In this EPIC episode, Zander Sprague sits down with Tim Thomas, a former Australian Special Forces soldier and professional fighter turned breathwork and sleep expert. Tim shares his incredible journey from combat to coaching, revealing the power of breathwork, overcoming adversity, and why commitment fails when you’re not fully in. He breaks down the mindset shift needed to go from hesitation to all-in, showing how 100% commitment can change everything. Discover how mastering your breath can transform sleep, resilience, and overall well-being. Get ready for actionable insights and inspiring stories that will help you unlock your full potential and break through personal barriers!
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Why 99% Commitment Fails – The EPIC Power Of Going All In With Tim Thomas
Welcome To Epic Begins With One Step Forward Podcast
Welcome back to another excellent episode of the show. I am traveling halfway around the world to talk to Tim Thomas. Tim, tell us who you are and what you do.
Zander, my name is Tim Thomas. I’m a former professional fighter and former Australian Special Forces soldier. I’ve worked in the veteran recovery space for over a decade now, helping other soldiers get through PTSD after I went through my own loop. Through all that, I realized the best thing you could do for anybody is improve their sleep. Now I’m all about improving people’s sleep, connecting people back to the joy of sleep.
That is awesome. There is so much that I am curious about because you truly have had an epic life, my friend. Talk about some epic adventures. Let’s start off with The Australian Special Forces. That’s no small feat. Tell me just a little about how long you were in the Special Forces. What did you do while you were in the Special Forces?
I had my service career between 2004 to 2010. I did the things that other people did. I had my deployments to Afghanistan and East Timor. The one unique thing at that time was in 2004, the Australian government started this first-time-ever direct recruiting into Special Forces. They took regular civilians and provided they passed the IQ test, the psych test, the physical testing, obviously, and you could actually apply for Special Forces. Previous to this, you had to be in a regular unit for two years before you could even apply.
I was told that 5,000 to 10,000 people applied. Of that amount, 70 were accepted. I was actually the oldest allowable age in that group. I was 30 and everyone was saying, “You’re too old.” It’s so interesting because I’m dyslexic. I see things in patterns and it was obvious to me it was the first time I’d ever aged. I’d never aged before. I’m like, “This is the first time I’m doing this and everyone can think of the age they’re currently at and the attachments other people have to that particular age group,” because people were telling me, “You’re 30, you can’t do it.”
I’m like, “Shouldn’t it be me defining what I can and can’t do at this particular age group because I’ve never done it before? Do I really want to take on board what everyone else is saying?” What I realized they were saying was not that I couldn’t do it, but they couldn’t do it. A lot of people try and stop you with good intentions because they’ve tried to do something possibly epic and they’ve failed, they’ve gotten hurt, and they’re trying to save you the failure that they felt. They try to stop you, but it’ll give you a hard time about it. I realized that.
I went into this thing and of the 70 that started, they did not want us there. We were not welcome. We were considered civilian queue jumpers. We’ve got a statistic in the school of infantry, 300% more injuries than any other platoon to go through there. At the end of the Special Forces selection, which goes for 28 days in Australia, there were less than 15 guys that got through from the initial 70. Probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. When you’re in that space, it’s so all-consuming. It’s like you disappear.
If you don’t have your personal admin sorted out, like paying your bills, you’ll go back to your home and your electricity might be turned off. There are all these things that you have to balance. If you’ve got any small lack of integrity in your personal life, it really shows off. You can’t turn up and say, “My car didn’t start up. My girl didn’t do a certain thing.” It’s hard enough in that space, but you have to manage all your personal stuff. It’s what I tell people. If you think about going to the gym part, isn’t actually the hard part. It’s organizing everything else in your life.
If you think about going to the gym, the gym part isn’t actually the hard part. It’s organizing everything else in your life so you can actually be there.
You can actually be there. You talk about doing epic things. An epic thing is one part of having everything else in your life organized so you can do that epic thing. That’s often where people get stuck and people don’t talk about that. Speaking of personal admin, my firstborn was due to be born on Special Forces selection. They said, “Tim, this is Special Forces selection. You can either do it or see your son being born. You can’t do both.” Up until that point, I was a hard-working dude, but I was working in the early days of what would be called mixed martial arts.
Back in the ‘90s, it was just called no rules fighting. As much as I worked really hard, it wasn’t giving me anything above minimum wage and I thought, “I could not see it from my own perspective. I’ve got to see it from the child’s perspective. What does that child need? Does it need me physically there at the birth or does it need a dad with a job as it comes into the world?” I got my then-wife all the help she needs. I call it my then-wife, not my ex-wife because I stand for a positive future.
The Pivotal Decision Of “All In” Commitment
I got my mum down, I got her sister-in-law, and I did Special Forces selection. That’s exactly what they were looking for. The hardest thing I found, Zander, is making the decision to say, “I’m all in.” Once you make that, it’s like time changes, the distance between you and what you want changes. The world tilts on its axis. That’s the difference between you being 99% in and 100% in. There’s this immersion process where it’s not that it gets easy, the distances get a whole lot closer and it gets easier than you think it would be.
