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From Paralysis to Purpose - Jamie's Empowering Story · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Remember how I said in a previous podcast that sometimes you just have those conversations that completely change your life.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, this is another one of them today.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_03: I have taken this back out of the archives of one of my previous podcasts because I really wanted you to hear this conversation.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: This conversation is with an incredible man called Jamie.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: And at the age of 22, he faced a life-changing challenge.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: He was told by doctors that because of an autoimmune condition, he was now paralyzed with no known cure and no known cause, and basically gave him a stack of medication for the pain.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: Jamie had other plans.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: In this conversation, we explore how he flipped that script on his diagnosis.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't accept that fate.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: He actually went on to found the Cotswold's Breath and Body Company, which is where I met him on a Wim Hof uh training experience.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: And he embraced a whole new way of living.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: So we're talking breath work, cold exposure.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I think what really got me was the conversation around setting those small, actionable goals that completely turn his life around.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: This episode really is all about the power of making bold decisions and listening to your body.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: His story is a roller coaster of resilience and transformation, showing us all what's possible when you refuse to let life's challenges write your story for you.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: So please grab a cup of your favourite brew, get cozy, and let's jump into Jamie's awe-inspiring journey.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: Today you get to meet Jamie, who at the age of 22 was left paralysed from an autoimmune condition.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: His doctor told him there was no known cause, no known cure, and all they could offer him was a series of medications to help him manage his pain over time.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Jamie had other ideas and made a very different decision.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so Jamie's interview today is the first in a series of podcast episodes where I'm going to be talking to you and other people about what's possible and available to us when we make definite, different decisions.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: Jamie is the founder of the Cotswold Breath and Body Company, an incredible young man with an incredible story that he's come here to share with you today.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: So grab your cupper, get ready to be inspired, and mess by the light.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: Good morning, Jamie.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: How are you?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very good, thank you.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: How are you, Louise?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm very well, thank you.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm very excited to speak to you and to share your story today.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: So let's not waste any time.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: Let's just dive straight in.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I would love for you to kind of like summarise the story that you shared at the at the Wim Hof experience that has led to this conversation today.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm going to just pass it over to you.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I mean, as you said, you came to one of our uh fundamentals workshops in in Blue Water.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And as part of that, we're encouraged to share, you know, our own story with breathing practices and holistic health and and what led us to where we are.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And mine was um one of person injury or autoimmune illness for me.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um so when I was in my early 20s, I after university I wanted to move to London or I wanted to work in in TV, and I don't I don't really know why I wanted to do that, but it was something I wanted to do at the time.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um I managed to move there, I managed to get a about 22 in London at Channel 4, and I I went there to follow that that dream.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and part of my challenge there was initially financial, you know.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I I could find a flat to live, but it meant I had to walk everywhere, I couldn't afford um transportation anymore as part of being you know a young person setting up on their own.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so I would walk eight miles a day to work, and I very quickly realized it wasn't my dream, but I would start working in the evenings and weekends, and I would be walking all the time as part of that as a necessity.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I enjoyed walking, but I was doing a lot both work-wise and I was doing a lot of cardiovascularly and burning a candle at both ends.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I got very ill very quickly.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up with an autoimmune condition called Guillain Barry syndrome.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, that's where your adaptive immune system or the part that's meant to decide what isn't isn't meant to be there and develop an immune response, like a virus, for example, it thinks your body's a virus, so it starts to um destroy parts of your body, and in my case, it destroys the part of your nerves that carry the messages.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when you lose that, um, you know, you can lose the ability to move, feel, uh, be aware of your feelings internally, you know, your proprioception, your interception, and also then eventually lose the function of your organs and and you know pass away.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that was 22.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that sent me on a on a journey of personal health, as you can imagine.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because the specific thing about my condition and most most autoimmune conditions really is people get told there's no cure for autoimmune conditions mostly.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And with my condition specifically, the doctors said there's no known cause of this and there's no known cure.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we think viruses lead to it.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I had glandular fever, and we've got treatments you can have.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I had all those treatments.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um but essentially it's a pharmaceutical response.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't keep getting worse, take these 15 tablets a day and carry on and see what happens.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when I heard that, I was always very uh self-motivated about things.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I decided then that I wanted to be the be the decider of my own fate, you know.