate poorly and this is why we have busy lives. It’s we’re so we we we’ve learned that if we just stack on as much as we can, we don’t have to pay attention to the things that we really care about and doing them real well. Right. So I think the cold in and of itself is learning how to respond effectively to it.

Brian Mackenzie: Like if I get into a cold plunge, if I’m like, OK, maybe the first thing I learned to do with the cold is how to calm down that response. So give yourself ten breaths. And that’s going to come in very short period of time. Get out calm now when you warm up, maybe approach it again because it is very quick. And see if you can go in and be mm.

Brian Mackenzie: So it’s a very different response. What I mean, there’s a lot of things that are happening inside of cold plunging and doing Cold Plunge right? Cold shock proteins. Norepinephrine is the response. Dopamine is a response. We’re talking about a whole lot of things that are very high level that people think they care about. But ultimately, if you just cared about your response to stress, know you bring all of that minutia into the conversation without ever even needing to think about that stuff.

Dean Pohlman: Mm. Got it. Yeah, that helps. So and what are the actual benefits of cold funding? Because like, I think the biggest question that I hear, the three biggest questions I’d say I would here, hey, are does this help me build more muscle does this help to increase testosterone? And is this going to help me lose weight?

Brian Mackenzie: It could to all. It could all it could also retard those things. Because if you’re doing too much, too much stress you’ll shunt all of that stuff. So this is the importance of understanding of why I continue to come back to how well do you regulate? Like, can you I mean, in a lot some people can can you at any point in your day, if you had the desire to lay down and take an and be asleep within 5 minutes.

Brian Mackenzie: Right there’s a very good regulation technique. You know, like this is the you know, the ability to kind of bring it down in a high stress situation is being cont like a friend of mine. Esteemed. So Dave Wood is down in New Zealand. He runs some workshops called Calm under Pressure, uses water training. But he’s he’s way into breathing as well. He’s super smart guy and this is it. It’s it’s called Under Pressure. He teaches people how to remain calm under high levels. Of stress and he exposes them to water and various things in the water that would really kind of make people panic because water does that, especially when you’re holding your breath longer than you actually want to.

Dean Pohlman: So he throws sharks in.

Brian Mackenzie: Now throws weights on people, has them go a distance, you know.

Brian Mackenzie: Yeah. I mean, but like, look, you just that’s what stress is for is what we’re using. Stress. We’re hacking. Hacking things because we’re no longer meaning we’re no longer existing in a in a world that is unsafe as it used to be, because we used to have to just to try and be safe where we’d be under constant pressure. And so it was learning to understand how to respond to certain things that aren’t that stressful.

Dean Pohlman: Mhm. Yeah. So it’s important to understand that cold exposure can be, can be helpful, but it is in and of itself a stressor and you might already have too much stress going on. If you just throw this on top of all the other stress you have, then it’s not going to help you, it’s just creating more stress. That you can’t, that you’re not already handling.

Brian Mackenzie: And if I rather if I, if I could give them, I wouldn’t give the names mean I usually do this, but like the amount of people that are in this biohacker space that are doing all everything and I’m like, Look, man, you’re going to need to make a choice about this. Whether you’re doing cold exposure and this and this today.

Brian Mackenzie: Why? I want, I need, I need to get these benefits, but you’re not getting those benefits. Just so we’re clear. What do you mean? Why this this this guy said the scientist said this. Yeah, that’s talking about people who are just doing cold exposure. They’re just doing cold exposure in this research experiment. They’re not doing they’re not going to work running a company, lifting weights, working out with a trainer like you know, doing some mobility or yoga and then doing cold exposure and heat exposure.

Dean Pohlman: Got it. So I mean, to me, that comes back to our next topic, which was training to chill out a big part of some kind of drawing, a correlation to training and show up. But also deciding on your priorities because it sounds like people are just taking on too much. They want to do too much. They want to, like you were saying, take on that extra project, have another puppy, do more work, take on another client.

Dean Pohlman: And and we’re just we’re doing too much. And that’s a big thing that comes up in a lot of conversations that I have with people. And they’re like, well, I’m busy from, you know, when I wake up until 9:00 at night, I’m like, well, I mean, there’s you can either hire someone to do all the lot of stuff for you or you can just you can have to take some stuff out. You’re going to have to lower your expectations and start to take some stuff out. But do you want to talk about training to chill out?

