How Can Breathwork Help People with PTSD? With Tim Thomas. A Clinical Psychology Podcast Episode.

Today on The Psychology World Podcast, I’m joined by former Australian special forces veteran Tim Thomas for a brilliant conversation about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the life-changing healing power of breathwork and more. If you enjoy learning about mental health, trauma and trauma recovery then this will be a brilliant episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Healing As A Survivor: A Personal and Clinical Psychology Guide to Healing from Sexual Violence. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Who is Tim Thomas?

Tim Thomas is a former Australian Special Forces Commando, martial artist as well as veteran recovery specialist who’s life story is a masterclass in resilience. He was raised in a racially divided South Australian town, and his early connection with Aboriginal Elders shaped his understanding of courage, community and culture. Tim left home at 17 to work on remote cattle stations before later reinventing himself as a full‑time martial artist and becoming a recognised figure in Australia’s early “no‑holds‑barred” MMA scene.

After the Bali bombings, Tim joined the first Direct Recruiting Special Forces intake. This pushed his mind–body connection to the limits to earn his place among Australia’s elite Commandos. After tours of duty in Afghanistan and East Timor, he faced undiagnosed PTSD and he transformed his own struggle into a mission to help others grow through theirs.

Nowadays through Commando In Your Corner, Tim uses powerful storytelling, humour and brave insight to show people that the most powerful force on the planet isn’t a weapon— it’s a conversation.

How Can Breathwork Help People with PTSD?

Connor Whiteley: Hi everyone and moving on to the content part of today's episode. So, today I'm welcomed by a brilliant guest. I’m looking forward to this interview because we're going to be talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, mental health, and trauma. And from my previous podcast episodes, as someone who's experienced a lot of trauma in their life, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. So, hi Tim. Welcome to the podcast.

Connor Whiteley: Can you please introduce yourself?

Tim Thomas: Connor, great to be here.

Tim Thomas: So my name is Tim Thomas. I'm a former professional fighter and Australian special forces soldier. and these days I help people do things that most people have forgotten how to do and that is quality sleep.

Connor Whiteley: Brilliant. Thank you.

Connor Whiteley: And I definitely know why that quality sleep is important because I knew that for my mental health if I didn't get enough sleep, then it would only make my mental health even worse.

Can you please tell us more about your journey from professional fighter and special forces into what you do now?

Tim Thomas: I guess I got to the right path by doing all the wrong things.

Tim Thomas: And not that I'd call what I was doing as wrong, but I was going about it in a way that fatigue and trauma was almost inevitable. Thinking you're bulletproof, thinking you don't have to sleep, thinking that you can cash in your tomorrows to live today and there'll never come a time where you have to pay it back. So the origin point where I realized there was something going on was in Afghanistan on deployment. And I was beyond fatigued cuz they train you for fatigue but then there's a whole other emotional fatigue because you've lost mates over there.

You've seen all sorts of things happening to others. And it was like I only had two cents worth of energy left. And I t, There's no point carrying on. I'm going to die in this crap hole. And then a voice came through. I don't know where it came from. It said, "If you've only got two cents worth of energy, you better invest that wisely." And I didn't know what breath work was, but for some reason I looked at my left thumb when I was laying down.

We never got anything you'd call sleep, but every now and then you could get horizontal in the dirt. And I looked at my left thumb and I pictured a pinhole in the tip of my thumb. And I just did a big nasal breath through this pin hole at the end of my thumb. And it didn't just relax my thumb. Eventually, it turned it into white light down through my thumb in my mind's eye. And then I did the same thing with my pointer finger. And then I fell asleep and I woke up with 20 cents worth of energy. And I t that's interesting. I went to bed with two cents, breath work turned it into 20. And again, I didn't know what breath work was, but just I was breathing. And so every time I got horizontal, instead of just crashing into fatigue, I'd invest that 20 cents get back $2.

And eventually it got to a point where I was good inside my own skin. But it's funny how energy works. When I only had two cents worth of energy, Connor, all I could think about was me and my world and how it really sucked. But then as my energy rose, I became aware of other people outside of me. And you know what? If they're having a bad day, I'm having a bad day, especially in a war zone. And so I t, I can't just have enough energy for me. I've got to have energy for people around me because, even if I don't like them, who do I want around me when good times turn bad, so that idea of helping others, I kind of knew it, but it really got embedded in my DNA in Afghanistan.