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: If the doctor doesn't know what to do, or the doctor doesn't know how to cure me, then why am I going to put my store in that estimation of where I'm at, you know?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that I was ignoring medical professionals, you know, medical professionals have saved my life and they saved my life in that instance, probably too.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the deciding factor, if they don't know, I'm going to know.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that leads into things I've learned uh after this about stuff called the primacy of the brain, where setting your intention um actually changes your chemical environment to achieve those things.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if you set your intention now, now I teach you know Wimp-off method and ice baths and breathing techniques with my company, you know, if you set your intention to keep yourself warm, your body starts to enact the chemical processes to do that more than if you didn't.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that wasn't something I was aware of at the time, but it was something I innately felt was right for me.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so that sent me on a journey of health.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was in a neurological rehabilitation ward then, which is where I lived for a while while I was in the acute stage of my illnesses, and then I started to slowly every day try and do the next thing I couldn't do.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So initially that was my way of having actionable goals, you know.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: What what can I do, what is in my sphere of influence?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And um all of this was I realized as I went on and started to learn about these things was is good first steps, but it just felt it felt right at the time to be doing it.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was something I was doing without knowledge at the time.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I would try, you know, when I was sitting in bed and couldn't move my feet, I'd try and move my feet, and then when I could move my foot a bit, I'd try and move my leg.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I could move my leg, I'd try and sit up, and then when I could sit up, I'd try and start.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there was always a goal, and my goal over arcing was to be the most well I'd ever been before.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: Can I just interrupt you one second?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because I I just you know, I'm so was you unable to use your body like at all?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Had everything just kind of stopped working and and then Yeah, I mean it's a great question because it's different for everyone with autoing, and it's different for everyone with my condition too.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So my condition's an ascending paralysis.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I also had glandular fever, um, which was the main thing I felt when I was getting ill was just how ill I felt.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't notice I was paralyzed until it was kind of already mostly happening to me.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was focused on just how ill I felt, and you don't ever expect to be paralyzed.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: But once you're aware of it and it starts happening, it ascends usually from the feet up.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so mine stopped kind of in a U shape, starting at my hips and underneath my navel.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of where my ascending paralysis stopped in terms of internal feeling, external touch sensation, and being able to move.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um also, you know, the outside of my hands started to go.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'd I'd drop things quite a lot.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the left side of my face was paralyzed, um, and then it would be creeping up, but it kind of settled in those main areas, and then I was able to start to try and reverse it from there.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there was a period of time where I was completely you know immobile from above the waist down.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but interestingly, you can you can actually stand up in that situation, but you need support.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you can, for example, you can do a lot of things you don't expect to do.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: You have no feeling, and if you were to stand unassisted, you would just fall over.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were to um, but you can, if you hold on to things, feel like you're standing on your hips and balance and use your brain to overcome the physical side, and that's part of the neuroplasticity that I learnt in breath work and cold exposure is you're infinitely adaptable in all these different areas.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when I couldn't stand up, I could still make myself stand up with assistance, but my brain reinterpreted what I could do so I could maybe feel the very top of my femur on the inside a little bit, and it felt like I was standing on that instead of my feet.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I could try, I could try and neurologically get my head around that to try and stand up, but that's a part of your progression, you know, it's realizing what you are capable of.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you hear this a lot about people who lose sight, they start to have other other senses that they tune into more.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's just listening to your body and your intuition, really.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: But that was my that was my situation.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: I was looking at and was there I know I wanted I really do want to focus on like making the decision, but before that, was there ever a time when you know the the the fear and the uncertainty was like overwhelming and that you couldn't see away, or did you do you feel like you you got your diagnosis and you you went full into right, I'm gonna see what I can do?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: There definitely was a point of sadness and and despair, I think.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it was I mean I wrote an article about this actually, so I was very into uh film and TV and scripts and all that because that was what I trained in, that's why I went, that was where I was my head was at at the time because that was what I was trying to do in London.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um films and stories are quite powerful, and I had a lot of stories from fiction that that helped me out in this situation.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the one for me was from Lost.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that show Lost on TV?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, where they were crashed on an island in a plane.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I had a story from that.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the in the pilot episode of that, Jack, the main character, is in the woods and he's trying to sew himself up.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Kate comes in and has to sew him up, otherwise, he's gonna be in a bad situation, and she's panicking.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and he tells her a story about a fictional story in this show about his first spinal surgery where he had to cut a certain thing, and if he cut this sack next to it, the patient would die.