Brian Mackenzie: That is essentially why you’re training. Mm hmm. People don’t understand that is that we’re engaging in physical practice because our nervous system in our system, our bodies in and of itself work better when we move. So we can’t be on up here all the time. And so when we do physically exert ourselves or put ourselves into a more stressful environment, the objective is how we respond to that environment.

Brian Mackenzie: And so it it’s a teaching mechanism for how we actually respond to stress in our daily lives and the things we don’t like, which, you know, the thing that I’ll do like I’m doing a talk this weekend in Florida, and I will present at the end of this talk an experiment for people to try, which I guarantee you and this has happened six times this year. When I say the experiment for the next week is to drive the speed limit or under. And most people are like, no fucking way to my friends. They’re like, no way. I have no help. And it’s like, why you don’t want to learn about who you are. Like, and that’s what you’re going to learn is where all your energy is going.

Brian Mackenzie: Like you’re driving in a way for like, this is what we do, what I did, this is what I do. I still catch myself. Trying to go back to that is we literally are trying to be somewhere we’re not with our driving by driving faster to get to that place and then taking things personally with other drivers who have no idea that who we are when they don’t let us do what we’re doing, especially when we’re riding somebody’s ass or somebody who cuts in front of us, right? It’s like this whole prophecy is like this whole thing unfolded in front of me as I went through this process, right? And I’ve presented it the number of times through a talk that I do, and it’s literally the same thing every single time. No way. I don’t want to do that.

Brian Mackenzie: There’s just no way. It’s like, it’s like you’re going to find out what you do why why you’re so cut. Because you we actually give away all this energy doing little things throughout our day that we have no idea. We’re just trying to be so efficient because everything about our culture is trying to convince us that we’re not doing enough.

Brian Mackenzie: And there’s no, there is zero truth in that at all. And so we constantly are picking up more and more things to do. And this is has a lot to do with kind of the social media experience because it’s in this kind of endless scroll mode of like information. And we’ve bought on we’ve gotten it’s not bought on. Sorry, that’s that’s the wrong language. It’s we’ve been manipulated with this in inadvertently by filling ourselves with with a lot of information really quickly and then not being able to absorb all of that information. And so we skip to the next thing because we can’t absorb that thing. So we go to the next thing, get a real quick highlight that when it triggers something in us, whether it’s good or it’s a negative, positive or negative, and then we go to the next thing and then we go to the next thing because we can’t absorb everything and think critically enough about it.

Brian Mackenzie: So we’ve lost the ability to think really deeply and actually creatively about a lot of the things we’re doing. So we struggle to sit there with the thing that we actually want to be doing. Where in the morning I have, I’m cut off from the world from about 4 a.m. when I like to get up. And that’s just my preference. It doesn’t happen every day, but I do it without an alarm and then I’m cut off from the world until about 9 a.m. and I’m involved in physical practice and practice of thinking and doing things creatively that get me going. Then I will do a block of work after that, and then I cut off around two or 3:00 and give myself a big break and then I’ll go back to something for about 90 minutes and I’m done and I refuse to go back to the way I used to do things because I was miserable and I didn’t understand why I was fried.

Brian Mackenzie: And this is allowed me to go and take stressors like I’ve had like a stressful life and doing things and being like, Oh, so why am I training? Like going and I train? And then it’s like I bring myself down and calm down and allow my system to relax to where, oh, I’m hungry, man. I’m starving. I can’t tell you how many people I know that are like, Oh, I’m just not hungry after I train. And it’s like, Wow, who if I just a sympathetic nervous system response?

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. If I don’t if I don’t get to a food source within an hour after a workout, I’m just terrible. That’s great. Well, my wife I mean, my wife is my wife is like, don’t you want to feed your child? I’m like, no, I need to feed myself because I nothing is going to get done and nobody will be happy until I get food because I am voraciously hungry at the moment.

Brian Mackenzie: Yeah, I’m about the same. And even though I eat prior to actually eating and training, too, but I for years I train like an idiot. And I mean, look, man, I train like I like to train, but I like to expose myself in training as well. So training takes a bit of time with me and I’m invested in it.

Brian Mackenzie: And that process I used to treat poorly. I would fast until I like I was on the whole fasting game for quite some time and that caught me years later. And it’s just like, yeah, I found out through trial and error and through experimentation that feeding a highly functional nervous system is imperative and not feeding it can have poor results long term.