And again, I didn't know what breath work was, but then it just helped, so getting out of defense, I had undiagnosed PTSD and I didn't know I just knew I wasn't sleeping well and that everything was annoying. and why is everyone sort of doing well in life and getting by and I'm living this life of quite desperation. So after seeking unsuccessful help in the mainstream medical system, I realized that there must be a lot of other people stuck in this situation. So I've got to find a way forward for me because I've got a feeling there's many others in this same situation.

And so I started creating these programs that worked on the things that I'd observed were the real problem areas. And these aren't on the spreadsheet. The thing about me  is I'm dyslexic, so I see things in patterns. And I saw that pain, it doesn't matter if it's emotional or physical, it'll eventually turn into loneliness, isolation, and you don't even know it's happening. And that's the real killer. and in that place of loneliness and isolation, if I'm the only one that's got my back, everything's a threat because everything is a threat. I can't drop my guard for a second because that means something bad is going to happen. It's going to be my fault. So fatigue was something that went hand in hand.

So all the success metrics of the programs we ran sleep and the improvement of sleep was the metric we judged whether it was a success or…

So breaking the isolation and getting people out of fatigue was sort of the main things that I discovered and seemed to really really work in the recovery space.

Connor Whiteley: Wow, brilliant.

Connor Whiteley: And thank you so much for sharing that because I understand that that must have been really difficult. So it's full testament to you, your strength and also your resilience in your lowest moment that you were able to do that breath work, you were able to realize that I need to be okay and I need to be more proactive  just so everyone else around me is okay. Especially in a combat zone so a massive well done. Because I know that for my personal experience it takes a lot to overcome that. Especially because as a survivor myself, the most annoying thing about PTSD is that when you're seeing everyone around you is living their nice happy lives, they're going to places, you're just trapped in your house because if you go outside you're going to have a panic attack. So I totally understand what you mean plus it's also really impressive that you were able to develop these.

Tim Thomas: Yeah.

How Did You Recruit Veterans for Clinical Work?

Connor Whiteley: So how did it start in a terms of finding more clients or how did you actually start recruitment and the sort of like a business aspect if that makes sense?

Tim Thomas: Yeah. No, no. I worked for a charity that worked for soldiers and no one was attending because the thing about it could be a guy thing too that we tend to think that if we ask for help that means we're weak and if we're weak we'll let the team down. So there's a bit of a thing that we stop ourselves. We're not our best friend in that area. And I noticed people would come into the center, and they'd go really quickly.

Tim Thomas: So, I t, I've got to change the culture here. So, I started these men's groups and I had them at a very specific time of day. So, just as the sun was setting, it's light, but there's different spectrums of light. And those spectrums of light create melatonin, time to, sleep and rest. and I'd have a fire going and people as the sun went down, the men would gather around the fire.

Again another safety thing and then they'd eat and then we'd all sit in a circle and I would simply interview guys that have moved forward in their journey and they're willing to share about how it was when they were in that place and how they got through it and it was such a simple thing but I understood that if you don't break someone's isolation then it's most resources of water off a duck's back.

So, millions and billions of dollars go into, mental health, but if you're not breaking their isolation and then getting them out of fatigue, it mostly doesn't land. and we had a goal of saving 40 veteran lives from suicide. I would have died happy if I achieved that. But, Connor, that was achieved within 12 months because of those two things. Breaking the isolation and getting them out of fatigue.

And sleep is a very measurable metric. And how with lessons learned in that area, I distilled that down into a business. Because what I've discovered is that your life is shaped by two moments every day. The five minutes before you go to sleep and the five minutes after waking. And if you've got PTSD, you're poisoning both. And breath work allows you to reclaim those two moments and find that peace, find that power.

So that's how I created the business of understanding those two critical moments in people's lives and then making a very easy to use online tool for people to just have that there exactly when they need it. it's a tiny investment of time but it creates a massive shift on how your nervous system operates. And obviously this isn't just for people with PTSD. I just had to go that deep and get that effed up to find this universal truth.