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he did cut it, and he panicked, and he gave himself five seconds, he said, and he counted to five, and he had all the traumatic emotions in that five seconds, and then after that five seconds, he sewed them up and carried on.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that story roused her to action.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I had that same story.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was finally in a hospital, I'd been to about four or five, and they'd all sent me home because it's very hard to diagnose this type of condition, as anyone with autoimmune will know.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Any it's very hard to get a diagnosis.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time I was in hospital and I was still getting worse, and the pain was unbearable, etc., it's very painful to be paralyzed with a neurological condition.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I went into the shower and I refused all help.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I always refused all help um because I wanted to do it myself, which is good and bad in a way.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: You need that drive, but you also need to accept help.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I went into the shower, the disabled shower, I was in a wheelchair, I managed to lift myself into the seat below the shower, and I managed to turn the shower on, and I looked up and the water went into my eye, and I didn't realize that you reflexively close your eyes in a shower.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: My left eye was paralyzed, so I couldn't close my eye, and I hadn't even realized because the face went after the body.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd sort of got used to the body, stabilized the pain, and then in five seconds, like butter melting in a pan, my face went, and that really hit me hard because I was like, this is my identity, this is who I think I am.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I look in the mirror, I talk to people.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: My if I lose my face, it felt like a big loss.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: It felt like my ability to communicate was gone.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, when that water went into my eye, I realized actually I I'm screwed, I've gotten you know, this is it.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I just remember crying in the shower, I was just crying in in the shower about that, and then I remembered that story from Lost.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, and uh I gave myself those five seconds, and then I decided to do the next thing I couldn't do and keep working on that, and and really solidified my conviction then, thanks to a fictional show from the 90s.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: I you know, listen, whatever it takes, right?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just whatever however that landed with you, and and I just I love how you said like it solidified your conviction to do what you needed to do.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: So tell us then, obviously, you you you said every day I did the next thing that I couldn't do.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um what was what was the next step for you?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: Because you'd gone from obviously not being able to do anything for yourself, you was in re how long were you in rehab for?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, I think my family had known that more than me.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe I was in hospitals I was allowed to be in rehab for three months.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think I left rehab after a month and I was in two of the hospitals before that.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so what was your journey once you'd left that sort of environment?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: What what was your journey then?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: What was your next decision?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: After leaving medical establishments.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So by the time I'd left there, I'd got myself to what I thought was a good place.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was I'd been able to teach myself to to walk again.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: I had enough feeling that I could stand up unassisted.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I was still walking like um with your brain as opposed to your body.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So have you ever seen a kid try and walk, or you've ever tried to throw your legs without feeling it, that's that's kind of where you're at.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I was doing work every day on balance, on proprioception, the awareness of the way your limbs are in space, you know, where we when we stand up, we've our feet make micro adjustments to keep us stood up.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You lose all that.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I was working on that every day.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing like lunges every day, I was doing balance exercises every day, and that's where I went back to when I when I left.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I immediately went back to London.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was in a rehabilitation in Liverpool where my family's from, and I immediately went back to London and lived on my own uh to try and have what I thought was the a normal life, right?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of benefit in that, but the you know that that bullheadedness, I say my recovery is 99% bullheadedness and one percent physical, you know, it's all it's all mental.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, and that's fine while you're still doing things every day, but when you come up to roadblocks that set you back, for example, you know, mine was to try and learn my medicine to try and do more things.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had to spend a lot of time adjusting to being able to accept that I could do one thing in a day, and then I wouldn't have the physical or mental energy to do anymore where I was used to being able to just do whatever I wanted, right?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I used I was walking eight miles a day before getting ill now, but I couldn't I can walk round the corner to the shop and that's all I could do that day.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that was uh something to get used to.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would slowly try and build up to being able to do two things, three things in a day after years, after seven years, I could do three things in a day.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and in the process of that I'd uh tried to lower my medicine, which I had, but I was still on 15 tablets, just lower doses of 15 tablets.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um I couldn't get it any lower.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'd had uh therapy during this as well as part of my recovery package.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'd had um uh facial physio as part of my package, I'd had uh occupational health, I'd had all these different things.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they try and give you these things in rehab as well if you have them.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: But really that's potentially the wrong time.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I I was never in a bad place in rehab because I had my goal to get out of rehab.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas when you're three years down the line and you're knocked off track, that's when you're in a bad place.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because you feel like, have I failed?