Detox your body and unlock deeper healing through the power of breathwork. Kurtis Lee Thomas, creator of the Breathwork Detox modality and founder of the Just Breathe Foundation, reveals how intentional breathing can release stored stress, trauma, and negative emotions while resetting the nervous system. From his own journey of overcoming chronic health challenges to guiding transformative sessions for organizations like Nike and NASA, Kurtis shares how Breathwork Detox delivers immediate results—boosting focus, relaxation, and emotional breakthroughs. With practical tips for daily breathing practices and stories of profound transformation, this conversation explores why breath is the most accessible and life-changing tool for health and vitality.
The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.
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Detox Your Body With Breathwork: Healing Through Breath With Kurtis Lee Thomas
I’m joined by Kurtis Lee Thomas, the Founder of the Breathwork Detox modality and the Just Breathe Foundation. Kurtis has been featured on the Today Show. He’s been recognized as the number one employee well-being provider of 2023 and honored as Entrepreneur of the Year in 2024 by Best Holistic Life Magazine.
His groundbreaking breathwork technique has been used by organizations like Nike and NASA, as well as athletes and celebrities, to help people overcome anxiety, trauma, stress, and ADHD. The results speak for themselves. After 1 session, 98% of participants report major stress relief, improved focus, and deep relaxation. What makes Kurtis’s story even more powerful is that it began with his own health challenges. When conventional medicine couldn’t provide answers, he turned to alternative healing and eventually uncovered the transformative power of the breath.
In this episode, we’ll dive into how Breathwork Detox works, why it’s so effective at eradicating stress and trauma from the body, and how you can use it to experience greater peace, clarity, and resilience in your own life. Take a deep breath, settle in, and get ready. This conversation with Kurtis Lee Thomas might change the way you breathe.
Kurtis, thank you so much for being a guest on our show here. I’ve been excited, since I learned about you and the work that you’re doing, to have this conversation. I’m a super curious person. I’m going to learn a lot from you. I’m excited to dive in and learn from myself. I get to experience your virtual session. I’m looking forward to that. I get a whole day with you. Thanks for joining us.
I love it. Thanks for having me. I love what Einstein said about curiosity. He said, “I have no special talent. I’m just passionately curious.”
Breathwork Detox: The Origin Story And Modality Explained
That’s a great way to live. You have this amazing platform and therapy that you’re doing, Breathwork Detox. I want to dive into the work that you’re doing and how it transforms and helps people live their best lives and optimize their lives. I would love to start with the origin story, and then we can back into it from there. You shared with me earlier that you had your own health challenges, and that’s what led you on this path to discover this. The suite of tools that you have, what do you even call it?
It’s called Breathwork Detox. That’s the modality. It was born from a bunch of different things. On my own spiritual journey, which started around 2011, I knew I wanted to help people. I came from being a serial entrepreneur, and I became a certified life coach, certified hypnotherapist, NLP Practitioner, sports science fitness professional, and Reiki master. I was pretty much collecting these certifications, trying to figure out what it is that I truly wanted to do and what it is that I was good at.
During that journey, I had health complications. My stomach was the main cause of the problem. I went to every GI doctor you could imagine. I was spending thousands of dollars on copayments. I had insurance. For five years, I suffered, and doctors couldn’t diagnose me, never mind heal me. I became more and more desperate trying to figure out the source of my pain and my discomfort.
I did everything you can imagine, from all traditional to non-conventional. I went to the jungle and drank ayahuasca fourteen times. Nothing did it. I then found this one lost ancient breathing technique. I did one session, and it completely eradicated my stomach condition. I’m a very skeptical person. I got to see it to believe it. I need the science. I need the facts. I could not wrap my head around how this one silly little breathing technique healed what the best doctors from New York to LA couldn’t do over a five-year time span. That’s what made me open my eyes and realize that people don’t even know this exists, so I made it my mission to bring this modality to the world.
That’s an amazing story. I’m always so curious about where people’s passions come from. Oftentimes, it’s born out of some kind of suffering that you want to alleviate in others. That was true for you with your own health challenges. It seems like with so many people who are doing the type of work that you’re doing, it started as a way to help themselves in their own health journey or someone they love. That’s amazing that you stumbled into this, discovered that, and had that kind of outcome. For readers who are new to this, can you break it down for us? What is the Breathwork Detox modality? How does that differ from other breathwork techniques? What exactly is it?