That was just natural and immediate and it just kept working

Connor Whiteley: And also thank you for sharing that.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that because something that I've been very interested in now for a long time is that if we actually taught people and if we actually taught them the importance of sleep and the mental health benefits that it has in schools and stuff. Then it would mean that people like you and me who also go through trauma wouldn't have to hit rock bottom before we find this miracle cure, and to some extent, it really is a miracle cure because once you realize it, your entire life does get so much better.

Tim Thomas: You're right.

And the data is in sleep poor people have a two to 300% increase in mental illness. So you could be completely fine, but if you're not sleeping you have a 2 to 300% increase in mental illness or likelihood of mental illness. And to me, I look at that data, then if we can improve sleep, surely that means you can improve it by two or 300%. And in fact, in Afghanistan, we used to use that as a weapon of war.

Tim Thomas: We used to deliberately run these operations that would disrupt the enemy's sleep. We didn't know about the science of sleep. We just knew if we could take it out for three nights, it would mess him up better than a bullet.

Connor Whiteley: Wow.

So that's really in impressive. And it does show that science can be used for the more like a darker side .

Connor Whiteley: But it is really clever.

Tim Thomas: But yeah, just to finish that off , so these days I say if you care about somebody, you care about their sleep. And people kind of know that, but I always like to ask the question, with all the people you care about,… Have you done anything active to make sure they're getting a good night's sleep?

Connor Whiteley: Yeah, because it's so simple, but none of us ever think about it. We always think about the more so-called practical aspects in terms of comforting them, bringing them dinner, making them tea and stuff, but in reality, sleep is actually so simple that we often overlook it. So, thank you for that.

And the second point that I just remembered was that for our audience you might be working in a mental health service and as Tim did if you find that your engagement isn't actually as high as you would have wanted. Changing it because like Tim said the men weren't as in engaged originally, because he restructured it so he focused on the fire, doing it outside and also doing it when the melatonin is actually being created is really important. Then it led to approved engagement because one problem that the west has when it comes to mental health is that we always do therapy indoors during the day and that just doesn't work for certain people.

So adapting it is really good.

Tim Thomas: Connor, you said a mouthful there.

Tim Thomas: An underlying principle we found is us humans, we're light receptive beings. We're very receptive to the light that's around So sunrise, sunset, our ancestors for millions of years have been exposed to us and that ancient DNA is still inside of us. so natural light exposure is the first thing when I was in the throws of PDSD the first thing a good psychologist told me was Tim a sunrise is a natural anti-depressant because turns on the wake up chemicals and if you can get naked sunlight through your retina it hits a part of your brain called the supercarismatic nucleus.

I hope I said that. But basically that's in charge of all your internal clocks, all your circadian rhythms. So when people say to me, "Give me a good sleeping tip." And I'm like, it happens first thing in the morning. If you can get that natural light through your eyeballs, then all your internal clocks are clocking on together. It's because sometimes people at the end of the day, they turn off the light, get in bed, and there's a part of them still running around the place. All right? And that really impacts on that golden 5 minutes before sleep.

Connor Whiteley: And definitely after the podcast episode, I'm not going to go outside there, but just I can get that. But you were mentioned about culture.

Tim Thomas: Sorry, I will just stop you just for a second…

Connor Whiteley: Okay.

Tim Thomas: because it has to be naked light. You would need to have your glasses off to get that light through your retina just so Otherwise, any kind of glass, looking through a window or having glasses on will stop the full spectrum getting in. I just wanted to tell you that so you can set yourself up powerfully.

What Mental Health Lessons Could We Learn from Aboriginal Elders?

Connor Whiteley: Thank you. So something else that I found on your website was that as a child you were connected with the Aboriginal elders of your community. Would you mind telling us more about that and some of the insights that you learned?

Tim Thomas: Yeah, So growing up in that space, I grew up in a town that was very racially divided. So if you think of sort of deep south Mississippi type type stuff, my dad worked in the church for the Aboriginal community. And as a kid, I could see two types of spiritual connection in the indigenous space. They were connected to the land. They were connected to each other. And it was in everything they did. in church on Sundays, there was a lot of, white guys saying they believed, but it didn't really show up in anything else they did during the week. and I'm not saying it was all peaches and cream either. There was so much violence, especially around alcohol, in that community.