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I wanted to ask, because when you said seven years, I mean that's a really long time to to to keep going.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean what what can you remember any of the things that you would say to yourself or uh you know or what was that what were the the the what was the one thing or the two things that just m made sure that you didn't give up when you got knocked back?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was never a a knockback, so it was it was always the next thing I couldn't do.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So my aim was to do the next thing I couldn't do and to try and do that every day.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: If I didn't get it that day, I would get it the next day, and if I didn't get it the next day, I get it the day after that.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um I always had those micro goals and I had to make adjustments in the short term that I believed would pay off in the long term.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if I went anywhere with friends, I would have to go there, sit down in a corner, and that's how I could go there.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't stand up, I couldn't socialise, I couldn't be involved in those conversations.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if someone came over to me, I could I could be there, yeah, and in that way I wasn't losing out, and I had to do that in all aspects of life.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one time I would see a comedy show, and uh the left side of my face was still paralyzed at this point, and there was a friend on the right and a friend on the left of me, and the friend on the right was having a whale of a time, and the friend on the left looked like someone died, and I realized that they were on my paralyzed side.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they they thought I wasn't finding this funny at all, and they were they were they were sharing that energy with me, and the person on the right was having a whale of a time.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's so funny.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: And how will it be?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: I came to realise that but have a look at your friend wanted to kind of like mirror you so that you didn't feel that you know that you Yeah, no one ever we didn't talk about it, it just happened.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, I love that.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: You learn what is a you learn what's a facade and you learn what's real.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, I felt with facial paralysis more than my body that I'd lost more, right?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I thought I'd lost my ability to communicate.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas I realized that that was actually kind of nonsense and you you are not your external self.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Never has that become more apparent than when you're paralyzed, because you you become this um you become this con it sounds wanky, but you become this consciousness inside your body.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you you're aware of this external vehicle, and you're aware that you live somewhere else inside of it, and uh as as who you are, and yeah, there are parts of your external self that um are who you are, for example, how you smile, how you look at things, how you pick things up, the running you might do, or whatever you might do in life that you think identifies you.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I realized through talking to people in like um that I didn't know like servers in in in in fast food places back when I ate fast food when I first went back to London, I could still have a conversation with them and I could still communicate with them, and there was no difference with the fact that half my face wasn't there.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was all my ego thinking that that was who I was.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you have little micro learnings as you go along and you make adjustments, and the thing that kept me going was the realizations I had about self, the realizations that I was still progressing or wanted to progress, um, doing the next thing I couldn't do.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: When I could do two things in a day, I had to look back and go, Oh, there's a change.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: When I could do three things in a day, I was like, oh, there's a change.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you reach a wall that you feel is immovable, like I did at seven years, that's when you really start to crash, unless you find something else.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I was very lucky at that time to find breath work and cold exposure, um, which ended up changing everything for me.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so tell us more about that, because that's that's obviously we met when I came to your workshop and and heard your story, and um and then just to sit like to see you and and imagine you as you were when you were like 21, 22, and then watching you there and talking about what you do now, I think it's just something that everyone needs to hear.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: So tell us about how how did like how did you find it and then and how did you start to use it and what happened?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'm in my mid 30s now, I'm 34 this year.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're well I'm in comparison to when I was ill, yeah.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 11, 12 years, maybe I've been ill.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'd reached the point where I had identified what was right for me, and everyone's what was right for them will be different.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd identified that I couldn't do cardio because of my physical and mental fatigue, but I could do resistance training.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So weightlifting specifically helped my pain, it helped blood flow, and it helped my energy levels.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I could do that.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing meditation via headspace, that was helping me.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was nutrition was the foundation of everything, so I changed my nutrition to what worked for me, and then I started doing blood tests every six months to check that my nutrition was doing what I wanted it to do, which it wasn't, and I had to make adjustments.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I had all of these things that worked, but I couldn't get my medicine any lower, and I was constantly trying to get my medicine lower.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And with my condition, especially my experience was that everything is guided by the patient, so the doctors not that they don't care, they just don't have any input as far as my experience is.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: They ask you if you weren't self-initiating lowering your medicine and doing all of that, no one ever would.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you would just be on it and the dosages would go up for the rest of your life.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's my experience.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I maybe I had bad luck with doctors, but my experience is that you stay on this stuff and it only goes up.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I had constantly tried to, and I'd reached a point where I knew from that seven years that I my pain was coming back too much when I lowered my pain meds.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't going away after two weeks, which was my usual pattern when I lowered it, and I was stuck.