I couldn’t agree more, Tim. When I talk to people about epic and stuff like that, first of all, for me, what EPIC stands for is Every Pilgrimage Includes Commitment. Clearly, going through Special Forces is a pilgrimage. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of blood, sweat, tears. I’ve heard from other people I’ve talked to those who are been in Special Forces and done like here in the US, Ranger training and stuff like that. It is more the mental than it is the physical. There is a physical part.
There were plenty of guys fitter, faster, and stronger than I was.
That isn’t what actually gets you through. I’ve done some marathons, half marathons, and an ultra-marathon, not anymore, but I did do those. I remember when I was trying, I was like, “How the heck am I going to run 26.2 miles? That is a really long way.” I ran a couple of halves first and my running coach said, “If you can do a half, you can do a full.” It is the mental part of it. It’s when it gets hard when you have a grindy mile like it’s not a good mile. You don’t feel good, your feet hurt, your legs hurt, whatever it may be, do you keep going? You’re right with that whole, it’s easier to do 100% than it is to do 99%.
It’s this magic. You commit 80% to something, you get 80% back, you get 90%, 90%, 99%, 99% back. When you are all in, it’s like the universe gives you 1,000% back. It’s like the whole world is just waiting for you to go, “I am 100%. Nothing else matters except this one thing.”
It is easier. I remember when I ran my first marathon. I knew I was going to finish. I vision-quested the bejesus out of that. When I was running at 5:00 in the morning and it was cold and dark, I pictured myself crossing that finish line. I was like, “If I have to crawl, I am crossing that finish line.” I’m not fast, but it doesn’t matter. I finished it. The fact of the matter is, and your Special Forces training, whether you were first in your class or last in your class, you’re still Special Forces. You still made it through.
I want to share something in that space because there’s a really wonderful experiment they did. They had a mouse going towards a piece of cheese and they attached a little spring to its tail and they measured how many neutrons of force it pulled. It was something like 300 to go towards the cheese. They put a smell of cat behind it and it pulled like 1,200. There’s something about integrating the shadow, something about integrating the fear of what would happen if you didn’t go forward.
On some days, and I just want to share with that too, it’s a very powerful thing to hang onto both because if the mouse was tied, it doesn’t give a crap about the cheese, but then it doesn’t want to be eaten by the cat. Our minds respond really well to us imagining what would be the predictable future if I didn’t. I was quite blessed with that. When I was doing Special Forces, some days I was like, “I’m doing this because I want to be a commando.” Every morning on my phone, when my phone would start up, it had a little message saying, “You will be 079.”
079 is the qualification code for a commando. Every morning, I saw that. Some days, I’m like, “I was blessed to have the job that I left.” The last job I had before I was doing Special Forces selection, I had a complete a-hole of a boss. Some days, I’m doing selection because I wanted to be 079, I wanted to be a commando. Other days, I’m like, “Stuff being a commando, but if I stop this right now, my last job is that complete a-hole of a boss. There’s no way in God’s earth that is happening. F that.”
That’s the thing about our epic dreams. The things that we dream of doing that may seem impossible. There’s nothing wrong with saying for all the naysayers, I’m going to prove them wrong. That’s highly motivating to be able to say, “I finished a marathon. I made it through the selection process. I made it through the training.” Whatever gets you to your destination.
The Feelings Of “Now What?” After Achieving Epic Goals
I’ve watched a lot of MMA over the years, there are certainly fighters who are using whatever personal rage they have to go out, get into the octagon, and do their best. If they win, they’re not coming up and going, “Tim, what was your motivation for doing it?” There was a manager back there and I was like, “He told me I couldn’t do it, I’m going to prove that.” Who cares? You won. The thing is, the winning is great. Don’t get me wrong. Here’s my experience in achieving some epic things.
I’m going to ask if you’ve had this, which is you have this goal over months or years to get someplace. When I finished my first marathon, I was ecstatic. It was just like I couldn’t believe it. Probably about ten minutes later, I was like, “Now what?” I achieved my goal, but does it just end there? It’s not like when you made it through your training, you’re like, “I made it.” You’re not like, “That’s it. I’m done. I’m going off.” There’s always more. When you are doing MMA, you get a victory. That’s great. Now what? Now what do I do? Am I right that you sometimes had that thought, that feeling of, “This is great. I’m ecstatic, but now what?”
Yeah. We sometimes step over the fact that as we head towards an outcome, that is the greatest part. That is the part where we’re most energetic and we are moving towards something. Regardless of whether we get what we want or not, or get the outcome we want, Bruce Lee famously said words to the effect of, “Don’t worry about the outcome. Just worry about the moment.”
Teddy Roosevelt had this fantastic quote about striving valiantly and he said, “It’s not the critic that counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who’s actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again because there is no effort without error or shortcoming. He who knows the great enthusiasm, great devotions, he who spends himself in a worthy cause.” That moves me to the bone.
I talked about in my book that failure is part of the journey. We’re going to fail at things, be it an entrepreneur, training for a race, a fight, Special Forces, whatever. First of all, there’s a lot of learning in failing. That’s not how to do it. I know as an entrepreneur for the last twenty years. I’m a generous man. I’ve spent money on lots of software and tools and stuff like that that are supposed to help me do my job better. It’s not that they’re bad tools, they’re just not the right ones for me. You look athletic, I’m going to say perhaps you’ve done some running in your life. Running shoes are a great thing.