I grew up just thinking it was normal. I sort of used to play t it was funny like a cartoon when all this stuff would happen but if it happened to a kid these days there'd be all sorts of outrage of but it was just normal back in the 70s right and it took about 3 years before the local first nation started trusting dad but then once you're in the community so I still go back there to this day and go hunting and fishing and camping. and it's kind of like you are what you marinate in. If you want to get a real close connection to the land, hang out with people that are, connected to the land.

And yeah, most of the traditional foods I still enjoy eating.

It reminds me of my childhood. And yeah, I hope that answers your question, Connor.

Connor Whiteley: definitely because I find it really interesting learning about other cultures and I'm sorry to hear about the alcohol abuse of your childhood town. That must have been really difficult for quite a while so thank you for sharing it. Do you think that the Aboriginal people and their teachings taught you anything about modern mental health or anything that we could apply to today?

Tim Thomas: Good question.

I believe we're as powerful as we are connected. Our peace, our power, our happiness, our love is relative to how connected we feel. All right? And all the illnesses we have, mental, physical, and otherwise, are the blockages that stop that connection. In our natural state, we are divinely connected, I believe. But in my case, PTSD, that was In the modern western world, that creates a speed of which we do things that creates blockages. Modern society stops us often robs us of quality sleep and that's a fatigue is a big blockage.

So if I was to say I'm almost hesitant to say this because most people don't understand if so Have you heard that term where you walk around barefoot grounding? So we don't just get nutrition from the earth by eating the fruits of it.

Connor Whiteley: definitely.

Tim Thomas: We get nutrition by putting our bare feet on the ground. And it's hard to explain this that how do you say to a white person that putting your feet in a sacred area feels better than we winning lottery?

Connor Whiteley: I understand what you mean because it is a really hard aspect to say that word but grounding is really important because when I was having the worst of my PTSD and my panic attacks one of the most relaxing things that I found was laying on my back, focusing on the gravity pushing me into the ground just so I know that I was safe, I was anchored, and I was actually there. That was a really powerful grounding technique. But you're right , it sounds crazy, and it's not going to work, but it really, really does.

Tim Thomas: Some places are more energetic than others as well.

And this is where when you have a connection to a particular area and you can walk around barefoot, there is something that shifts. and it's hard to put into words, but it is like a nervous system shift. It has to be experience. You can't just talk about it. yeah. Yeah.

Connor Whiteley: Yeah, thanks.

I think I vaguely understand what you mean, but you're right until you actually go somewhere and until you actually experience this moment or this spiritual moment, you can't explain it and you can't really truly appreciate what it is.

What is Breathwork In Bed?

Connor Whiteley: what is breathwork in bed?

Tim Thomas: it’s an app and I'll see most people try and fix their life while exhausted so breathwork in bed simply helps people recover their energy first. So do you remember how I spoke about our life is shaped by those two five minute moments before sleep and upon waking? Breath work in bed is a simple tool to help people through those moments with breath work in that place in your bed where most people often struggle with their ts going to sleep and then struggle getting out of bed. This is what the breath work in bed app does. It just gives you the breath work to turn your bed into a cloud literally tonight and then into a trampoline when you need it.

Connor Whiteley: Brilliant. So could you take us through a step by step how the app works just so we have some more practical tips as well.

Tim Thomas: Yeah, look, people who are exhausted don't want an extra thick sick things to remember, going to sleep. So, the genius of the app is you just tell it when you want sleep. when you want to wake up and we take care of the rest because when I'm tired and I'm going to sleep I'm like but there's a notification tap tap and then it'll guide my breath to breathe a certain way to elicit a certain medicinal response and then in the mornings you'll see a notification tap tap and then you don't get out of bed yet you stay in there breathe a certain way move your body a certain way remove some of that stuck energy and…

Tim Thomas: your feet swing over the side in a very different way.

Connor Whiteley: Okay, thank you.

But yeah, because I know that when I tend to wake up. If I'm really bad, I go on my phone for a while, which I know you're not meant to do. I know that's bad, but I'm human. I'm not perfect . But it's really a good idea where if we can just take a moment to be mindful and do that breathing exercise.

Tim Thomas: Okay.

What Breathing Exercises Can Help Us Improve Our Sleep?

Connor Whiteley: But what sort of breathing would you encourage us to do? Just so tonight when we go to bed we can use this for ourselves.