When you hear the term breathwork, it’s very much an umbrella term like yoga. There are many different forms of yoga, like Kundalini yoga, yin yoga, power yoga, Bikram yoga, and hot yoga. Breathwork is that umbrella term. There are many different types of breathing techniques. Different techniques are used for different things.
Breathwork Detox is by far the most powerful, somatic, cathartic breathing technique you can do. I will say that 99.9% of the time, we should be breathing through our nose. That’s connected to our parasympathetic. It brings us to rest and digest. That’s where we want to live. However, the Breathwork Detox technique is done through the mouth and out through the mouth, which sounds very counterproductive to nose breathing. However, you cannot achieve what we achieve in Breathwork Betox by breathing through your nose.
If you take the body’s natural response to alleviating pent-up stress or pain in the body, what the body does is you’ll see the body get stressed, and then all of a sudden, the body goes like this, “Ah.” It does a sigh of relief. That’s the body’s natural mechanism for releasing pent-up stress, emotions, and pain within the body.
We pretty much take what the body naturally does and consciously induce it over and over again with this mouth breathing. What that does is it not just alleviates surface-level stress, but as you keep going, you peel back the onion and the layers. You keep going until you go so deep that you start hitting unresolved, emotional issues, unresolved trauma, and suppressed stress that you never learned to regulate. All types of miraculous things happen when you start peeling back those layers. That’s why a lot of people even cry during breathwork.
Trust me when I tell you that I’ve done this for the most masculine men in the world, from war veterans to Navy SEALs, NFL athletes, and prison inmates. At least 60% of all people cry. Crying is a huge energetic release. It’s a huge emotional release from things that we’re holding onto. There’s no other technique out there that can induce such a massive release as this particular modality.
The Breathwork Journey: What To Expect In A Session
Walk us through what a typical session looks like. What happens in a session? How do you get into this? What immediate effects do people usually report?
In my particular sessions, I make them fun and energetic. It’s entertaining. Healing doesn’t have to be boring. I have my own flavor. I have a slew of other teachers underneath me, who I certify, that have their own flavor and bring their own medicine. Typically, if you’re going into a Breathwork Detox session, whether it’s live or in person, you’re going to have your dedicated space. In that space, all you need is a yoga mat, or you can lie on your couch or your bed. You’re lying down on your back, and you’re comfortable. There are little to no barriers to entry, unlike yoga and meditation, which we can get into in a little bit.
You’re lying on your back, and the instructor, who is either me or one of my students, is playing music in the background. The music isn’t the typical music when you walk into a crystal or a yoga shop. It’s higher energy in the beginning, and then it goes into more emotional music. The music is, in itself, its own journey it brings you through.
The instructor is giving words of affirmation, is using NLP techniques, and is motivating you to continue this breathing. You have this instructor who’s egging you on to keep up the breathing process. During this process, you’re going through all these different trance states. At some point, the brain even goes into something called transient hypofrontality, which is another word for flow state. This is great for marketing departments and executives.
The prefrontal cortex of our brain, which is the CEO of our brain, is the decision-maker. It’s the one that judges everything and separates things. It says, “You’re you. I’m me. This is good. This is bad.” When you begin to quiet down that monkey mind, that inner critic, or what I call the self-saboteur, then all of a sudden, you’re able to see all the answers to all the questions you have in your life.
The immense amount of clarity that you get during a session is the reason why I personally do breathwork every day. It’s because I crave that clarity, and probably because I believe confusion is temporary insanity. It sucks being confused, whether that’s the next decision you have to make, like if you want to stay in this relationship or stay in this job.
We all have decisions that are at the forefront of our lives. It helps bring clarity to those, and it connects the dots from all the pieces that already exist. That’s one thing that could happen. Another thing is that you start to feel lighter. You start to feel more buoyant. Your body begins to tingle and release all this stuff that you didn’t even know you were carrying until you start to feel it release. That’s the beauty of it.
Sustaining The Shift: Daily Practices Vs. Deep Sessions
We hold stress in all these different areas of our bodies, and some people in different places. You’re getting to those places, pushing through that, and letting go of that through this process. I imagine that builds up over time. You’re saying you also do this every. Do most people do one session and they have this amazing experience, and then they don’t necessarily need to do it again for a while? There’s probably some version we need to do every day. Can you talk about that a little bit?
The good thing about this is, unlike yoga and meditation, we’re going to be extremely consistent to be able to see those compounded results. Unlike yoga and meditation, the results of Breathwork Detox are immediate and undeniable from one session. What I’m leading, which you’ll be joining us later, is what I call a deep session. You don’t need to do a deep session every day. You can do this once every week or every two weeks. We do them every two weeks. That’s all you need for a deep session.