“These are great running shoes,” and you put them on, “They’re not bad shoes. They’re just not the right shoes for you. They may not fit your foot right. They may not give you the cushioning you want. There may be too much cushioning, it doesn’t matter.” It’s not a bad product, it’s just not the right one for you, and when you find the right shoe for you, you’re like, “This is great.” Of course, the shoe company goes and changes something in it and ruins the shoe for you and you’re like, “Come on.”
Everyone’s getting into barefoot grounding these days. I don’t think I spoke to it properly when you spoke about achieving something and then going, “What’s next?” There’s a bit of a saying here. If you don’t go within, you’ll go without. I know myself when I thought I want to achieve a certain thing and then I have this assumption that when I do that thing, it’ll give me something from the outside in. It does for like a window, but then it disappears like a mirage.
If you don’t go within, you’ll go without.
It’s almost like, “Tim, if you don’t go inside yourself to give yourself a sense of self-worth, this thing on the outside won’t do it for you.” You can’t put your sense of self-worth and attach it to something on the outside. That’s part of what I do, which is to help people see, Zander, that our value to others as they see it isn’t what we do; it’s what we’ve come through.
The other thing that I’ve discovered in my life is people will give attributes to things that you’ve done as, “That’s so great, that’s so wonderful.” Sometimes, they’re making you sound so altruistic about what you’re doing. Yet you’re like, “I’m doing part of my motivation is selfish.” It’s still a great thing. I’ll give an example. I used to live in Boston, and I volunteered at Boston’s Children’s Hospital and worked on an infant-toddler surgery unit. I was doing it because I just really like kids and I wanted to help out these kids.
Now, when I said, “I’m sorry, Tim, I can’t go out and meet you for a beer because I’m volunteering at Children’s Hospital,” People would be like, “That’s so great. How wonderful you’re doing it.” Yet I felt guilty. They’re like, “That’s so wonderful that you’re donating your time and all that.” I felt bad because I was doing it because I had such personal satisfaction in being around the kids, helping them out when they were scared, and helping the parents out so they could have a break.
The Challenge Of Receiving Genuine Compliments
I totally hear you. I don’t think it’s the fact that you’re questioning your motivation to do it. You could be like a lot of guys, that you can handle the grueling pain of a marathon, but can you handle the grueling pain of someone else paying you a genuine compliment?
There is that.
There is a part of us as men that if we’re not allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and let people contribute, because I’m a man, I penetrate into the world, but to allow yourself to open up and receive, that’s a whole level of vulnerability. I’m going to acknowledge you right now and I want to see how it lands. I’m interested. Zander, we’ve met maybe twenty minutes ago. First time ever. What I see in you is a man with a heart of service.
You have this energy. You’re the type of person that when you do something, you’re automatically thinking, “This would be really good for so-and-so-and everything you do for yourself, you pay it forward. You’re a real giver.” I want to acknowledge you. In my world, you occur as one of those guys that if you just think about the guy, he’s inspiring. He’s empowering. If you struggle to believe that you can empower someone without being in the room, imagine if you’re an A-hole and you’re like an energy vampire, the thought of you in my head will be, “He’s just taken from me.” Can you get the inspirational man that you are and can you let that in?
Thank you. I’m humbled because you don’t know me from Adam and I appreciate that.
I’d not if you’re a D-head.
I am here to help people because, to me, knowledge is useless if I’m not sharing it and I love what I do. I literally can’t help myself. I need to help people. One of my jobs is I’m a licensed mental health professional. I do that because it, honestly, it comes intuitively to me. I listen to people. I chew on it, and I try and figure it out. I get curious. Why is that happening? That’s something that I think is really important, especially with the work you do with veterans, and stuff is not enough for people to get curious about what’s going on. Why is this happening?
I get that. I want to harp on something here because of the trap that I fell into, like yourself, the heart of service. It was natural for me to give to others. What nobody knew, because I had a goal of saving 40 veteran lives from suicide, I didn’t care if I worked the rest of my life to do that. That was achieved within a year because I discovered two things that no one else saw, having my dyslexic pattern recognition powers. I’ll get into that in a second.
What I’m going to say to you and to every service-orientated person out there is what nobody knew at that time was that I was getting incredible results, but every probably 6, 7 weeks, I’d have to write myself off with alcohol in for about three days. What was happening in that space it was natural for me to give but I was giving of myself. I wasn’t giving of my abundance. What would be as if I was just adequate at 100%?
If I gave someone 10% which I’d naturally do, there was a part of me that said, “I’ve given you 10%, you better do something with that.” I want to have an attachment to what would happen with what I gave them. These days, Zander, My saying is I don’t give up myself anymore. I give of my abundance. Instead of being at 100%, if I’m at 500%, I’ll always invest in me at the start of the day. Before I did this show with you, I was up on the roof of my house doing breathwork, watching the sunrise.
It moved me so deeply, I literally had tears on my face. In that place of abundance, I can now interact. If I’m at 500%, I can give away 20% a day consistently. People can love it, hate it, tell me to F off, it doesn’t matter. It’s a very powerful thing to say that I’m in touch with something so much more powerful than what can be taken from me because we’ve all been taken from. When I’m working with high school students, I use the example of a little plant.
