Stuart Sandeman, a former banker from Edinburgh, has become the poster boy of the deep exhale. His clients include Google, Nike and burnt-out executives. Robert Crampton has a session with the respiration guru – and discovers he's been doing it wrong all along.
Stuart Sandeman's technique is called "breath work" for a reason. After an hour forcing myself under Sandeman's instruction to inhale with my abdomen not my chest, I feel like I've put a proper shift in. What ought to be child's play (literally so, because as babies, we all naturally breathe using our diaphragm) has turned into something requiring a degree of concentration and effort. Sandeman's periodic instruction to "tone and move" – lying face up beating the floor with your hands and feet while wailing loudly – is also a bit draining. Not to mention embarrassing, at least initially, before he convinces me he's done tests and his Shoreditch flat's neighbours can't overhear.
It feels reassuring to put your back – or rather, your belly – into one of these currently fashionable therapies. And none is currently more fashionable than breath work, the treatment of choice for young metropolitans and stressed executives in 2019, a surge of popularity Sandeman has done much to bring about. He has conducted sessions for Google, Nike, Sky and Virgin among others. Once our session is finished, he's off to Canary Wharf to do a workshop for clothing brand Lululemon.
He has a clinic in Harley Street and this flat/work studio where we meet, in the heart of hipster east London. Sandeman, articulate in his mellifluous Scottish brogue, is a talented advocate for his technique. PR-wise, it also helps that, at 36 with startling blue eyes, luxurious hair and the lightly muscled physique of the judo champion he once was, he is almost comically good-looking.
Most therapies in and around Hoxton – believe me, it's my neck of the woods and I've tried most of them – essentially boil down to lying down with your eyes closed listening to whale music while someone says nice things to you. Who wouldn't do that for an hour if they could afford the money and time – and yet how much good does it actually do in the long run? Learning to breathe correctly, however – I can see how that might yield a long-term benefit.
And a short-term one, too. After my session with Sandeman, I felt simultaneously more relaxed and yet more alert than an hour earlier. What I had not achieved, although many aficionados report that they do, is an altered state of intellectual clarity and emotional release, let alone the "wailing and crying" catharsis Sandeman underwent when he first discovered breath work at a class in his native Edinburgh five years ago.
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Back then Sandeman was miserable for the first time in three decades of life. Having lived in London, Hong Kong and Barcelona, and travelled the world first as a judo star, then a City trader, then an international DJ, he was holed up in his parents' house in Edinburgh following his latest, far less appealing global odyssey. His girlfriend of three years, Tiff, the same age as him and a fashion buyer for an American luxury retailer, had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. The couple had travelled the world – her adopted home of New York, then Los Angeles, London and back to her native Taiwan – seeking a cure. None had been forthcoming and, on Valentine's Day, 2014, she had died. Sandeman went home to grieve.
"I went back to Scotland broke in every sense of the word. Some days I just lay in bed, which worried everyone around me because I'd never been like that before." The third child of four, with parents who ran a B&B, had enjoyed a blessedly happy childhood. "We are a very close family. My mum and dad were very open, never pushed us into anything. They just said, 'Go and be you.' "
Following Tiff's death, his realisation that the world could be a cruel place hit him hard. "I was raging," he says. "I felt a bit of guilt as well that we hadn't started treatment earlier. Although from day dot the doctors said there was only a 20 per cent chance."
Mother's Day rolled around. "I didn't have a present so when this breathing workshop popped up online I thought, 'Mum'd love that.' And off we went." He was right about his mum – she still goes to breath sessions. As for the effect on him? "Wow! Fireworks! It was a safe space to let go of the grief I'd held on to." Breath-work advocates believe that adults lose their natural ability to breathe optimally via bad posture, sedentary jobs and restrictive clothing, combined with the less tangible explanation that storing up past trauma causes parts of our body to shut down.
Having reached – possibly because he was so fit, possibly because of his bereavement – a heightened state of awareness very quickly, "Weird stuff started to happen. I felt Tiff alongside me at that class. I'd always been very 'science'. I did maths at uni. Tiff always said, 'This is the ultimate science experiment. If I don't make it, I'll come visit you afterwards.' " What did Tiff say when she visited him? "That everything was OK. This is what was meant to happen. 'I'm OK.' " Sandeman now has a new girlfriend. She works with him in his practice.
"I think our journey looking for help with her cancer opened me up to spiritual questions. What is life? What is death? I don't believe in heaven and hell, but I believe there is something else after here, that Tiff's energy has gone somewhere else." That day in his first breath class, months after she had died, he felt Tiff holding his hand. "Afterwards, the group was sharing in a circle and I was like, 'I've just had an out-of-body experience. I've got to share this with the wider world.' " Shortly afterwards, he set up Breathpod.
One of the reasons Sandeman makes a good therapist is that rationalist background he refers to. He'd been a happy child, at a decent state school, popular and not plagued by either bullies, arrogance or self-doubt. His initiation into judo aged four was a key moment. "I was competitive and focused." He was a Scottish champion in his weight division from juniors into early adulthood, at which point, at a training camp in Sardinia, a slipped disc put paid to his hopes of making the Olympic squad. "That was a huge blow, but it meant I could go off to Ibiza for three months, which was a different type of training."
While not claiming to be an angel, the music and "human connection" on the club scene always excited him more than the drugs. "I had a set of decks and I played guitar and keyboards at school." He put his ambition to make music for a living on hold while at the University of Leeds, after which he moved to London and got a job as a junior broker in the City, while also building up his CV as a DJ in clubs around the East End. "I was never, 'I wanna work in the City and get rich.' I was more, 'London is a cool place; I need a job to live here.' I didn't hate the City but I didn't enjoy it. But I enjoyed my life."