Tim Thomas: I'll be happy to show you a little exercise now that'll help people.

Connor Whiteley: Please do.

Tim Thomas: So, all I'm going to get you to do, Connor, everything is an invitation. Nothing's forced. So, I always ask three simple questions before I do any breath work exercise with anybody.

Tim Thomas: So, Connor, do you give permission to your very own breath to make every single cell in your physical body feel really, really good?

Connor Whiteley: I do.

Tim Thomas: That was Second one's just as easy. Connor, do you give permission to your very own breath to fully nourish and make your conscious thinking mind feel really, really good? Excellent. Last one. Do you give permission to your own breath to make your unconscious mind feel really, really good?

Connor Whiteley: I do.

Connor Whiteley: Yes.

Tim Thomas: Fantastic. So, all we're going to do right now, Connor, is breathe in and then Breathe in more. just hold it and wiggle. Wiggle your shoulders. Wiggle your arms. Wiggle wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. And then, when you're ready, let it out with a nice big sigh.

Connor Whiteley: that was fun. Yeah.

Tim Thomas: Teeth start showing when we start breathing properly. And I'm going to show you how to boost that, my friend. Because you've just put your toe in the shallow end of the pool. I'm going to take it a little bit deeper now. So this time and this is what I love doing Connor. We all have these amazing bodies…

Tim Thomas: but we just don't know what they can do. And you probably didn't know this but in your two fingers and your thumb you've got a power button. When you pinch them really hard you boost your inhale. So, I'm just going to play with this. So, before when you breathed in and then you breathed in more, you noticed that your top third was kind of filling up.

Connor Whiteley: Yeah.

Tim Thomas: All I want you to do with your fingers here is breathe in partway and then when you want to fill this area, pinch your fingers and breathe in. So, just play with that. Go. You notice those little power buttons?

Connor Whiteley: it really does work.

Tim Thomas: It's funny how it works, So, all we're going to do now, I've got my hands up here so you can see it, but keep them down by your sides. Have your power buttons down by your sides. And this time, we're going to blow it out. And as we blow it out, we're going to shake it out. We're going to blow out as much as we can.

Tim Thomas: And then we're going to do a rapid inhale through the nose. And halfway through our inhale, we're going to hit our power buttons and look up. And then we're just going to wiggle. And then let out a big sigh. Cool.

Connor Whiteley: Okay. Yep.

Tim Thomas: I'll be right here with you as we do it. So Blow it Out. Okay.

Connor Whiteley: that was good. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Tim Thomas: let's start this again and we'll do it together. So, when we blow it out, try and blow out as much as possible because this is where energy is and this is where stuck energy can sit. So, when we blow it out, try and blow it all the way out. And then when you breathe in, try and really rapid double the speed of the inhale so you're sucking that air over your nose. So behind our nose we have these sinuses and breathing through our nose creates a gas called Nitric oxide improves mood, immunity, performance, recovery, sleep.

Tim Thomas: All these things get produced when we nasally breathe. That nitric oxide doesn't actually get produced when we breathe through our mouths.

Connor Whiteley: Okay.

Tim Thomas: Okay, fun little fact about the nose. So when I say blow it all the way out, I want it all the way out so you can really suck that air over your sinuses. Almost like you're trying to pull it through the back of your head. You got that?

Connor Whiteley: Okay. Let's do it. Yeah.

Tim Thomas: Let's Shake it Let your head fall forward so you can sort of squeeze out your stomach. And then with your power buttons, breathe in through your nose. Hit those power buttons. Look Hit the power buttons now. Wiggle out any tension from the day.

And then let out a really big sigh.

Connor Whiteley: Yeah. It’s definitely fun. It does make you feel more energetic and breathing just makes you feel good. And considering I woke up an hour and 15 minutes ago, it does make you feel a lot more energized. So I can see if you do that straight after getting out of bed, it could have even more of a positive impact.

Tim Thomas: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Because you and I have been doing it our whole lives. And that's why I've noticed that it does to get that medicinal dose. It does need to be guided. Otherwise, I'll tend to lose myself. That little reset breath, I call it, is really handy if you're kicking around your day and something's annoying me. I'm human. Things annoy me. instead of going stuff that guy and then I'm carrying sort of a of handful of gravel from that experience. And at the end of the day, I often had to drink a lot, in the past when I didn't know what was going on. But when that happens now, when something annoys me, I'll discreetly pinch my fingers together in public and shake it, and just discreetly let it out. And that becomes me plugging back into my sovereign space.