This little plant here, it’s been taken from and I ripple a few leaves off. The plant goes, “I want to protect myself.” I put a steel bucket over the plant. I ask the students, “What’s going on? Is it safe?” “Yeah.” I say, “What else is happening?” They say, “It’s dying slowly.” My vision for everybody is to live like energetic millionaires. If I’ve only got $0.50 and someone takes $0.25, that’s a massive withdrawal. I can’t help but chase that.
I’ve been that guy for years chasing $0.25 when I’d forgotten my ability to make $1 million the next day. For all the service-hearted people out there, yourself included, my message is to think of all the things that are in your area of care, all the things you want to help. I highlight the negative to highlight the positive. Picture yourself in a physically and mentally depreciated state. Would all those things in your life be better or worse for that? It’s an obvious thing.
The Significance Of Self-Care For Service-Oriented Individuals
Two things I want to tack on there. One is if you’re service-oriented and service-hearted, you need to have your own self-care routine. I started when I was in graduate school. They talked about it in every single class. It didn’t matter if we were talking about my addiction class. All the professors, every single one, talked about creating your self-care.
I started it in graduate school because I was like, “It’s a practice. It’s something that I need to do now.” It’s not, “Once I get licensed.” No. I had 3,000 hours of internship that I had to go through before I could even take the licensing exam. When you’re having to hold space for other people who are hurting in pain, in need of help, my heart gives it, I’m there, but I need to make sure that I am taking care of me, that I have my routines of exercise, eating right, sleeping right, and we’ll get into sleep in just a minute.
I had another therapist that I would go talk to because I needed someone else to talk to about some of the heavy stuff that I was dealing with so that I wasn’t carrying it around all the time. When I was doing part of my internship, I had about a half-hour drive and there was this dilapidated barn that I would pass every day. That’s where I said I would drop off my baggage from doing counseling where I was like, “I can think about it up to this point, but once I drive past that, I’m tossing it out the window until I drive by the next morning.”
I can pick it up and think about it for fifteen minutes on the way in. When I get home, I have to be dad. I can’t be all broody and moody and stuff. People hear about self-care, but they don’t really know what it is and they don’t practice it. Look at you, up on your roof, meditating, doing breathwork. Awesome self-care. That allows you to be to give of your abundance and, frankly, not have your abundance sucked all the way out. As you said, every three weeks, you’re like, “I’ve got to have a few beers.”4
It was insane. You’re really speaking my language, Zander. I think there are two completely different types of people in this world. They’re both you. They’re both me. There’s the you that are abundant in energy because they’ve connected to something super powerful. They’re that energetic millionaire. There’s the you and me that isn’t connected to their abundance. They still need energy. For me, on a good day, that might mean an extra coffee. On a bad day, that might mean a beer and I’m an a-hole because I need energy. I can’t generate it for myself.
I take it from others. It’s almost like a survival mechanism, like you’re drowning and you wonder why there are so many a-holes in the world because they don’t know how to generate and connect. The world loves to give us these comfort foods, substances, ice to drink, and take a lot of pills. The current consumer society we’re in doesn’t want to see you getting in touch with your sovereign power. This is one of the reasons I love breathwork because it’s free man. It’s our birthright.
Breathwork is free. It’s our birthright.
I certainly utilized and do utilize, I call it oxygen rejuvenation therapy. I have my clients who may have anxiety or something like that. What I do is I say, “When you’re feeling anxious and you feel your muscles are all tight, the number one thing your body wants and needs is oxygen.” If you breathe deeply, and I’m talking diaphragmatic breathing, and I get them to do it because I give them a straw, and I’m like, “I want you to breathe in through your nose, then blow out through the straw.” That just forces you to breathe into your whole lungs.
You only got to do this 3 to 5 times. You get a huge head rush because, by the way, you just flooded your body with all kinds of oxygen. Most of that muscle tension goes away. Why? Muscles are all tight, you give it oxygen, and they go, “Oxygen,” and they relax. It’s been incredibly helpful when I was doing my internship with high school and middle school kids, like 12 to 17, 18 years old. A lot of stress, a lot of tension. It was the kids who would actually do it with me and I did it with them. I’m not just asking them to do it. I’d be in the room doing it with them. They’d be like, “I feel so much better.” Funny that whole breath work, funny that whole breathing thing. Come on, the number one thing we need is oxygen.
It’s funny, too, the data shows that if you don’t breathe properly, pretty much every function of your body dies early.
It’s amazing.
It was not until I had a chronic injury that I realized that the age we’re in right now is not an age of information. It’s an age of marketing. A marketer has a very different goal than a healer. A marketer wants a repeat sale. They’ll promise power, give you a tiny bit, but then take dollars out of your pocket. They don’t care if you go into an early grave.
This is where we have to challenge our assumptions, because you and me care about human life. When a market is coming at you from say, Big Pharma, you can’t assume that Big Pharma cares about your life. They care about the dollars in your pocket, and they’ll put some happy puppets in front of you on their marketing team. Go, “That’s exactly what I want. Shut up and take my money.” A healer takes a bit longer to find because they’re not the loudest voice in the room. The good news is in the healing process, healing takes less time than you think, but the thing that takes the most time is the journey defined by the right healer.
Healing takes less time than you think. What takes the most time is the journey to find the right healer.