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: So then I saw a video about the specific breathing was the Wim Hof method breathing, which I'm an instructor in now, and our company teaches.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I saw a man with my condition on YouTube in his 60s in America, and my condition's worse the older you get it.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he said he wasn't using his crutches anymore, he said he had more energy than he ever had, he kept doing the splits.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he said it's because of this.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that sounds like bullshit.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um but he said uh it's proven by scientific experimentation, and here's some of the information.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Here's this man, Wim Hof, who who uh put this put the structure of the program together, and it's his method, and you know, breathing techniques I since found out have been around as long as they've been humans.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what this methodology did is it made it very easy for anyone to do, it made it very intuition-based.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you listen to your Roman body signals as opposed to counting or doing all these other things that a lot of other breathwork practices do.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the first one to prove through Western science the effects.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I started to learn about this, and I started to learn about Wim, who's an identical twin, and I started to learn that his mantra was that anyone can do this and he's not special.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned that they'd done experiments on him, injecting him with endotoxins with E.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: coli, and usually he'd have a severe immune reaction, and he didn't have an immune reaction.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: He actually skipped the symptoms of illness and went straight to healing from the illness in his blood work.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for anyone who's interested in that, that's suppressing the innate immune system and boosting the adaptive immune system.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening there.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I learned that they tested him and his identical twin and found that his twin couldn't do what he could do.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: His twin did the breathing but not the cold.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Wim said again, you know, it's a whole method.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that now we know through studies that it, you know, the benefits are compounding if you do all of us all of the aspects as opposed to just one of them.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: So breath, mindset, and cold is the Wim Hof method.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I started doing that, and I did the breathing, and I was originally pushing and pushing and pushing and trying to do things, like putting effort in and trying to do longer and longer.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was doing all these things that I felt mindset and bullhead in the sephore, and I wasn't listening to my body, and I wasn't listening to my signals.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and I went to a workshop like the ones I now run, and I learned about that.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that it doesn't matter if you try and hold your breath or not, it doesn't matter how long you hold your breath, it doesn't matter how long you're in the ice water.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: What matters is listening to your own feelings, listening to your own signals from your body.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got in an ice bath, which was incredibly painful for me because of um my nerve condition.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: But when I got out, I felt incredible.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it that kept me going back because I knew the st I'd read the studies and the stuff online that you can find out about that.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew in principle it should work, and I was doing everything else, so why not keep doing this?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt great after I'd stopped stopped pushing in the breathing and I'd just accepted what my body wanted and done there.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: When I started listening to my body, it got even better.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when I started being more relaxed, it got even better.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: These are all sides of myself I'd never used, I'd always been driven focused, I'd never been surrender focused, I'd never surrendered to my my body and done things that could change it.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'd always tried to push my body through things.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I started to learn other sides of myself that I hadn't exercised.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started to do this more and more, and after three months going in the ice, I didn't have the pain going in the ice anymore.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then after a year of going in the ice, I felt almost like I'd forgotten.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I need my medicine anymore.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went, I slowly went to the doctor and and came up on a plan to come off it, and I didn't need it anymore.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: When I cycled down, the pain didn't return, it started to go away.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if I did the ice every day, there were no pain signals.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then I reached a point where I didn't realize I realized that I don't have a limit on the amount of things I can do in the day anymore.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's not three things I can do in a day.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: I actually felt like I had so much energy I I had to start running.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's my thing, which is not something I ever liked doing.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I ran in school, but it wasn't something I wanted to do.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I started running, like I told you guys in our workshop, from our house to my uh fiance's work, which is 14 and a half miles away.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because part of this, when you engage your mind and part of these types of practices, and part of the primacy of the brain is understanding that you are capable of things, and unlike before, where I just decided I wanted to do this, I now knew that chemically I was priming my body to be able to do it too.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't just bull-headedness anymore, although bull-headedness is somewhat important, it was bull-headedness mixed with listening to my body and priming my body chemically to be have more energy, to have more endurance, to have all these different things that breath and cold practices can give you.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: So then I started doing that, and that was a massive change for me because I went from not being able to do cardio at all to doing huge amounts of cardio.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's just incredible.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it was something that snuck up on me.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had this aim to be the most well I'd ever been, but when I learned to do breath work and cold practices, and the reason I now teach it is it it gave me something else other than determination.