Technology to transform the mind

How I got unstuck and broke through stress by using nothing more than my breath.

It was New Years Eve, 2019. I was sitting at the dinner table with my wife’s family, and we each came up with a word to summarize the “theme” for our 2020 year ahead.

Mine was abundance, or more specifically, to live in a state of abundance. My intention for the year was to lean into it more fully. After having moved to New York, 2020 was the year to push myself to take bigger risks and do more. Abundance was about taking the leap to launch a new business and build 6 blockchain-focused accelerators around the globe.

A few days prior I had just closed a deal to launch a new venture fund. Securing $10m in investment capital and an additional $10m was about to close. The deal was 1.5 years in the making and I was ecstatic that it was all finally coming together.

Like many other people, 2020 laughed at my plans. “A state of abundance you say? Hah. How about a state of the world closing down instead!” A short 3 months after that New Years dinner, everything had fallen apart. The world was entering the heart of the Coronavirus pandemic, closing borders, locking down and every person going through the pain, job losses and suffering that that has brought.

For me personally, my year of abundance rapidly turned into a downward spiral of our investors pulling out, my new venture not getting off the ground, being stuck in South Africa indefinitely (after an intended two-week trip), an investment turning sour and losing millions, and Trump announcing a series of visa bans that paused my ability to plan anything for 2020. It felt like one knock after another, and while I have a high threshold for uncertainty, this was taking it to the next level.

I asked myself: How can I stay in a state of abundance while the world (and my world) is shutting down?

To be honest, I didn’t have an answer and most certainly didn’t feel abundant. I threw myself at some new business ventures, tried to stick with meditating, exercising and daily journaling focusing on what I had to be grateful for. Those rituals did bring some reprieve, but on a whole I still felt pretty much stuck and stressed.

Then came the shift.

I’ve been meditating for a number of years, spending 10 to 40 minutes every day observing my thoughts and being mindful of the moment. It has brought a sense of inner calm to my daily life, but when the pandemic hit and the future life I had envisioned seemed to be unraveling, I would wake up stressed. Beyond the time that I was actually meditating, meditation wasn’t pushing through that tension. As soon as I stopped and returned to my normal day, I’d feel stressed again.

It wasn’t until I signed up for a 24 day transformational breathwork course that things really shifted for me. For those of you unfamiliar with breathwork, it’s simply the ability to use different breathing techniques to get you into a different state of consciousness. It’s a practice that has been taught for thousands of years, and more recently backed by science. Some breathwork techniques can help you feel calm, some will increase your energy levels, and others can take you on a complete psychedelic-like journey into the outer edges of your mind. All with nothing more than the use of your breath.

The breathwork course that I signed up for was focused on using the breath to transcend the mind and thoughts, to get you into a “higher” state of consciousness beyond the ego, your fears, and the repetitive thinking of the mind.

It worked.

During the course I was able to push beyond my own thoughts and repetitive thinking patterns. I was able to elevate myself into a different state of consciousness. In that state, I could deal with the grief that I felt about my perceived loss, move beyond that grief, and map out the course of my life over the next 10 years (despite the ongoing uncertainty in the world). I was able to see what truly mattered to me and get into intense states of both gratitude and possibility. It helped me come up with a number of business ideas, reconnect with old friendships, and rebuild my confidence as an entrepreneur in a new country.

The first time I had experienced a transformational breathwork of this nature was 5 years ago during a weekend retreat that I attended. Every year since then, I’ve made a point of doing at least one retreat a year, but with the global lockdown, this was no longer an option. Doing a weekend retreat (while powerful) is one thing, but sticking with 24 continuous days of breathwork and the shifts it brought, was a whole other level.

If meditation is a daily ritual and practice that builds like a muscle, breathwork is like injecting steroids straight into that muscle and lifting more weight than you have ever before, repeatedly, for 24 days. You come out transformed.

It took almost two thirds of the year for me to realize what I knew intuitively: living in a state of abundance has little to do with what is happening externally, and much more to do with what is happening in my mind. My situation hasn’t vastly changed. But I have a clarity of focus and ideas for what is next that I couldn’t ‘get to’ before. I became unstuck. In addition, what is completely different is my state of being each and every moment of the day. I feel mentally fit like I have never felt before. That makes all the difference, and I have breathwork to thank for that.

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I’m excited that breathwork is starting to become more popularized and that more startups are working on bringing this remarkable ‘technology’ for the mind to the mainstream. Like Calm and Headspace have done for meditation, I expect to see an explosion of these startups in the years to come.

For those of you interested in exploring working with your breath, here are some of the courses and startups that I have found.

• The 6 Step Consciousness Breathwork Course: This is the course that I did, and can’t recommend it enough. (If you’re the type that just wants to dive into the deep end, then this is for you). It is lead by Jacques Theron.

• Breathwrk: If you want to take it a bit slower and ease into breathwork, then this an easy to use app to incorporate breathwork into your daily life (gradually building from just noticing your breath to more advanced techniques). There’s a great podcast episode by the founders of Breathwork that goes into why they started the app (which they launched in November 2019).

• Frequency: The team at Frequency frame themselves as The Peoloton App for the mind. They offer daily live streamed breathwork classes lead by various instructors (launched 5 months ago).

• Wim Hoff Method: Probably the most well known practitioner and advocate for breathwork, Wim Hoff is better known as “Ice Man” for his ability to use his breath to warm up his body and endure below freezing temperatures.

Have you had any experience with using your breath to transform your life ? Do you know of any other startups working in this space ? Share your story or leave a comment.