The Importance Of Feeling Comfortable With A Therapist
I say that all the time when I first meet with a new client, I say, “Therapy is a really intimate process. For it to be effective, you have to be comfortable with me. I may not be the right person for you. You’re not going to hurt my feelings.
That is the smartest thing I’ve ever heard a therapist say. Most of these guys spend their lives because they’ve worked hard to get to where they are. Seven years of work to get that piece of paper behind him. Most of the time, they’re justifying, “I’ve worked for seven years, I’ve got to prove this stuff works. I didn’t want to work all that time for nothing.”
What nobody tells a therapist is that the trauma, like before we were speaking, we were feeling with our bodies. We were thinking. Sometimes, this trauma that someone goes through goes down deeper than words can reach and the feeling of safety you have with somebody when you feel comfortable with that person actually goes down deeper than the words can reach. To hear you say that, that’s epic. Thank you.
You’re welcome, but I do feel it’s true.
Many people don’t get it. The amount of veterans that said, “I tried to get help, but help didn’t help. F that. I’m never doing it again.”
I’ve written 3 books and 2 of them were on sibling loss. I wrote one for siblings because my older sister was murdered 28 years ago, and when I was going through that, there really wasn’t anything that spoke to my type of grief, so I wrote a book about it. You see over my shoulder, Why Don’t They Cry? That’s for parents to understand their living child’s grief. There’s so much that isn’t said that parents feel.
I was 28. My younger sister was 25, and my older sister, who was killed, was 30. I was an adult. I was out on my own. Yet I still needed my parents some days, but I didn’t go to them because I’m like, “I’m not going to ask for your help because you’re already dealing with so much bad stuff.” My understanding of veterans is there’s a whole lot of just suck it up, you’re fine. Yet getting to talk about what’s bothering you, getting to talk to someone with whom you feel comfortable.
I think what you’re speaking to there, underneath all of that, and this segues nicely into the two things that I saw that helped me save 40 veteran lives within twelve months. The pattern I saw with pain, and my journey into this was just a veteran space, this is just the human journey. Whatever you’re up against, I’ve observed this pattern. It doesn’t matter if the pain is emotional or physical, it’ll get to a certain duration or intensity where it transforms from just being pain to loneliness and isolation.
Breaking The Isolation Before Resources Can Be Ported In
“I’m the only one going through this. I can’t go to anybody with this because this is so painful for me. Why do I want to spew it up on them?” Those unspoken words become like rocks around your heart. Isolation is not something that us social mammals do well with. If you want to flip it to the opposite, Zander, if you knew I had your back 100% and if I knew you had my back 100%, and we had that, everything else is a very small detail. Bring on the pain.
The opposite of that is equally as disempowering. If I feel all alone, everything is hard because everything is hard. I’m at like 1% processing ability. Guess what? I can’t drop my guard for a second because something bad is going to happen, which is going to possibly be worse. I’m not sleeping. Breaking the isolation is the first thing that needs to happen before the resources get poured in there. When you’re talking to your clients about you’ve got to feel comfortable, that’s a step towards breaking that isolation.
To draw in everybody reading, everybody’s up against something. I came into this in the veteran space but you’re up against something. It could be breast cancer. It could be a mental health thing, whatever it is. If you get through that, you are going to be qualified to break the isolation of someone else who’s up against that.
I noticed, Zander, because I’d run these group sessions, and us blokes, we have these unspoken words in our heart and we need to hear another guy who’s gone through the same thing that speaks those unspoken words inside our hearts. When we heard that, I noticed that there was a physiological response. The jaw would pop open like, “Okay,” which is interesting because we have the vagus nerve attached behind our jaw. That would go like this. I can’t say what they’d say but they’d go, “Wow. I thought I was the only one.
Breaking the isolation and then getting them out of fatigue, it’s like this golden compass turned on inside of them. It was always there, but it was just covered in crap. Clearing off the crap of isolation and fatigue, they knew exactly where they needed to go, and they had all the resources to do it. One or two guys a week would come up and say, “Do you remember that conversation?” I’m like, “Yeah.” They said that was the thing that changed everything. It was so easy. It was just those two things. I wasn’t qualified. I’m like, “This is working, keep doing it. If this is working, how can we expand it out?”
My experience as a sibling survivor is that it was incredibly lonely. At the time my sister was killed in Boston, I was living in Boston at the time. People knew my parents. They go, “How are your parents doing?” No one asked how I was. The longest relationship we have in our life is with our siblings. We reasonably have a time in our life where we say, “I expect that my brother or sister will die.” Maybe that’s when we get in our late 70s, early 80s, whatever. You go, “It doesn’t make it easier.”
The longest relationship we have in our life is with our siblings.
You’re like, “This is the time in our life where this happens.” Certainly not at 28. I started to wonder whether my loss was less significant than my parents. The answer is no, it’s not. Here’s a startling statistic for you, Tim. Here in the US, there are over 1.3 million new sibling survivors every year. We’re everywhere and yet we’re nowhere because there’s not like some secret hand signal or something. We’re everywhere. Now, I work with an organization called the Compassionate Friends, which is for families that have lost a child and I’m on the board for the sibling as the sibling representative.