Dean Pohlman: So so for you, I wrote this question down because it sounds like we need to practice being OK with not doing more. And for you, it sounds like the reason you started doing that was because you thought about how it used to be and you compared it to where you are now. Do you want to talk about that?

Brian Mackenzie: Yeah. I mean, I I I really hit walls with things. But, but, but here’s the thing. I wouldn’t have admitted those were walls Yeah. Years prior to that, you know, and then it wasn’t getting older. It was just being like, I mean, I got, I got, I screwed myself by getting into this breathing thing. And that inevitably set me up to taking such taking coming back to the beginning of so many things and working my way back into them with the breathing thing showed me how I was actually responding or reacting more, I should say to this the things that I was doing in my life and that provided me an opportunity to explore who I actually was.

Brian Mackenzie: And in trying to actually define that, I actually got really confused about things because the thing is, is we can’t actually I found out you can’t actually define who I am or what I am. We think defining ourselves is by it begins with like a name that we get our height, our weight, and then it moves into a lot of things like, oh, I’m a coach, oh, I’m this, I’m that. And that has nothing to do with who we are. It really doesn’t because you cannot be what can change and are we’re so much more than that. And we don’t realize that like, you know, I was talking about cellular respiration and the Krebs Cycle and this crazy thing that is so complex. We I mean, we’re just scratching the surface of what we understand about it.

Brian Mackenzie: But you’re actually doing that trillions of times a second, and you’d never say, this is who I am, but that is more who you are than anything that I would like to define myself as. And in doing that and exploring those edges and breaking that down and really looking at that, it’s like I came to terms with the fact that it’s like, oh, this is just a process of living and really exploring what I’m capable of. And I don’t think I’m ever going to find the end the end result of that because it’s so infinitely large and vast.

Dean Pohlman: I was going to say, so what were some specific examples from your life in that process?

Brian Mackenzie: Yeah, I mean, almost breaking my neck, you know, and literally having, you know, having to learn to re walk on relationship issues. You know, you know, growing up or being around family, being around kids and seeing how kids were interacting with my family, you know, like just being an uncle. Like, I pay attention to things on my parents, watching them age and seeing that process and watching the process of people who were once very active, becoming less and less active.

Brian Mackenzie: And the the things that go come with that and no judgment, right? Like like I’m just really paying attention to things in my own life. With me and then the people who are in my life and what was happening with them. And then understanding that, you know, the root of the problem with the problems that I had, was me, there were there was nobody else to blame.

Brian Mackenzie: There’s nobody else to look at. There’s nothing else to look at. No matter even if I say everything about culture is trying to push me to convince me that I’m not doing enough. Well, I’m the participant. If I choose to participate in culture and when I stop participating in culture in that manner, I stopped convincing myself that I needed to be busy.

Brian Mackenzie: And I found out that I am the very definition of what time is and how I value that shows up to what it is I do. And that should be the reflection of where I’m at in my practice. And that’s why I take the time with my practice and what I do in the mornings. Yeah, with myself because I want that to be a reflection what it is I do when I show up to a client’s house, I go on, you know, an interview or whatever. I’m bringing that energy.

Dean Pohlman: So a lot of these a lot of these changes are a lot of these, these mindful practices you engage in are it seems to me like these are your ways of of being OK with not doing more or that’s that’s not the right way to say it. It’s your way of, of practicing being OK with not doing more.

Brian Mackenzie: Correct. OK, it’s about practicing. It’s about being engaged in the thing that I’m actually doing like and this is why I brought up the driving thing.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah.

Brian Mackenzie: Well, if I’m driving, why aren’t I here? Hmm. And some people where you are, even if you’re speeding and acting like, no, you’re not, you’re actually somewhere else. And, you know, it’s when you’ve got to do the time, you got to do the experiment in order to actually understand what that means. And it’s going to be different for a lot of people.

Brian Mackenzie: But, I mean, when I saw it clear as day on day two of driving the speed limit or under which I will say the first time I tried this experiment, I stopped doing it after day one. Then I came back to it. Yeah. And then on day two, I was like, Oh, this is what I’m going to be doing the rest of my life.

Brian Mackenzie: I now understand what it is I’ve been doing with myself and I’m I’m putting myself into the incinerator here. That’s that’s this hamster wheel everybody is involved in versus actually stepping out of that and some people do this really well, like really, really well already. But by and large, the vast majority of us do not. And slowing down enough to actually observe that is the point.