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Having been promoted to a big job running a trading team in Hong Kong, Sandeman stayed out east only six months before he decided to give it a go as a full-time DJ. In Japan just after the tsunami in 2011, he found himself immediately in a massive earthquake. "It threw me. I thought, 'Why am I here? Just to make money? I should follow my passion.' I went back and handed my notice in."
Life was good. "It was never private jet status, but we played every festival around the world. I met Tiff at Burning Man and although it was loose and long-distance, we both knew it was serious. Then she got ill. Then the doctor told us it had spread. 'You know what that means?' Tiff said. 'I should go out and have fun while I can.' " Believing as he does that many cancers originate in stress, he thinks his work is helping potential victims to survive, and is thus a tribute to Tiff. "Her passing opened the door to me doing this work."
Back on the couch, or rather futon, my session is running into trouble. I understand the principle of breathing from the diaphragm well enough – much as I dislike his prolific use of the word "belly" – but I'm struggling with a dry mouth and persistent cough, the legacy of nearly 40 years of cigarettes. Even when I'm not trying to clear my throat, my breathing is laboured and overexerted. Listening back to the tape is scary, as if Sandeman had offered a session to Darth Vader rather than a Times journalist. Darth Vader on his deathbed.
Mouth open, eyes closed, I concentrate hard on relearning the habits of half a century. Sandeman gives me a small plastic funnel like a snorkel mouthpiece to aid my efforts. It's a bit gimpy for my liking. "It's safe to let go," he tells me and, yes, for a half-minute between coughs, I glimpse an image of a whole cargo of useless baggage from decades ago breaking its moorings, like a barge freeing itself from a quayside, and drifting off into history. These sessions normally cost £120 for 90 minutes – I'd pay that if I could be guaranteed a few more load-lightening moments such as that.
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As and when he can make himself heard over the hacking explosions and the playlist of trancey techno on the speakers, Sandeman explains how breathing can be used as a tool to change your mental and physical state. More air in will fire you up; more air out will calm you down. Inhaling from lower down pulls oxygen into the bottom of your lungs as well as the top, so you get more. The inhalation should be "active", the exhalation "relaxed", the two actions connected in that one immediately follows the other, without getting tense or panting. With luck, you enter the deep state of wisdom that, as Sandeman puts it, "meditation talks about but never achieves". It all adds up to what athletes call being "in the zone", a state of extreme calm, alertness and insight.
I signal my understanding between violent bouts of phlegm re-arrangement. Every so often, he asks for a "tone and move", the hand and foot beating exercise I am finding increasingly fatiguing. The wailing involved is starting to sound like an old Native American ghost dance incantation. Also, I need the loo, and a lot of Sandeman's acupressure prodding is perilously close to my bladder. "There's something special about the breath," Sandeman says. "It connects all of us. We all breathe the same air."
The music changes to something lighter and tinklier, and I realise we're coming to an end. Sandeman asks me to say thank you to my heart and breath and "amazing body" (aw, shucks, cheers Stuart) for doing so much on my behalf. That feels a bit weird, but on reflection, I think fair play, take a deep breath, and do as he asks. And then I take another deep breath, and realise, all things considered, it feels pretty damned good.
How to breathe for energy, focus and sleep
1 Optimal breathing
Diaphragmatic breathing through the nose
The diaphragm is your primary breathing muscle. It helps you relax, lowering the effects of the stress hormone cortisol on your body. It lowers your heart rate and blood pressure. It improves core muscle stability and your body's ability to tolerate intense exercise.
1. Sit in a comfortable position or lie flat on the floor. Relax your shoulders.
2. Put both hands on your stomach. Inhale through your nose into the hands on your stomach for a count of four seconds. (The displacement of the air and organs downwards will make your stomach rise before the chest; try not to push with your stomach muscles.)
3. Exhale through the nose for four seconds.
4. Repeat, extending your inhale and exhale to five seconds.
5. Repeat, extending your inhale and exhale to six seconds.
6. Repeat, extending your inhale and exhale to seven seconds.
7. Repeat, extending your inhale and exhale to eight seconds.
2 Energy boost
Stimulating breath
This stimulates the solar plexus to generate heat and release natural energy. You'll feel fully charged and ready for action. The exercise is powered from the navel point and the diaphragm is used to pump the navel in and out on each exhale and inhale. So, sitting up tall, straight spine, first practise panting like a dog with open mouth to get the rhythm and navel movement. Your chest will remain relaxed and slightly lifted. Now close the mouth and continue this rhythm through the nostrils. Inhale and exhale should be equal duration. Then, once you have nailed the movement …
1. Inhale quickly though the nose, engaging the diaphragm, filling from the navel, while lifting your hands up in the air above your head.
2. Exhale through the nose quickly engaging the core and pumping the navel in towards the spine, while bringing your elbows to your sides.
3. Repeat in and out of the nostrils, pumping the navel, and lifting the arms up and down.
If you are menstruating or pregnant, miss this exercise out.
3 Focus and balance
Box breathing
Lowers blood pressure and provides an almost immediate sense of calm. It improves your mood and will also keep you energised.
1. Inhale through the nose into the belly for a count of five.
2. Hold breath for a count of five. (Try not to clamp down your muscles – simply avoid inhaling or exhaling for four seconds.)
3. Exhale through the nose for a count of five.
4. Hold breath for a count of five, then repeat four rounds.
4 Chill, calm, rest, digest and sleep
Four-seven-eight breath
A powerful anxiety and stress-busting breath, and a good tool to help get you to sleep.
1. Place tongue on the roof of your mouth.
2. Inhale through nose for a count of four.
3. Hold breath for a count of seven.
4. Exhale through pursed lips for count of eight, then repeat four rounds.
- by Stuart Sandeman
Written by:Robert Crampton
© The Times of London