Oxygen Advantage

“Block out negativity… take control and then work towards the goal.” On this week’s edition of The Oxygen Advantage® Podcast, Patrick is joined by high performance coach, businessman and author, Ben Coomber.Both as a High Performance Coach and in his own life, Ben specializes in breaking down and examining the parts of our lives that may be stopping us form achieving high performance. He says it’s starts with making changes that will get us the “big wins”, i.e. things we can change that will quickly bring improvements, like a good night’s sleep.The people Ben coaches, score different parts of their life out of 10, like diet, stress, sleep and even relationships. By looking at the lowest scores first, Ben says that’s how you can identify your “big wins”. The things we can change or adapt to improve our overall health will differ from person to person. Job, stress, diet, relationships and more can all be negatives for our health. By taking a look at how we spend the time each day is how we can make positive changes and use our time better, and according to Ben, sleep is one of the best ways we can make quick improvements to our performance.Many of the tools Ben uses to improve his clients’ health and performance can all be found in his book How to Live an Awesome Life. Ben’s other books How to Be an Awesome Personal Trainer and Sports Nutrition in Practice are also available for purchase.This is a very entertaining and informative conversation about finding ways to use our time better and avoiding the many unhealthy traps of modern life, like poor sleep, phone addiction and stress. Discover more about Ben on his website bencoomber.com or search Ben Coomber on your preferred social platform.Plan your exercises at home. Try the free Oxygen Advantage®Breathing App, available now. 📱 Android Play Store:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oxygen.advantage📱 Apple store:https://apps.apple.com/ie/app/oxygen-advantage/id1589260950🔗 CONNECT WITH Patrick McKeown (Oxygen Advantage®)💻 Website - https://oxygenadvantage.com/  🎙Podcast - https://oxygenadvantage.com/podcasts/ 📹 YouTube Channel -https://www.youtube.com/c/OxygenAdvan...📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/oxygenadvan...  📱 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/theoxygenadvantage/💼 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/oxygenadvantage🐥 Twitter - https://twitter.com/OxygenAdvantage... 

“Everything is vying for our attention… and we need to take the power back.”On the latest episode of the Oxygen Advantage podcast, Patrick is joined by TV host, radio personality, comedian, author, and mindfulness teacher, Dermot Whelan. A well-known celebrity in his native Ireland where he has been a permanent fixture of television and radio for well over a decade, Dermot experienced many struggles with his mental health over the years. Even when his career was flying high, Dermot was still experiencing mental health issues that were starting to eat away at him. It all came to a head about 15 years ago when he experienced a panic attack on the way to the Cat Laughs comedy festival in Kilkenny where he was performing. He was driving and had to pull his car to the side of the road. He would eventually arrive at the festival in the back of an ambulance.He says it wasn’t until he discovered mindfulness that he was able to start making really positive changes in his life. A neighbour introduced him to mindfulness and he hasn’t looked back since.From his status as a national celebrity Dermot has used his position to spread the word about mindfulness, even teaching live courses and writing his book ‘Mind Full’. The book features easily accessible information about mental health and mindfulness while mixing in comedic elements. Comedy is something that comes naturally to Dermot and is something he was able to extend into his Mind Full tour which is currently ongoing.This is an entertaining, practical and accessible podcast for anyone interested in mindfulness, breathing and improving mental health.Visit www.dermotwhelan.com for more information about Dermot and tour dates.Plan your exercises at home. Try the free Oxygen Advantage® Breathing App, available now. 📱 Android Play Store:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oxygen.advantage📱 Apple store:https://apps.apple.com/ie/app/oxygen-advantage/id1589260950 🔗 CONNECT WITH Patrick McKeown (Oxygen Advantage®)💻 Website - https://oxygenadvantage.com/ 🎙Podcast - https://oxygenadvantage.com/podcasts/ 📹 YouTube Channel -https://www.youtube.com/c/OxygenAdvan...📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/oxygenadvan...  📱 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/theoxygenadvantage/💼 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/oxygenadvantage🐥 Twitter - https://twitter.com/OxygenAdvantage...