What I do is when I tap in, I’m doing much shorter sessions to have the maintenance of all the deep work that I’m doing. That’s why we created something called The Breakfast Club. We do live breathwork every single morning, 7 days a week, at 6:00 AM Pacific Time and 9:00 AM Eastern Time. That’s the tap-in. That’s the maintenance.
In the deep session, you don’t need to do it a lot. That’s the beauty of it. That’s how powerful it is. You create your own schedule of what you feel you need. When I first found this, I did the deep session every single day for 8 to 10 months. That’s because I loved how much I felt. I felt so much lighter and buoyant. I felt good. I’m like, “Why wouldn’t I want to do this every day?” It was also my personal initiation into being able to teach this. That’s my own flavor.
That makes a lot of sense. You report that 98% of people see a massive stress relief, improved focus, and deep relaxation. Does that hold true? You said one session is immediate. You get undeniable results from one of these deep sessions.
You’re going to feel something, for sure. The statistics that you’re reading are from a case study that we did with both Nike and NASA. They did the breathwork technique, and then that’s what they reported, 98%. Pretty much everyone’s going to feel something. What I will say is that how much you get from it is contingent upon your ability to go all in and surrender at the same time. I believe those are the two determining factors.
When I work with high-level CEOs or multimillionaire entrepreneurs, they’re always on the go. They have a lot of guards up. They have to push things down and keep going forward. Those are shells and masks that we all wear. Those people need to learn how to surrender a little bit more. The breath peels away at those layers. Maybe if it’s not the 1st session, it’s the 2nd. If it’s not the 2nd, the 3rd. Guaranteed, within the third session, you’re going to crack. You’re going to surrender to yourself. You’re not surrendering to me. You’re surrendering to your own nervous system.
You’re right. The body holds on to emotion. The body is a living library of all of our experiences. What the mind does is that mind always wants to live in the future, but the body holds onto the past. The soul always wants to be present, but the body is riddled with all these things that we hold onto. When we’re children, when we experience “trauma,” it’s not the trauma we think about now, which is losing a loved one or something like that. It’s getting pushed off the swing or not getting picked for dodgeball. That stuff is traumatic as a child.
As children, we don’t have the emotional intelligence to process those emotions, so we store them inside our bodies. The problem is, life keeps life-ing. We have this compounded crap, like heartbreaks, failures, and all these things, and the body will hold onto it. That’s why everyone’s walking around with some ache, some pain in the lower back, or whatever it may be. That’s what my stomach condition was. I was holding onto all this energy and suppressed emotions. That’s why I couldn’t figure out, when I did that one breathing technique, how it eradicated everything. That’s because my issue wasn’t physical. It was energetic. It was emotional. That’s how I ended up in this work.
Unclogging the "Wind Gate": The Energetic Root of Well-being
You mentioned working with Nike, NASA, high-level CEOs, and celebrities. I imagine the more stressed out someone is in their life, the more relief they have. Is that true? Would you say that’s true?
I would say that would be true if they’re willing to let it go. People tend to hold on to the past. People tend to hold on to things that don’t serve them any longer. Psychologically, it doesn’t make sense. If I’m holding onto this hot potato and it’s burning my hands, I’m going to throw it away. When it comes to these emotions and past experiences, the reason why we don’t is because they’re attached to a belief system. They’re attached to a certain part of our identity. That’s what makes us apprehensive to release it because we think we’re letting go of our identity or belief system that we don’t yet know how to replace.
This is why conversational therapy will only get people so far and why I switched everything to breathwork. I feel like the breath can heal anything if you also understand conversational therapy. I use that in the breathwork. You’re using the breath to move all those belief systems and all that stagnant and stuck energy out of the body so it can clear and regulate your nervous system. That’s where the magic’s at.
Tweet: The breath, when combined with conversational therapy, can heal anything. It moves stagnant beliefs and energy, clearing and regulating your nervous system.
You’re resetting the nervous system, so then everything functions the way that it’s ultimately supposed to.
That’s correct.
When we talked before, you talked about this concept of the wind gate being clogged. Could you share a little bit about the wind gate and that idea?