Dean Pohlman: Hmm. OK, so driving the speed limit is is a way of I guess I’m also thinking that it’s a way of just practicing being present and practicing being engaged in what you’re doing.

Brian Mackenzie: What else is there? There is nothing else. Hmm. There is absolutely nothing else. And that’s the hard, hard thing.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. And breathing.

Brian Mackenzie: Go outside of that air and.

Dean Pohlman: Breathing can help you, can help you practice.

Brian Mackenzie: Breathing is that entry point.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I mean, at.

Brian Mackenzie: First, breathing at first is really about like, OK, I’m consciously participating in my breathing, so I can’t be doing much else or thinking much else. Right. The breathing my only goal is to make you aware of your breathing. So that when you are actively doing things and your breathing starts to run around because it will, you’ll be like, oh.

Brian Mackenzie: Or when I’m lifting weights and all of a sudden oh, I need to transition my mouth breathing. OK, is this where I want to go? Yep. OK. How long? Oh, that was a little too long. Yeah. Yeah, because you weren’t designed to be doing things that long like that. Mm hmm.

Dean Pohlman: So I know you got a hard stop. I wanted to. I wanted to ask more. I would. I had more questions written out, but I feel like we could just go on for, you know, episode three next season. But some things you didn’t touch on that I think would be awesome to to hear more about from you directly.

Dean Pohlman: The gears of breathing. Yeah, talked about that. So the gears of breathing. We don’t have any time to go into it. I’ll just preface I’ll just I’ll just put a teaser in and say Gears of Breathing would be great to hear about from from Brian and. And the last thing I was thinking was the relationship between exercise and stress.

Dean Pohlman: I remember reading a book once where it talks about how exercise is stressful, but because you are the one who is controlling the stress, it teaches you to be able to be in stress and be OK with it. Is that…

Brian Mackenzie: It can do that until it doesn’t do that. OK. Of which I’ve seen plenty of that. And yeah, people who think they need to be training the same like here, I need to go run three miles today. I need to go run three miles today. I need to go run three miles today. I run three miles every day. That’s no longer anything worthwhile for you. Mm hmm. You missed the point.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So. So a big theme of what we talked about today is, yes, this can be helpful if you’re not already taking on too much.

Brian Mackenzie: Correct, Correct. And let your breathing guide you. I mean, it’s your entry point to energy, and you only can use certain energy pathways for so long. It’s real simple. I mean, the Internet’s full of this stuff. You can go look at all the anaerobic pathways and you know how they work, how long, how much time you have on those, and just know that mouth breathing happens in those.

Brian Mackenzie: So beyond that is our aerobic pathway or pathways, and that involves the nose. Hmm. And so most of what we should be doing is through that nose. And that can be a guide into how your training and what you’re training.

Dean Pohlman: Got it. All right, Brian, I know you got to go. I don’t want to keep you any longer, guys. If you want to learn more about what Brian does, I don’t always talk about this stuff at the end. But, Brian, your company is called ShiftAdapt. I think you have breathing courses. Can you just briefly…?

Brian Mackenzie: We have some things. Yeah, it’s still a stress which we offer online. I do. We do do an art of breath. Usually once or twice a year at this point. But we have a lot of stuff on how to implement the breathing the gear specifically, which there’s plenty on the membership on shift for, you know, and we actually have the breath calculator there on how to get started with starting a breath practice and learning how to develop resiliency.

Brian Mackenzie: And that’s the other part of breath breathing that people just don’t realize is that, you know, most people are using it to kind of as a gateway into calm, which is great. But unfortunately that’s not… like CO2 sensitivity is a big problem within culture because it’s directly connected to mental and physical health. And when we are hypersensitive to CO2, we are health very it’s pretty quickly it’s not V thing, but it’s a good thing. But CO2 sensitivity is one of the most trainable things that we have. That’s the importance of engaging in nasal breathing, what you’re doing, but also developing breath practices that are training that resiliency as you go through them. Mm hmm. And we’ve got a if you go to shift, adapt dot com, forward slash breath work, it’s a great starting point right there.

Dean Pohlman: Cool. I got to check that out myself. You know, you do awesome work, so thanks for coming on again. Yeah. I guess we could do a whole season of these episodes, but hopefully this is enough for now. I’ll look forward to talking to you again soon. You know, stay in contact, guys. I hope you really enjoyed this episode of the Better Man podcast. Be sure to check out that first episode from season one. Brian, thanks again.

Brian Mackenzie: Thanks, Dean.

[END]