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Someone can be a determined person, and someone can be a driven person, but that can be a fair weather trait, you know, and if something knocks you off, you can fall hard.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas I'd had a practice developing me that the whole purpose was to go inside yourself and feel what your body's telling you to do and not do, and in doing that, you're infinitely more capable, and I constantly work on that and adjust my micro goals.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, I was running a long way, but I was doing interval running, I was running until I had to walk, then I was walking, then I was running again.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: In the last couple of months, I've started again challenging myself because if you want to keep this neuroplasticity, you have to keep giving yourself the environment to create new neurological connections.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I wanted to run without stopping.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: So over the last couple of months, I've done that and now I don't have to stop anymore.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you can keep doing this life.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: Can I just ask a question there then?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because um, I loved how you said about having gone from driven focused to surrender focused and moving away from that always pushing and that ball headedness.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: And and this is one of the things that I've really been interested in over the last kind of like six months is you know, that very like you know, more that the alpha type.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then how do we bridge that gap between still being driven and still being like you've you sort of said, like um putting ourselves into the space where there's new challenges, but how do we do that?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Or how I don't even know if I'm asking the question the right way.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: How have you formulated that in your brain now so that it's not a case of proving a point or pushing yourself further?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's more of an exploration about what's possible for you.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like, did I ask that question the right way?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think so.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there were a couple of sides to it.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the first side for me, and everyone look, everyone's different, I'm just one person, everyone's got their own struggles and journeys, and everyone all come to their own conclusion.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, it was it was very hard for me to go back to what I thought my life was about, which was creative, the creative industry, having a realization in hospital that for me it was pointless.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was in hospital, I felt that not only is it borderline narcissism that that career path for myself, it was seemingly absent of any sort of um uh honesty or purpose or or or ethics, right?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was it was seemingly self-serving, and then I had a big challenge going back into that career going, what how do I do something that I now think empties my soul as opposed to fills it?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um so for me, the realization I came to was that it's no longer goal-oriented, as in I want to have done X by X age.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's I want I want to be doing the things I like doing around people that I value, and it's those connections with those people that matter, and it can still lead to a goal.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: You can still want to make something, yeah, but the important thing isn't making the thing, the important thing is the day-to-day interactions with the people you're doing it with, and that naturally leads to a goal.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was how I was able to reconcile that career is is looking at it and going, it's the people that I'm doing things with and the and the conversations and connections that matter, not the thing that we're doing.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then it be then it became uh then it became something that mattered more to me because it was people that mattered, it wasn't the thing.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oh love it.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: So with that being said, I know that I'm I'm probably rushing you through a little bit, but um just mindful of time.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: I I to get to that stage now where obviously you're running and um you know you didn't need the meds and so on.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: What was the journey from that space to you then doing what you do now, setting up your company, doing these workshops all over the country, you know, sharing your story.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the workshop was just insanely good, I have to say.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, every part of it was just amazing.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I think now you've just said that about it.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's about the the connections and the conversations and the interactions on that journey.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: That now sums up what the what the event was like because you created that space to have those conversations with other people, and you know, when we all got in the ice bars at the end, celebrating everyone that got in and celebrating everyone that got out, and it was just beautiful.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: So, how did you transition to do that?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think I might well thank you.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: I but I think for me, when I first decided to be an instructor, it was to deepen my own practice, not to start a business.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I I went to do it purely to try and get a deeper connection with my own ability to do it and my own recovery.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I was approaching it from a non-commercialized point of view.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then once I did that, I I got so much from it that I genuinely felt compelled to keep doing it and make us and the realization that I had in hospital was that for me at the time, and it was very biased for your point, the the at the time the only career that seemed worthwhile was healthcare.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and this was healthcare adjacent, and it felt like I was giving something that mattered.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: So everything I I I did from there on was always from a point of view of pe people and sharing and doing all this stuff, and and then it's it's more interesting for me to build to build a business and try and do something well because I still have that bull-headedness and I still have that drive to do things, but uh that's never the the goal.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like the goal, the goal is to uh fill up my cup as much as possible, and it so happens that I'm doing something that that we know works, has proven to be works, and and people get so much from it that that I can keep doing it, but my aim with all of it has been from a point of view of everyone's different, I'm not special.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: My own story is something I tell as part of this, but it's not something I focus on really.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: My my own purpose is to try and help people unlock within themselves the the knowledge that they're infinitely more capable than they think they are.