For sure. The person who put me onto Breathwork was a CNT practitioner, which is a Taoist tummy massager. When she was working on my belly, she was the one who told me, “Kurtis, your wind gate is completely blocked.” I’m like, “What the heck is a windgate?” She said, “That is the place in your body where all the energy comes in and all the energy exits. If that’s blocked, you have all stagnant energy in your body. You should try breathwork. Breathwork is going to open up that wind gate.”
She’s the one who put me onto it. That’s when I had my first session. That’s when I was able to eradicate my stomach condition by opening that energy center in my belly, but it was bigger than that. What I learned is that not only is your wind gate there, but we have 72,000 energetic channels or energetic highways that run through our body.
For Western medicine, they don’t understand this energetic system called the noughties. Eastern medicine and Vedic do. We understand that there’s blood in our bodies, and we understand that that blood gets distributed through veins and arteries. Most people, even science, are made up of more energy than matter. We can walk into a room and feel good vibes and bad vibes.
We all believe in energy, no matter what religion we are, but we don’t know how energy is distributed throughout our bodies. It’s distributed throughout our bodies through this intricate energy system called noughties, which are these energetic highways. There’s one place in the body where all of these energetic highways intersect. It’s like the Times Square of your energy system. It’s your belly.
Also, 80% of your serotonin and 80% of your immune system are produced in your gut. That’s 80% of your health, your serotonin, your happiness, and your vitality, which is your energy center. It’s all in the gut. This is why they say there’s a gut-brain connection. This is why they say, “I have a gut feeling.” They don’t say, “I have an elbow feeling,” or, “I have a chin feeling.” It’s a gut feeling because we have intelligence, microbiome, and all this magic that happens within our gut. Some say it’s even more important to have better gut health than brain health because if you have good gut health, you will automatically have good brain health.
Reclaiming Your Breath: Why Proper Breathing Is Essential
You said 80% of our serotonin is formed in our gut. I always think of serotonin as a brain chemical, though. That’s very interesting. It seems like, especially in our country here in the US, most people are probably walking around not breathing appropriately, correctly, or in a way that’s most beneficial for our health. Would you say that that’s true? Do these sessions help us, throughout the rest of the day, breathe in a healthier way?
When I have a large group of breathers, the first thing I’ll have them do is have everyone put their hand on their belly and put their hand on their chest. I’ll say, “Everybody, on the count of three, take a deep breath with me. One, two, three,” and then everyone takes a deep breath. I then say, “Let it go.” At least 90% of the room is breathing wrong. They’re doing something called paradoxical breathing. When they take that deep breath, their chest, their shoulders, their clavicle, and everything up here move, but their belly doesn’t.
If you watch a dog or a baby breathe, when a baby takes a breath in, its belly moves up with every inhale. That’s how we’re supposed to breathe. We’re supposed to do deep diaphragmatic breathing into our gut, but what happens is life keeps life-ing, and we get all this stress. It closes up our diaphragms and prevents us from breathing down into our belly.
Also, on a subconscious level, we do hold a lot of emotions in our belly and in our hips. What we think we’re doing is that by not breathing in our belly, we’re stopping ourselves from feeling the pain of life. We’re cutting ourselves off from feeling the joy and the pleasures of life because that’s where all the magic is. It’s in the belly. We need to learn to breathe into our belly and do that deep diaphragmatic breathing. Most people aren’t breathing.
The irony behind this is that people think that I’m the best breather in the world because I have this big breathwork company, and I work with Nike and NASA. The truth is, I was the worst breather in the world. I wasn’t even breathing at all. I found myself holding my breath. I remember one time, I found myself holding my breath. It was on my birthday. My friend and his wife took me to dinner. My fist was clenched under the table. I was holding my breath. The only reason I knew was because at one point, I went, “Ugh,” and I took gas. I was like, “I wasn’t breathing.”
I went from being the absolute worst breather and having panic attacks and anxiety attacks to being able to jump on podcasts and lead hundreds of people. It’s a beautiful thing. I was able to regulate my nervous system enough that I felt comfortable in my own body again. I didn’t even know I didn’t feel comfortable in my own body until I started feeling comfortable in my own body, and I’m like, “This is how you’re supposed to feel. This is great.”
Real-Life Transformations: Impact Stories Of Breathwork Detox
I bet. You’ve shared your own story of how this has transformed your life. Could you maybe share a few examples of people who have come through your sessions, had some breakthroughs, and had some significant health changes? Give us a few examples of what kinds of issues have been resolved through this.