I can tell you, you’re talking about the vagus nerve and the getting heard and getting seen. Going to the national conference is three days. It’s so emotionally overwhelming and not in a bad way. We laugh all the time that people think we’re crazy because we’re excited to go to a grief conference, but we’re excited because we get to be around our own people who get us. In the same way that when veterans get together, it’s unbelievable what’s happening. Why? It’s because you all understand. There’s so much that you get to talk about that you don’t have to put a 30-minute preamble to get someone who doesn’t know your experience. You get to go in and say something.
You can speak your language and know that you’re going to be heard. You don’t have to feel to yourself.
Someone else goes, “Right there with you, brother. I got you.” You talk about the stones around your heart. You get to talk about that thing that’s going to take one of those stones away and not have to try and educate someone about where you are so that they can then help you, but they don’t really understand because I could really describe what it is to run a marathon in great detail, but until you’ve done it, you just don’t understand.
I get it. It points to the observation that it’s not the pain that’s the problem. It’s the isolation you feel.
It’s not the pain that’s the problem. It’s the isolation you feel.
The Dangers Of Anti-Social Social Groups And The Need For Forward Momentum
It’s horrible. It’s devastating. It has such profound effects.
You’re right. Within that context, it’s important that we see our pain as real because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you’ve lost a sibling, you’ve got something else when the pain gets to a certain point where you feel isolated. That’s where it’s the beginning of the end. I will give a certain caveat here. It’s so powerful, breaking the isolation when you feel someone who understands what you’re going through, but there is a certain danger there that is observed in the veteran space. I don’t know if it applies elsewhere.
Breaking the isolation is the first step in your healing journey. Ultimately, you want to be bringing your serving at your highest level, bringing the gifts that you have in you out to serve others. What veterans tend to do is they’ll form these antisocial groups. They’ll get together with their own kind and they feel their isolation is broken but then the second they leave, they’re like, “My barriers are back up.” It almost leads to this antisocial behavior. I always treated my groups like a springboard. You go in, you leave with more energy, but you’re pushing out into the real world with more of you knowing that you can circle back.
It’s one thing to be lost in the middle of the ocean. A lot of people say, “We’re all lost. Let’s just all pull our rafts together. We’re going nowhere, but we’re all in this together.” I do think you have to be very careful with the power of breaking your isolation. Some people just stay there and they don’t say, “Let’s move forward. How do we get healing from here?”
It’s an us-them thing. It really needs to change from an us-them to a we like it’s we here and we out in the bigger world or expand your circle of us or however is going to work and words are powerful. I work really hard to give people the analogy that they’re going to hold on to because I’m a teacher at heart. I’m like, “If what I said doesn’t quite land with you, let me find the thing.”
The number of times that a-ha moment. I know you’re talking about where you’re trying to make a point, as you and I are people helping and leading. I found that sometimes, they jump off before I get to where I think that a-ha moment’s going to be until I’ve let go of where I think the a-ha moment is. I just sit and wait because I know it’s coming. When you’re connecting with someone, you’re like, “What’s going to work? What’s going to resonate with this person?”
I love that. The image I see in that is everybody, you, me, we’ve all got a tree of knowledge. What an expert will do is have a fruitful life. Someone comes to them for information to have the fruit that they have, and they’ll just give them information. Here’s all this exact information that’s exactly right but that’s like giving them seeds and what they want is apple. The seeds will eventually give you an apple but it looks nothing like it, not even an apple right now.
Technically it’s all right, it’s all there but it’s not connecting me with what I really want. What you are doing there is you’re living a fruitful life but with your power, with your combination of communication, empathy, and getting them, you can graph the fruit from your tree onto their tree of knowledge and then they’ll have it in far less time than what it took you to grow it. Am I hearing you right?
Absolutely. Now, Tim, I don’t want to run out of time here and have you talk about your Breathwork in Bed because I know that’s big.
I want to give you something that you can use for the rest of your life and anyone reading. Everything I do has to pass a P test. It’s got to be powerful, and positive, but the most important one is permanent. Permanency. If we really care about people, I don’t like the idea of this powerful and positive circus coming to town and everyone’s like, “Yeah,” then a week later, “What changed?” The permanency of the message is the key.
There are two things I want to give you. I want to give you a breathwork technique that’ll just change your world. My humble brag is that in three breaths, you can completely relax your body and mind. I’m really excited to give it to you because I know how you’re just going to multiply. Part of this permanency was, I withdrew from public life years ago. I did a workshop on an army base. I got an email from a very high-ranking army officer saying, “All my corporals and sergeants were coming up to me saying that was the first good night’s sleep they had in five years.”
He thought it was awesome. I said, “That’s terrible. Your men haven’t been sleeping in over five years.” He said, “It was good when you were there, but what have you got when you’re not there?” I’m like, “I’ve failed my P test. I’m not permanent.” For the past few years, I’ve created this online resource that people can go in there. You tell it when you want to sleep, when you want to wake up and we take care of the rest.
You just hit that notification, press play and it’ll guide you into a cloud to go to sleep and it’ll wake you up with presence power and transform all that lead into gold. My company is my effort and the resources are my effort to be permanent because the powerful thing in this scenario isn’t me. I don’t see myself as a breathwork coach, Zander. I’m the guy who introduces you to the love of your life. You’re going to have that love all your life.