Connor Whiteley: Yeah. Thank you.

And for our listeners, I also just want to say that people do breath work all of the time. But what I tend to do is box breathing if I'm really annoyed.

Connor Whiteley: So it's when you breathe in, hold for four ,let it out for four, then you would just keep doing it until your parasympathetic nervous system is activated and you're a lot more relaxed relax.

What Are Some Tips You Recommend When Working With People With PTSD?

So, the only other sort of question that I think we've got time for today is that so lots of our listeners might be a aspiring or qualified psychologist and maybe they want to work with people with PTSD. What are some tips and tricks that you might want to share or what do you think is important for them to know about PTSD beyond textbooks and lectures?

Tim Thomas: I've literally come back from a documentary film shoot where we were speaking on this subject and a lot of the psychologists wrote down what I'm about to share now. So what you have to understand is that a nervous system even when it's not functioning well protects itself and it senses when anything could potentially change it even if it's for the better. And so we noticed with these veteran programs about 3 days out people would start cancelling. If you had, 20 people saying they're going to turn up, we used to have up to 18 cancelling and it started at the 3-day mark.

And what we found the way to reverse out this cancellation was have the engagement not all on the date but break it up. So 3 days beforehand just a call up going, "Hey, how you doing? Just checking in. we're doing this event. what would be something you'd like to get from it? blah blah blah." And the fact is it's two humans making a connection. And when that happens, that nullifies any fight or flight. It keeps them in their prefrontal cortex out of their amygdala. And then that was 72 hours before. And then 48 hours before, just another call, checking in. All good. And then here's the kicker. We'd send them a text or a call the night before just checking in because a lot can happen at night time.

And that's when the unconscious mind can run the show. And so what we found was if we didn't address them in that 72-48 and the evening even if they did turn up, they were completely exhausted. It's like the part of them that didn't want to change says, "Fine, if you're going to turn up, you can turn up, but we're going to have you completely exhausted, and you're working with no energy. and they're not going to get anything from it. But if we reached out beforehand and had that human connection that will get them out of their house across a space that they may not have traveled before to that to a door they've never been to before.

And I know that doesn't sound like much, but if you're in that lockdown state where you don't want to change, you look for any reason to say it's too hard, turn around and go away. and these days what people do as if they're running a program is they'll get them to use the breath work in bed app for two weeks beforehand and have it as a bit of a screening test. Okay, we'll have you on the program, but for two weeks you've got to do this breath work in bed. And when they turn up, they're well rested. And that's a massive difference between someone who's well-rested, attentive, got some energy to work with than someone that hasn't slept, fighting themselves and even if they do turn up, they're completely exhausted. And it's very hard to work with someone who's feeling exhausted.

Connor Whiteley: Wow, thank you.

That is a brilliant tip about that text the night before, because I know for myself, and probably so many other people, when it gets to 7:00 at night and when it starts to get dark that’s when my PTSD and my mental health would go absolutely mad to be honest. It would be so intense so that's just a brilliant idea  because if someone gets that text, they know they're not alone, they know they're supported and that can make all the difference.

And the idea that you can use that app two weeks before that's another very powerful idea because one of the problems that we definitely have here in the UK is that it's just that one-week session.

There's nothing after it. So if you have any difficulties in between those sessions you can't get help. So the idea that we could use this app is actually a great idea. So a brilliant tip.

Tim Thomas: In real life, we turn a 90% nonattendance rate into a 90 plus attendance rate on that principle.

Connor Whiteley: Okay then. And that definitely goes to show for our listeners that when we go into mental health services, we probably won't be able to do this as assistant psychologists but once we're qualified, once we're higher level, and once we're able to advocate for changes, I think that we should potentially start exploring these different ideas. For example, the contact before the session and let's be a force for change that helps people for the long-term.