If I told you all of these stories, you would not believe me. I can go crazy and woo-woo, like, “How did that even happen?” There are two very practical ones. I’ll give one famous author, Mark Victor Hansen. He wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul with Jack Canfield. They sold half a billion copies. I did a men’s retreat, and he did the breathwork. He came up to me afterward, and he was speechless. He was like, “Can I have your email?” I’m like, “Yeah. How was it?” He goes, “I’m processing. Allow me to email you.”
He emailed me a week or two later. This is a guy who was arguably one of the godfathers of personal development. He has all these tools and whatnot. He’s a seasoned vet. He said that he’s been trying to forgive somebody for over 30 years. He did one Breathwork Detox session, and he was finally able to forgive this person during that session. He couldn’t thank me enough. The first thing I said was, “Can I use this as a testimonial? This is pretty good.” He said, “Yes.” If you go on the website, it’s on there.
Dr. Michael Bruce, who’s the number one sleep doctor in the world, has been on Oprah and Dr. Oz 39 times. He had a profound session. It was in the same one as Mark Victor Hansen. He did a video for me. He was like, “You not only changed my life. I’m thanking you. My kids are thanking you. My wife’s thanking you. I’m completely showing up differently.” That video’s also on the website.
When people deal with a lot of stress and they get rid of that stress, they’re almost like new people. They’re reborn. I had practical ones like that. There are wild ones. This happened several times, so I know it’s contributed to breathwork. These were women who were trying to get pregnant. I know this firsthand because one of my best friends spent tens of thousands of dollars with these fertility doctors. People spend a lot of money trying to get pregnant.
This lady, in a breathwork session, said she saw this heavy, dark energy when she was breathing leave her womb.” She was like, “I’m not into spirituality, woo-woo, or any of that stuff, but I felt this heaviness in my uterus lift off of me.” Two or three weeks later, she was pregnant. She has been trying to get pregnant for eight years with her husband. That story happened a couple of times.
I’ve heard so many that it has become normal. It doesn’t contribute to just one thing. Whatever you need, the breath will give you that healing. For me, it was my stomach. For him, it was forgiveness. For this person, it was stress. For her, it was a pregnancy. Energy is everything. This is why people like Nikola Tesla, who said, “If you want to understand the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.” For those of you who don’t know who Nicola Tesla is, when they asked Albert Einstein in an interview, “How does it feel to be the smartest man in the world?” He said, “I don’t know. You’re going to have to ask Nikola Tesla.”
Science is finding out that a lot of our root causes of emotional issues or physical issues are emotional issues. That’s why the Harvard study came out and said 60 to 90% of all doctors’ visits are stress-related.
We’re coming to a time when Eastern medicine and Western medicine are merging. I believe there needs to be a bridge between the gaps. I don’t think we should get rid of Western medicine because God forbid if I break a bone or something, give me painkillers. If I got a cavity, give me Novocaine. I am not knocking Western medicine whatsoever. I believe in it, but I also believe in the merging of the two. That’s where we need to head to.
You’re pioneering, in some ways, doing that work of being a bridge. Thank you for bringing those modalities together. There are so many things. We can exercise, eat right, and sleep, but if we have some sort of block in our energy system, then we’re still not going to feel our best, function optimally, and maybe have as much joy in our lives.
That’s the bingo. I was going to the jungle. I had the best diet. I was vegan. I had a vegan chef. I had every supplement that you could imagine. I don’t even know if half of them were even working, but I was taking them every day. What I realized is that it doesn’t matter how many podcasts you listen to, how many green juices you drink, or how many books you read. If you are holding onto the energies of guilt, shame, regret, or anger, it’s a death wish. You look at people like Steve Jobs. He had all the money in the world and all the best doctors, and he couldn’t heal himself. He was open about some of his issues he had with his daughter and whatnot. It wreaks havoc on our nervous system, and it can kill us.
Dr. Suzuki from British Columbia University did a study. He took 80 Guinea pigs, and then they took the condensed molecules from the energy of anger. For one hour, it had enough toxicity to kill all 80 Guinea pigs. You can look that study up. This is the stuff that we are choosing to keep in our bodies that’s wreaking all this havoc in our nervous system and causing imbalance, stress, anxiety, and dis-ease. More than what it’s contributed to the emotional things that are going on, the things that the body’s holding onto are causing far more issues than what’s being reported.
The Just Breathe Foundation: A Vision For Global Breathwork Awareness
I would love to hear a little bit about your Just Breathe Foundation and some of the work you’re doing there in spreading awareness. You’ve taken this on as your personal mission. Can you share a little bit about the bigger mission you’re hoping to accomplish and the legacy you’re hoping to leave in your life?