“The sun will always rise again tomorrow and you’re not on your own.”In this episode of the Oxygen Advantage® podcast Patrick is joined by Caroline McKenna, a mental health advocate, teacher, and host of the ‘A County Down Under’ podcast which she started during her time living in Australia. Originally only visiting Australia for ‘a few months’, Caroline ended up staying seven years. It was during her time in Australia that Caroline saw the high standards of mental health awareness and positive steps taken to highlight and address it. Things like readily available counselling services and mind healthy activities like mindfulness coaching.During the pandemic, Caroline started to galvanize her thoughts on what she wanted to change in her life. She had spent almost three years in lockdown, away from home like many other non-Australian nationals, so she made a 15-minute video explaining the difficulties that many ex-pats face being unable to return home. The video was a huge hit and was the beginning of what became the ‘A County Down Under’ podcast. A very popular show focused on mental health and wellbeing which has appeared on top download lists in Ireland, the UK and Australia ever since. At a similar time, Caroline also started Sunrise Socials as a means for ex-pats to meet up and watch the sunrise and look at the future with positivity. The first Sunrise Social took place in Sydney, there are now 35 communities worldwide.Caroline speaks in honest terms about how repeated suicides impacted her community growing up and how she struggled to understand why someone would take their own life and how she herself decided to quit drinking alcohol due to its negative effects.An advocate of ice baths, it was also during lockdown that Caroline was introduced to breathwork thanks to Ronan O’Brien of Breathwave Ireland and has not looked back. She now agrees with Patrick and wants to see breathwork training taught in schools.This is a very entertaining and enlightening podcast on the importance of finding time for ourselves and time with our family and getting away from the distractions of work and the phone.Plan your exercises at home. Try the free Oxygen Advantage Breathing App, available now. 📱 Android Play Store:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oxygen.advantage📱 Apple store:https://apps.apple.com/ie/app/oxygen-advantage/id1589260950🔗 CONNECT WITH Patrick McKeown (Oxygen Advantage®)💻 Website - https://oxygenadvantage.com/ 🎙 Podcast - https://oxygenadvantage.com/podcasts/ 📹 YouTube Channel -https://www.youtube.com/c/OxygenAdvan...📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/oxygenadvan...  📱Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/theoxygenadvantage/💼 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/oxygenadvantage🐥 Twitter - https://twitter.com/OxygenAdvantage...Chapters:00:00 Introduction01:53 Ireland and Mental Health04:55 Caroline’s Story09:34 Giving Up Alcohol 15:11 Discovering Breathing Exercises19:48 Making Breathing More Accessible 22:40 Mental Health and the Older Generation24:45 Teaching Breathing in Schools30:04 Giving Attention to Ourselves31:14 The Distraction of the Phone38:51 Religion and Breathing39:53 Why Are More Men Doing Breathwork?43:02 Breathing for Concentration and Focus45:10 Teaching Students & Mental Strength49:55 The Future of Breathing53:56 Conclusion

“Flow starts when you say yes to the fight.” This week on the Oxygen Advantage® Podcast, Patrick McKeown and Daniel Pållson are joined by Rian Doris and Dr. Michael Mannino of Flow Research Collective, a team of doctors, scientists, athletes and entrepreneurs working to get the best out of human performance by researching the state of ‘flow’. Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where you feel at your best and are able to perform at or near your optimum potential. It has been described as a state of rapt attention and total absorption. It is a state where your sense of time changes, your inner negative voice quiets and your self-consciousness decreases. By reaching flow states we can perform at our best, whether in an athletic pursuit, during a presentation or performing creatively. Rian and Michael explain the complexities of flow, how our brains and bodies change when in flow and how we can get the best from it. This is a very detailed and interesting podcast on what flow is, how it works and how we can teach ourselves breathing to better access flow states. If you are interested in reaching peak flow, then this is the podcast episode for you. Visit www.flowresearchcollective.com for more details on the research into flow states.Visit https://oxygenadvantage.com/ for more detail on functional breathing for health and performance.