Tim Thomas: Yeah. The high-tech part of the equipment here isn't the app. It's people actually discovering that they don't own a set of lungs. They own a medicine cabinet with a lot of different shelves. And as someone who has prescribed a lot of different medications, I lost six years of my life to pills. I didn't know my own breath could do a better job getting me to sleep, to do a better job relieving my pain levels, to do a better job creating anti-inflammation through my whole system, And the reason I made the Breath Working Bed app is for people to discover what's right there and have it handy because I don't do something unless I'm reminded of it.

And the amount of times that this has saved my life at 2:00 a.m. when you wake up and your head's doing those ones. I've lost count. But because it's something I discovered, it worked in Afghanistan and it worked when I was going through my divorce. I'm like, "This actually works.

This actually works." and I think if you find something that actually works, it's your responsibility to create ways for other people to access it as easy as possible.

Connor Whiteley: I couldn't agree more.

How Do You Support Someone Who Is Resistant To Psychological Support?

Connor Whiteley: So I think that my final question is that, because we're starting to run out of time is that, how would you help someone who's very resistant to the idea of breath work or anything that you're going to present them with to treat their PTSD?

Tim Thomas: We came across a lot of people that were highly resistant to any form of treatment.

Tim Thomas: And we'd have two ways around that. we would support the family, Because it's not just the person that's suffering. Often it's their family that's suffering as well, the people around them. So we would do what we could to support them vicariously through those people closest to them. the other thing and this asks the question. So everyone's up against something and whatever you're up against ask the question how many other people do you think are in the same situation? So when I'm up against somebody who's resistant and again this is universal.

I've just discovered this through the veteran space. This could be anyone with cancer relationship any form of anything. The golden question is how many other people do you think are up against what you're up against And then you count backwards from six. You come back from six again. And then eventually they'll go, " thousands." and that can break their isolation. But then the next question is, do you think if you could find a way forward for you, you could find a way forward for them? And you see how that breaks the isolation that golden question. and when we're isolated, we're in our fight or flight, fast but dumb.

When that isolation is broken it's like the toricade comes off your intelligence and you can go into your prefrontal cortex you can sort of put a satellite in the sky and see it all so I work off the fact that everyone has everything they need inside of them our job is to guide them into accessing those resources so holding the right space asking the right questions And if it was someone that wasn't in my line of specialty, let's say it was someone with cancer who was resistant to, seeking treatment or anything like that, I would find people that had gone through what they had gone through and successfully come out the other side.

Tim Thomas: So that person who's gone through that journey, they might say something that they've heard before, but because they've been through it, they can shift it from their head into their heart. And that's when the real unblocking the connection happens and…

Tim Thomas: the person starts accessing their own ability to move forward.

Connor Whiteley: Yeah, that was really insightful thank you because it's all about that sense of shared connection, knowing that you're not alone and if other people can come through this then that can be a really really useful realisation. Since I know for lots of us aspiring psychologists we're often met with job applications that want us to understand how to explain or how would you deal with treatment resistant people. Which I think is a horrible term and to be honest I probably misremembered it but really just helped a lot of us on job applications, so thanks.

Tim Thomas: I might add one more thing because when people are isolated and fatigued, their cortisol levels are really high and too high for too long drives your hormone levels into the dirt. So that's another form of fatigue. So I've often had success with guys heavily resistant. I'm like, " have you had your testosterone checked recently? That's important." They say, "Yeah, it is important. I haven't had it checked." And then when they check it out and it's low, then they might see an endocrinologist, which works with hormones. They get their hormones balanced and all of a sudden they've got a part of their life that's out of fatigue, more energy, more options. Too many times I've seen people trying to fix their life from points of exhaustion and it just doesn't work.

So my goal is, get them out of exhaustion and then all of a sudden they will often instinctively know what to do next.

Connor Whiteley: Okay, thank you.

Connor Whiteley: So, we're out of time, but it's been brilliant talking with you. So, please tell everyone and know where they can find you online and everything that you do.

Tim Thomas: Three simple words, breathwork in bed. You can turn your bed into a cloud tonight if you want to try the breath working bed app. And for everyone listening, I'm happy to give them the 28-day free trial.

Tim Thomas: It won't cost you anything and it might just make all the difference to your sleep tonight.

Connor Whiteley: Brilliant. Best of luck with the future and a massive thank you for coming on the podcast today.

Tim Thomas: Thanks, Connor.

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