Yeah. You nailed it earlier. I would love to be an active participant and help bridge that gap between not just Eastern and Western medicine, but philosophy as well, and to get this particular modality of deep diaphragmatic breathing, Breathwork Detox, to the masses because I’ve seen what it can do. I’ve done very invasive plant medicines and things that are not for everybody. Breathwork is for everybody. I don’t think it’s a modality. It’s a movement.
We even pivoted with some of the work we’re doing in the foundation, which used to be able to bring this to children. I wrote a children’s book on breathwork. It’s a female character and her grandmother. We donate those to elementary schools. We’re looking to create a documentary. That’s what we’re raising funds for, because we want to bring this to the world in a way where they can see it and it’s tangible. They can learn it, and they can see the success stories in real-time. That’s a project that I’m bringing to the forefront to make this happen and make it happen sooner rather than later. That’s my mission.
My mission is to also certify as many teachers as possible. I feel like a lot more goes into my karmic bank account when I teach people everything that I know, and then they go out there and do what I do. I don’t look at people as competition. If you believe in competition, you’ll automatically adopt the scarcity mindset. I believe that there’s an abundance of money out there and an abundance of love. If you just have enough for yourself, you don’t have enough. I’m doing what I can, how I can. That’s where I’m at.
That’s pretty amazing. You mentioned a children’s book for this. That made me think of a question. Anybody can do it because we all breathe, but do you see success with young kids doing it, as well as much older adults and elders doing this? What’s the youngest and oldest person you’ve walked through?
The purpose of the children’s book is one of those situations where if I knew then what I know now, and if I can be one of the reasons why they know what I know now at the young age that they’re at, I could save them so much pain and suffering. That’s the main cause and reason for publishing the children’s book. It’s to get that out. There was another part of your question.
What are the youngest and oldest people that you’ve walked through this with?
You’re right. Anyone can breathe. As long as you have a pair of lungs, you can do this. For the deep diaphragmatic breathing that we teach in our Breathwork Detox, we have an age limit between 14 to 16.
That’s the line.
Each teacher is different. My rule is I’ll work with a 14-year-old, but on 2 conditions. One, their parents not just have to approve, but their parents have to have done a session with me prior. If their parents have done it and they want their kid to do it, if they’re 14 and above, I’ll work with them. Different teachers have different rules, but that’s the one that I have.
We go to elementary schools. I’m not teaching them the deep diaphragmatic breathing, and I want them to release all that trauma while they’re in recess. We ease them into conscious breathing. We’ll do more of box breathing, which is very simple and extremely effective to the point that Navy SEALs use it. Maybe the 4-7-8 technique in alternate nostril is a little bit more advanced, so I wouldn’t do that in an elementary school.
The simpler you keep it and give them a couple of go-to breathing techniques that they can pull out of their pocket and use whenever, they’ll naturally get curious and want to learn more. If you give them too much, they’re not going to do anything. It’s like juggling. I could juggle 1 ball, 2 balls, or 3 balls in the air. The moment you try to add a fourth ball, they all come falling down. I realized that if you give them the bare minimum to do, but it has to be an effective technique, then they’ll become a believer.
What about on the older side of the spectrum? Do you work with a lot of older adults or people who are in their 80s or 90s, even?
Yeah. We’ve done breathwork for people who are 80 to 90 years old before. They had tremendous breakthroughs. I’m looking to create something even for hospice. We’ve been going up from birth to death. I want to hit all spectrums and be able to cater to everyone. What I realize is that a lot of these people that I certify are registered nurses, psychologists, or professionals working with children. I’m developing programs with my students to be able to bring them to these niche demographics. That’s the scalability of what I’m doing.
You’re developing a program for patients in hospice. That’s amazing.
We secured HospiceBreathwork.com. We’re going to be building on that soon.
Simple Steps To Start Today: Overcoming Overwhelm And Anxiety
I’ll look forward to that. For someone who’s reading that maybe feels overwhelmed, anxious, or stuck, what’s something simple they can start with? Obviously, they can look up your work and attend a session. There are all kinds of things that you’re offering there. Are there simple things that someone could do even to get started?
Yeah. Don’t underestimate the sigh. I like to start simple. Take three conscious sighs. You breathe in through your nose and then let out a big, obnoxious exhale. The state change that I feel from those three, I can tangibly feel different right in this moment from those three. That’s what you’re looking to do. It’s the state change.