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm currently, you know, I I do those Wim Hof workshops and I show that, but there's lots of other things I do as well, and hopefully I can fold that in two and try and find as many of these things as possible that check the same boxes, you know, proven about how they work, person focused.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: It all it all came from and it's never really happened to me like that before because I've had a company before when I was 18, a film company.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um that was never the goal.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: The goal was what am I gonna do by a certain age?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was all very selfish goal, really, when I look at it.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not selfish, but just person focus personal focused.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I think that's I think that's just what society really has has given us.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I think as I explained to be got on the call, you know, I predominantly work with small business owners from the perspective of helping them grow their business, but you know, without sacrificing so because their business is an extension of who they are, yeah, right.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: So once we get caught up in I'll be happy when I've got this goal, I'm making this money, I've got this number of clients, da-da-da-da.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: We're missing what exactly what you just said.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: We're missing the the connection, the conversations, and the and the and the grounding in the everyday journey that we've that we've got, that we're blessed with.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's so important, yeah.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's filtered.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, you people have to pay rent and people have to do all this stuff, so you're not immune, you're not immune to reality, but yeah, everything I always do with this is always from a point of view of like this is I'm genuinely doing this because it changes my life every day in my own practice, and it fills up my cup.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and what what is the best way to do that for other people and and and make sure that it's always not about me, and it's always about them, and it's always about showing everybody what they're capable of, and it's always about trying to lead by example, not talk about leading by example, like it's all it all comes from that side, and it's it's it's quite remarkable really that for me that that is a thing because it's not something I think you could try to get to necessarily.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't know how to do that, it's just something that's happened, and I'm very, very grateful it's happened.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if I if I hadn't have gotten ill, I think I would have been a vastly different person.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: So before as we wrap up, um, before you tell people where they can find you, and I'll put all the links in the show notes anyway.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: What is your one thing tomorrow that I can't do today that you're working towards?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: Very good question.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: So over the last couple of months it's been running without stopping.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I've sort of got a handle on that now.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um my uh but like with all the stuff you have to keep keep a handle on it.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um my next thing I can't do is trying to work on um consistency in my mindset.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: So with mindset, it's uh for the Wim Hof method at least, or for breath practices, it's feelings-based.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: So listening to the feelings you're experiencing in your body, not just emotion, not emotional feelings, but physical sensations, um, and then eventually being able to influence and change them.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that can mean thermogenesis, warming yourself up, that can mean warming specific parts of your body up, that can mean relaxing when you're tense.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: All of these different things are chemical processes that you can influence and train during doing breathing and cold.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I think the hardest thing comes in staying with that feeling brain as opposed to drifting into the thinking brain, or even just being thinking about a meeting or thinking about a conversation and not being completely centered in your practice as you get the chance to experience in a workshop.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you'll know this from being at these things when you're not thinking about guiding yourself, you're not thinking about life, it's very easy to get to that headspace.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: When you're in life, it can fluctuate, and there are times where I've been really, really in key with that, and there's been times when I'm not so in key with that, and I want to try and be able to get into that headspace quicker and get into that headspace in my daily practice.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of mindset stuff I'm working on at the moment, and how to elucidate that to people as well, because the mindset is so ephemeral often and so poorly described that I want to be able to find that for myself and communicate that to other people.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: I love it, and I'm sure if anyone can do it, Jamie, then you can do it.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, when you've got the workshop ready, you can just um email me.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: So as we wrap up, uh a massive thank you for sharing your story um and just really helping people to understand what's possible when you make the decision and then you commit.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: And and I think the biggest thing that I've taken away today, you said it so many times, it was just having those micro steps, having the micro learnings.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: And if I couldn't do it that day, I'll do it the next day, or if it wasn't that day, I'll do it the next day.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: Just staying true to what you were working on.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: I think that is just a lesson that we can all take.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: So, where can people find you, Jamie?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we're Cotswold Breathandbody.com.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's also us on social media, Cotswold Breath and Body.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our website's there, our our social media's there.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be, if you're Cotswold based, we're going to be at um uh festival at Far Peak Climbing Centre in North Leach on the 11th of March.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to come and meet us and say hello, but um everything's on our website.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: Fabulous.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: And you're on Instagram as well, right?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: Under Cotswold Breath and Body.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fabulous so.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: Jamie, thank you so much for your time today.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've really enjoyed hearing your story again and just finding out a bit more detail.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: Jamie, take care.