Introducing The Breathwork Technique For Relaxation
It’s going to be your closest friend, your most powerful ally. It’s going to be there when you go to sleep, there when you wake up, there at 2:00 AM. When your head’s gone 1 million miles an hour. That’s there but what do I want to give you? If all people get from this is this breathwork technique, they are going to be set up so powerfully. All you need to be is seated in a comfortable chair. You don’t want to be driving a vehicle, cutting up carrots. You want to be in your body and be supported. You have to give yourself permission to really breathe. Do you give your physical body permission to really breathe?
Right now, absolutely.
Do you give your unconscious mind permission to breathe?
Absolutely.
In a comfortable position, all we’re going to do is simply breathe in and breathe out. Just give that a try. Congratulations. Your being conscious of your breath is the first step to peace and happiness. Just being conscious of your breath because when I was in fight or flight, I was so connected to the outside of me, I lost connection to my own body. I didn’t know it, but I was shallow breathing. If you see someone in the street shallow breathing, they’re about to freak out.
It doesn’t matter if you’re doing it fast or slow. Shallow breathing is the thing that puts your body in fight or flight and makes you reactionary. Your higher thinking doesn’t kick in. Being conscious of your breath is the first step. Now, what we’re going to do is this time, when we breathe in, we’re just going to breathe in more. Breathe in, then breathe in again and again, as far as you can. Just let it out. Did you notice the extra air opening up in the top third?
I did. I also felt that sinking down into the parts of my lungs that I don’t use nearly enough, Tim.
You are getting it. What I love about my job, Zander, is I get to introduce them to the wonderful power in their own bodies. We own these incredible bodies. I’ve got incredible resources, but we tend to think they just carry our eyeballs around. I’m going here, I’m going there. What you didn’t know about your body, Zander, is we have these little turbo buttons. Just hold up your thumb and two fingers and make little crab claws.
They’re your turbo buttons. We’re going to use that when we breathe into this top third. We’re going to call it for the sake of a name, this is your primary inhale, where you normally breathe in and out, and your secondary inhale is this top third. When you’re asked to breathe in again and again, that’s your secondary inhale. We’re going to hit our turbo buttons when we get to that secondary inhale. Are you ready? Just blow it all the way out. Start breathing in, hit the power buttons at the secondary inhale, as hard as you can, and then just let that go.
Look at the head rush. That’s so awesome. That oxygen.
Did you notice the bit of extra power you got in that secondary inhale?
Absolutely.
Turbo button is like hitting an inflation button and because you’re doing so well here, Zander, and I will include a little video that people can click and they’ll be guided through this in their own time. That’s there to take home. We’re going to juice this up even more. We’re going to hit our 3power buttons and we’re going to raise our chin and chest and look up. Almost like you guys got limbo over there on the stage, lean back. This is why we need a supportive chair. We’re going to breathe in and then hit those turbo buttons and raise their chin and raise their chest. When you’re ready, just let that out.
I was wondering. I’m like, “I’m holding it. It’s great but when am I letting it out?”
That smile on your face tells me you’re doing it right. This top third of our lungs, we call it our secondary inhale. I actually call it the breath of possibility. When I got crap in my head and things feel impossible, look what happens to my structure, I hunch over. These little turbo buttons, they make the impossible, possible. You’re getting a physiological change in your body. Think of your energy system, all your nerves, and the electricity that runs along them. They’re like hose pipes.
If you pinch a hose pipe, it’ll have less water running through. We’re hunched over. We’re pinching our power supply. When we raise our chin and pinch, we straighten up our structure and we naturally have more energy. Now, I’m going to show you how to juice this up and I’m doing this with velocity. You’re doing really well. Behind our noses, we have sinus cavities. When I was a professional fighter, my coach taught me that before I do a combination, I snort as hard as I could to pull air through my sinuses into my brain.
Now, whether that happens or not, it worked in combat. What we’re going to do now, Zander is we’re going to exhale everything. Let me just finish this before we jump into it. Exhale everything. When we breathe in when it gets to the secondary inhale, really flare your nostrils and snort as hard as you can. It’s almost like you’re snorting drugs out of the air through your nose, hold it there as we go up. Let’s blow it all the way out. Start breathing in and then hit those turbo buttons, snort the air, raise the chin, lean back, wriggle it, wriggle your shoulders, open up your chest, wriggle your shoulders, and let it out with a big sigh. How are you feeling?
Awesome. Energized.
That’s the breath of possibility. I’m going to dovetail this into the breath of peace. Our top third, breath of possibility, bottom third, breath of peace. What we’re going to do here is we’re going to snort it high, hold it, and then we’re going to wriggle our shoulders, let it all fall down. My head is going to go down towards my knees. My hands are going to be on my belly and I’m going to be pushing everything into my belly button. It’s going to be like a balloon down low. My head’s going to be forward, and my hands are on the belly button.
I’m going to squeeze it and it’s going to try and come out of my mouth but my mouth is going to stop it. It’s going to go and let it out super slow because of that bottom third of our lungs, that’s where you get the best gas exchange. I’ll talk you through it and we’re just going to do this three times. Breathing isn’t hard per se, but because you’ve been breathing your whole life, we often have a, it’s our oldest habit. To do something new, you just need a little bit of being gentle on yourself. Give yourself permission to let your body figure it out. Each time you do it, it’ll be feeling better and better.