I’ve been following Tony Robbins for a long time. I went to something he did in Vegas a few months ago. He said out of all the 43 years he has been working with people, the 1 thing you can do if you want to change your life is take a long pause. He said, “You have to change your state.” This is why Einstein even said, “If you want to solve the problems of the world, you can’t solve them with the same level of thinking that created them.” In other words, you need to change your state.
The way to change your state is through your breathing. It’s the fastest and most effective way without using any type of drugs or substances to change your state. You could do exercise. You can do all these things, but with breathing or breathwork, you don’t have to move your feet. It’s the fastest and most effective way. Changing your state is the key. Every emotional state that you have has its own breathing pattern. When you can consciously tap into these breathing patterns, you can change and alter your awareness in your state, which is the greatest hack. Why weren’t we given a manual on this stuff?
Why don’t we teach this in elementary schools and everything else? It sounds like you’re starting to, so thank you for that. I’m wondering, too. Now that you’ve become this breathwork expert, do you think about your breathing throughout the day? Are you way more conscious of your own breathing patterns and things like that?
I know and I’ve heard those quotes from Tony Robbins and others before, but I still don’t think about my breath throughout the day as often as I should. I even sometimes find myself where I took a deep breath because I was holding my breath for whatever reason. I want to become more conscious and aware of it. Do you find yourself thinking about your breath throughout the day, being more conscious, and breathing more consciously?
I don’t think about my breath all day because I’m thinking about 1,000 other things like everybody else. We have 55,000 thoughts per day, at the high average. Unfortunately, 80% of those thoughts are negative in nature, like worrying and stress. Only 20% are positive. It correlates to the news, which is a little conspiracy theory if you ask me, but we won’t go there.
Ninety-eight percent of our daily thoughts are the same thoughts we had the day before. A lot of people are stuck on this hamster wheel, recycling these crappy thoughts, which leads to crappy emotions and crappy feelings with crappy breathing. Studies show that the more stress the world becomes, the less we breathe. What I do is the moment I become aware of the breath or aware of my emotional state, I take a nice deep breath and a nice big sigh. I’ll let the air in through my nose and down into my belly. I’ll check in.
If you want to have fun with it, you can gamify it. I’ll take big sighs. It doesn’t have to be a sigh, but I like the sighs. Every time you touch a doorknob, you sigh. You’re consciously checking in. You take a deep breath. It could also be anytime you walk through an entryway or every time you touch your car door handle. Whatever it is, you choose that and stick with it. It makes it fun. You see how many doorknobs you touch a day. You’re like, “I didn’t think I even touched that many doorknobs.” You can have fun with it.
For me, it’s awareness of my emotional state instead of the breathwork. When I feel my emotional state off, I immediately become conscious of my breath. It could be three times a day. It could be 30 times a day. I also tie it into a cold plunge every morning. While I’m in the cold plunge, I’ll do the box breathing, which is inhale 4 seconds, hold 4 seconds, and exhale 4 seconds. I’ll do that while I’m in there.
I like habit stacking. I do have that same belief system as everyone else. I’m like, “There’s not enough time in the day. There are too many things to do.” There is, so I’ll habit stack. I’m doing box breathing while in the cold plunge. When I’m doing this, I’m also doing this. People need to know their own schedule and make time for it. That’s why I love the breathwork because you don’t have any excuse.
In yoga class, you’re going to drive to yoga and do it for an hour. In breathwork, you can adopt a habit when you’re in your car, when you’re walking through a doorway, or when you wake up in the morning and you’re in bed. There are so many ways you can implement it. It only takes two minutes, not even. Sometimes, it’s 60 seconds. There’s no excuse. It exercises that awareness of self. Awareness is that muscle that needs to be exercised. You’ll find that it’s interconnected to being conscious of your breath.
That’s great. Thanks for the practical tips. I love the gamifying it, too. That helps us remember to be aware. It makes it easier. You did mention two things that were profound there. We have, on average, 55,000 thoughts a day, but 98% of those thoughts are the same ones we had the day before. We get stuck in those cycles. This sounds like a way to break out of those cycles a little bit and shift our state.
When you go into the breathwork, the eyes start twitching and go into that REM state. What’s happening is that the neuroplasticity of the brain is breaking up the old neural pathways in the brain. They say the nerve cells that fire together wire together. The more that we have crappy thoughts in a day, that becomes our default. The brain naturally wants to make those neural connections. You have to break up those connections and create new neural pathways. During this breathwork, that’s what happens. You start breaking them up. It’s a lot easier to get rid of old habits with this breathwork practice and a lot easier to create new, healthier habits by implementing breathwork.