“It was pretty much the best and worst day of my life.”On the latest episode of the Oxygen Advantage® podcast, Patrick is very happy to welcome breathwork colleague, OA Instructor, surfer and star of popular Australian reality show Bondi Beach, Mr. Dean ‘Deano’ Gladstone.Admitting he shares a similar story to Patrick’s, Dean explains that he struggled with asthma from a young age, even being hospitalized at the age of nine. The only times he felt relief from symptoms was when he went swimming regularly. Any extended length of time away from the pool and Dean’s symptoms would return.Dean had stopped swimming prior to being hospitalized and was sent back swimming by his doctors. Despite regular continuing issues with his asthma, Dean stayed extremely fit and reached an incredibly high level in swimming, reaching an Australian national ranking of 2 in the 400m swimming event at the age of 18.But even at an admirable fitness level, Dean still struggled with his breathing. He was regularly ill and would often go on a course of antibiotics prior to a swimming event as he knew the high levels of stress and competition would negatively affect is health.Becoming a plumber after school, Dean found that dust would regularly affect his breathing and coupled with his exercise, he suffered chronic fatigue. Around the same time, he discovered yoga which was his first foray into “regulation of the breath”.His life took a massive turn when he was violently assaulted in an unprovoked attack in his 20’s where he received spinal damage and had his four front teeth knocked out. It is a day he describes as “pretty much the best and worst day of my life.”The attack destroyed his health. It led to anxiety and post-traumatic distress, he started suffering skin irritation and was scratching himself to the point of bleeding at night. He needed to make a change so he and started looking at holistic alternatives. Since then Dean has not looked back and has gone on to become a yoga instructor, Buteyko instructor and Oxygen Advantage® instructor.He now works with people from all walks of life from children needing to improve their asthma to high level athletes looking for that 1% improvement. Thanks to Dean, this is a very interesting podcast with an enlightening life story that you should enjoy. More about Dean and his upcoming courses can be found on DeanoGladstone.com.More about Patrick and OA can be found at OxygenAdvantage.com.

“Chew some gum, stand up straight and shut your mouth.”On the latest episode of the Oxygen Advantage podcast, OA founder Patrick McKeown welcomes renowned orthodontists Dr. John and Dr. Mike Mew.Dr. John Mew is the originator of orthotropics, a type of oral posture training designed to prevent poor craniofacial development in children. A lifelong pursuit, Dr. Mew has always been intrigued by the development of the face. After seeing that many young people develop retracted jaws which can negatively affect their appearance as well as contribute to issues such as sleep apnea, he began to develop his theories.John is joined on the podcast by his son, Dr. Mike Mew, a fellow orthodontist who has continued his father’s work to improve the craniofacial development of the next generation from his clinic in Purley, London.Both men talk to Patrick about the reasoning behind their work as well as the benefits of keeping the mouth closed both for improved functional breathing, crooked teeth and improved craniofacial development.Find out more about the Mew’s work at the John Mew Orthotropics website and Orthodontichealth.co.uk.For more information on OA, please visit our website; www.oxygenadvantage.com.Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“I was silently fighting this chronic panic disorder from the age of 13.”On this week’s edition of the Oxygen Advantage® Podcast Patrick is joined, by musician, author, mindfulness therapist and mental health advocate, Niall ‘Bressie’ Breslin.A former Westmeath Gaelic footballer and Leinster Rugby player, Niall is a well-known celebrity in his native Ireland where he rose to fame as front man for rock band The Blizzards and as a solo performer.In more recent years, Niall has grown in prominence thanks to his work with mental health awareness and his part in founding mental health advocacy charity A Lust for Life where he currently serves as Creative Director.Growing up in Ireland in the 90s, Niall would sometimes run afoul of the Christian Brothers teaching him in school and suffered beatings at their hands. Niall moved to Israel with his father, a UN representative, at 13 and suffered PTSD after experiencing the conflict going on there. It reached a point where he was experiencing 2-3 panic attacks per day.Niall still captained his school football team and would go on to play U21 Gaelic football for his county and professional rugby for Leinster before embarking on his music career. In fact, exercising was the only time that Niall felt he could “breathe normally”. Everything came to a head when he suffered a massive panic attack prior to an episode of Ireland’s The Voice where he was working as judge.Since then, Niall has done “everything and anything” he can to communicate what he went through and help others to deal with similar problems. Find out more about Niall’s Mindfulness work at www.niallbreslin.com.For more information on OA, please visit our website; www.oxygenadvantage.com. Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“Does your body recover quickly and get back to ‘normal baseline’, or does it stay there?”The latest episode of the Oxygen Advantage podcast is taken from a recent OA Members Masterclass (05 Jan 2023). Oxygen Advantage founder Patrick McKeown speaks to Dr. Jay T. Wiles, a clinical health psychologist, working as Health Behavior Coordinator for the WJB Dorn VA Medical Center and the Greenville VA Clinic in South Carolina, USA. He is also the co-founder of Hanu Health, a health technology company that sees stress as “an opportunity – a chance to learn and build resilience”. Dr. Wiles has specialized training in health behavior coaching, health assessment, nutritional interventions for mental and physical health, motivational interviewing, applied psychophysiology, and consultation. In this masterclass, Dr. Wiles focuses on resilience and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) – when the amount of time between your heartbeats fluctuates slightly. Undetectable, except by specialized machines but a possible indicator of future health problems including a heart conditions or depression. Find out more about Dr. Wiles’ work at the Hanu Heath website.For more information on OA, please visit our website; www.oxygenadvantage.com.Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast.https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“It’s athlete preparation… I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I’m still learning.”This week on the Oxygen Advantage® Podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by lecturer, trainer, author and widely considered one of the foremost authorities on strength and conditioning, Michael Boyle. Beginning his career in the early 80s, Mike struggled to find work full time in the new field of strength and conditioning and worked at the college level. He often offered his services for free and supported himself working in bars for the first 10 years of his career. He would go on the work with the Boston Bruins, the World Series winning Boston Red Sox, and the gold medal winning US Women’s Olympic Hockey Team.Mike explains how strength and conditioning has evolved over the years. From originally being “the weights guy” he evolved the conditioning side and looked at preparation, healthy eating, core training and more. Another challenge he faced was trying to change old school mentalities about preparation for athletic competition. Even facing resistance for pushing the now very common knowledge that a big part of preparation for an athlete was being healthy.A continued evolution was what brought Mike to breathing. When he first heard the diaphragm described as a muscle and knowing that muscles can be trained, began bringing it into core training. Mike quickly learned that simply asking people to exhale to their maximum accessed the deep abdominal muscles including, the internal obliques and the transverse abdominis and could greatly benefit strength and conditioning core training. This is a very interesting conversation with someone at the top of their field.More on Michael Boyle can be found on his website bodybyboyle.com.For more information on breathing for health and performance, visit the Oxygen Advantage® website.Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“Breathing is 50% of movement. Movement is everything.”On the latest edition of the Oxygen Advantage podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by Mads Tömörkènyi, Copenhagen-based author and scientific researcher of biomechanics, neurophysiology and anthropology.Mads is the author of Human Mechanics: Unleashing the Potential of a Highly Advanced Species, where he points to four main pillars of health: nutrition, breathing, movement, and sleep. Blending history and scientific evidence, Human Mechanics aims to help us “experience first hand the incredible benefits of digging deep into your biological potential”.With a background in sports science and physical training, Mads’ studies have given him a deep understanding of the important role that breathing plays when trying to get the best out of physical movement and training. Mads points to the importance of using the diaphragm when breathing during exercise and physical movement. He notes that too much emphasis can be put on big belly breathing which uses abdominal muscles but not the diaphragm to the same degree. He and Patrick agree that people put too much emphasis on “the six pack” as the sign of true fitness which is not the case. In fact, they note that too much emphasis on building abs, and therefore focusing on just one group of muscles, has a negative effect on the development of core strength. Putting a focus on breathing during physical exertion is the safest and most efficient way to build abs without neglecting the development of essential muscles. For more information on OA, please visit our website; www.oxygenadvantage.com.Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d