We’re going to do this three times, all right? I’ll be right here with you. Sitting comfortable, blowing it all the way out. Get your turbo buttons ready. Start breathing in. Hit those turbos and snort the air, snort, snort, open it. Now, just hold it and wriggle your chest like you’re stretching it all out in the bed. Let your head fall forward, let your head fall forward, hands on your belly, push it down low, hands on your belly, try and squeeze it out and then as long as possible.
Just as you exhale, allow your muscles to relax through your neck and your shoulders. Now, with your turbo buttons ready, breathe in, snort the air, raise the chin, raise the chest. Hold it, wriggle it. Let your head fall forward to your knees, hands on your belly. Let it out with a super slow shh and try and make it twice as long as that last one. Really restrict it. The longer you exhale, the better.
Let everything relax like your body’s deflating with your power buttons here. Blow it all the way out, and then really snort it in, raise it up really long, feel like your chest is opening up like a flower, open up your chest like a flower, feel the warm sun on that chest. Holding it, just let your head collapse forward, push it down low, low as you can make it, hands-on that belly, squeeze it out and let it out as long as possible. How are you feeling?
Awesome, rejuvenated.
Some people feel energized, some people feel like they want to sleep, and whatever’s there for them. How’s your body feeling?
I really like being relaxed and alive. It’s like what I was talking about, similar to my oxygen rejuvenation therapy, getting the breath down into the lower part of the lungs. As you said, that’s where the gas exchange happens. Amazing what happens and how energized you feel. A lot of times, people will say they feel a little lightheaded. I said, “Yeah, that’s because there’s this huge amount of oxygen now coursing through your system and your bodies.”
Even the way I explain it to people is when we breathe, we take on the nature of air. Air has a certain nature. If you try and hold air with your hands, it can’t be held. It’s obvious. When we breathe and we take on that nature, the air doesn’t allow us to hold on to things. It doesn’t allow us to hold on to our tension. It doesn’t allow us to hold on to our blockages. It doesn’t allow us to hold on to the crap that’s in our heads.
When we breathe, we take on nature.
Having that as an ally, and if all you get is those three breaths, the breath of possibility, a breath of peace, then you are going to be so powerfully set up. Not just for yourself. I’m talking to all the readers here. How many people do that could do with some possibility and peace? To me, repetition restores. I do things that are easy and effortless a lot longer than things that are hard and uncomfortable.
Even though I’m a pretty tough dude, I’ve noticed that if I can set up these tiny little micro habits, then there’s an accumulation effect. The longer I do it, the better things get. If anyone’s who’s got a phone, you get out your phone, you go into your app store, and you type in Breathwork in Bed, you go in there, it’ll ask you two questions. When do you want to sleep? When do you want to wake up? We take care of the rest because people are already busy enough. They’re like, “Here’s what I want. Take care of it for me.”
Breathwork In Bed: A Gift To Humanity For Improved Sleep
You’ll set your alarm in the morning, probably set it a bit earlier, and then you’ll see your notification there, hit that, press play, and before you even get out of bed, you’ll transform that lead into gold. It’s particularly handy to have a Breathwork buffet at 3:00 AM when you’re up and your head’s doing 1 million miles an hour. It saved my life on so many occasions. That Breathwork in Bed is my gift to humanity. I’m not the powerful one here, but I can be the guy who introduces you to the love of your life. There’s a 28-day free trial. I want to gift you a month of sleep and see if it works for you.
I can’t wait to have that. Tim, how can people get ahold of you?
BreathworkInBed.com. I’ve got all the socials, but I’ve asked the question, does the world need more social media or does it need a good night’s sleep? I’m happy to work with anybody, but if they’re going to take something from this, put the app on your phone and get those little sleep tips guided into sleep, out of sleep. If you can win the first ten minutes of the day, you’ve won the day. I can’t do what you do, but if I can improve your sleep, you’re going to be able to do what you do even better.
Tim, this has been truly epic. Thank you so much.
We could do another one, I reckon.
We definitely can. We’ve been going now for over an hour and so much more. You never know, Tim. Maybe there’s another invite for you to come back. Anyway, Tim, I want to thank you so much. This has really been awesome. I feel so rejuvenated. Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing. I want to remind everyone that if you’re ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. As always, remember that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
- Tim Thomas
- Breathwork In Bed App on Apple
- Breathwork In Bed on Google Play
- Tutorial for the breath of PEACE and POSSIBILITY
- Why Don’t They Cry?
About Tim Thomas
Meet Tim Thomas—a man on a mission to transform lives and uplift the world, one night of quality sleep at a time. With over a decade of experience in the gritty, high-stakes world of veteran recovery, Tim brings an unparalleled depth of insight, forged through lived experiences in mental health, wellness, research, and breathwork.
Alongside his team, he has raised over $1 million for impactful charities like the Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation, driving advancements in veteran health, and the Queensland Brain Institute, a global leader in neuroscience and mental health research.
Tim’s personal passion lies in helping people access the transformative power of rest and connection, showing how they fuel resilience, clarity, and fulfillment. He’s not just a storyteller—he’s a catalyst for change, inspiring audiences to unlock the hidden potential that comes with better sleep and a generous heart.