The Future Of Breathwork: Scaling Impact And Documenting The Movement
That sounds great. I can’t wait to experience the deep session myself. You’ve given us so many great, practical things. It sounds like there’s a lot of exciting stuff on the horizon for you as well, with bringing this message to the young and old. I love that you’re covering the whole spectrum there and working through your foundation as well. Is there anything else that’s on the horizon? When you look out over the next five years, what excites you the most in terms of changing people’s lives and what’s coming?
For one, doing more of what I’m doing. I like bigger stages and bigger corporations. That’s my goal. I want to put more energy into working with large corporations. Some of these companies have 70,000 employees. As far as time management and being able to make the biggest impact, I noticed that doing that with corporations is huge.
I love working with executives and CEOs and training more students to go out there and do what I do. The documentary is going to be huge because people are going to be able to see more of the movement than the modality. That’s my focus. It’s more of doing what I’m already doing and then bringing this documentary to the world. That’s within the next few years.
That sounds exciting. I’m looking forward to that. I’m excited to experience it for myself as well. Where can the readers learn more about your work, join a session, attend a retreat, or experience Breathwork Detox for themselves? How can we connect with you?
If you type in BreathworkDetox.com, they’ll bring you to pretty much the program suite. There, you can have a link to join a virtual event, which we do every two weeks. We also do daily breathwork. You can get a consultation if you’re interested in becoming a teacher. We also offer a free masterclass for people who are interested in bringing breathwork into their practice.
If they want to reach out to us, they can email us from there. If they want to reach out to me directly, I’m pretty active on Instagram, which is @ManFromTheStars. I’m pretty good at returning messages within at least 48 hours. I try. Those are the ways to get a hold of me. If they want to taste the Kool-Aid, they can come and try a session with either one of our facilitators or me.
The only thing with this is I never want to convert somebody from Western medicine to Eastern medicine or from disbelief to that belief. I do have a goal, and it’s interesting that you set it in the very beginning. I thought it was synchronistic. My goal on these podcasts is to get people curious. I feel that if I can get people curious, curiosity is consciousness at work. That’s what it is.
I don’t think curiosity killed the cat. Ignorance did. That curiosity is what’s going to cause people to want to go deeper down the rabbit hole to try a session. That’s what I did. I tried it. I’m a super skeptical person. As long as people are curious and they’re willing to try something new. I was trying out of desperation, but hopefully, you don’t have to get to that point. That’s my goal. If they get curious, I’m happy.
That sounds great. I’m sure there are no negative or adverse effects of breathing, so what do you have to lose? Give it a shot.
Nobody has died from breathing, but there have been a lot of people who have died from not breathing.
There you go. What do you have to lose? I love that. Stay curious. Thank you for the amazing work that you’re doing, and for bringing awareness to this breathwork and how it can transform our lives and allow us to live healthier, happier, longer, and better lives. I hope that more people will engage and experience this for themselves. I’m looking forward to seeing you as well. Thank you so much for being here. Go to BreathworkDetox.com. We’ll have to have you back again sometime later, and I can share my own experiences, too, that way.
Awesome. Let’s do it. Thanks for having me.
Thanks.
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What a fascinating conversation with Kurtis Lee Thomas. We covered a lot of what I thought were super interesting statistics. We talked a lot about his Breathwork Detox modality, but I love some of the other stats that we talked about, too. Eighty percent of our health resides and stems from our guts. Eighty percent of our serotonin comes from there. Eighty percent of our immune system resides there.
Sixty percent to 90% of all doctors’ visits are stress-related. If we can alleviate stress, then we can probably alleviate a lot of the other conditions that people are faced with. This breathing can lead to a state change and allow us to enter that flow state, so that we can have more clarity and remove some of those thoughts. I thought it was super interesting that 98% of our day, we’re repeating the same thoughts that we had yesterday. How do we change that?
This modality that we’ve talked about seems like it provides an opportunity for us to change those patterns and our neuroplasticity and rewire the patterns in our brains. Check it out. Kurtis Lee Thomas of BreathworkDetox.com. I’m going to try out a session myself. I would encourage you to check it out, too. You can’t go wrong. There are no adverse side effects to breathing, so check him out. Thanks again for tuning in. We’ll see you next time.
