The Breath Geek

The Breath Geek Breathwork, bio-hacking and life coaching Dr. Richard L. Blake

04/26/2026

I used to be a Men’s Health fitness model—do you have any idea how hard it is for me to make these videos with my shirt on?! 😅

But seriously—there’s a time and place for sensuality in healing work. If you’re explicitly offering embodiment and sensuality work, amazing. But if people think they’re signing up for trauma healing and breathwork, and you’re subtly sexualizing the experience to make yourself feel powerful and desirable… that’s not empowerment. That’s blurring ethical boundaries for profit. Let’s be clear about what we’re offering. Let’s set real boundaries. Because healing work should be about safety and trust.

Drop a 💨 in the comments if you agree.

04/25/2026

🔥 This was front-page news in the UK.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting just said that mental health is being overdiagnosed—and he’s right.

Too many people have been conditioned to believe that life is supposed to be free from challenge, discomfort, or sadness.

And pharmaceutical companies have capitalized on this by medicalizing normal human experiences.

✔ Feeling worried? That’s an anxiety disorder.
✔ Sad after a breakup? Must be clinical depression.
✔ Struggling to focus? ADHD.

We already have more therapy, more medication, and more mental health funding than ever before. But instead of people getting better…

📉 Depression, anxiety, and su***de rates are still rising.

And here’s the kicker: Talk therapy only works for about 25% of people with anxiety and depression. The rest either don’t improve, or relapse.

So maybe the problem isn’t just that more people need treatment. Maybe the problem is that the treatment itself needs to change.

What do you think? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

04/24/2026

Some people experience persistent anxiety or low mood not because of trauma, but because their nervous system clears stress chemistry more slowly.
Variants of the COMT gene affect how quickly catecholamines dopamine, noradrenaline and adrenaline are broken down in the brain. Slower clearance means stress lasts longer, even when nothing is “wrong”.
This doesn’t mean mental illness isn’t real.
It means biology and temperament are often overlooked.
Research consistently shows that exposure-based therapies, which build tolerance to stress and bodily arousal, produce the largest and most reliable effect sizes for anxiety disorders. Approaches focused mainly on insight or past exploration without capacity-building tend to show weaker outcomes and higher dropout.
This won’t apply to everyone.
But for many people, the way forward isn’t more explanation
it’s more resilience.

04/23/2026

📉 We have more therapy, more awareness, and more medication than ever before…
So why do things feel worse?

Let’s get uncomfortable for a second.
For thousands of years, religion was the dominant framework for understanding suffering, morality, identity, and transformation.

Today? Therapy has taken that role. But without most people realizing it.

And unlike religion—which was often passed down through tradition and culture—therapy is being adopted through podcasts, social media, and influencer advice, often without critical thought.

💬 We don’t ask: “Is this working?”
We just assume if it’s clinical or therapeutic… it must be true.

But here’s the tension:

People are doing “inner work” like it’s a religion

Diagnosing their family members like they’re priests naming sins

Searching for childhood trauma like it’s original sin

And using therapeutic language to justify distance, detachment, and disconnection

All in the name of “healing”

🧠 And still… mental health is tanking.

Maybe therapy isn’t broken.
But maybe we’re using it like religion instead of as a tool.
Maybe we stopped asking what actually makes us feel connected, purposeful, and alive.

Let’s talk about it. 👇
Have you noticed this shift too?

04/22/2026

Estrangement didn’t rise because parents suddenly became worse
It rose inside a specific developmental and cultural context
That doesn’t mean all estrangement is unjustified
Or that harm doesn’t exist
But it does mean many people were never properly apprenticed into relationship repair
Understanding the context isn’t about blame
It’s about better explanations
If this felt grounding rather than attacking
That was intentional



📚 STUDIES CITED for your reference / double-checking)
Gilligan, M., Suitor, J.J., Kim, S. & Pillemer, K. (2022).
Estrangement between parents and adult children: Dynamics, correlates, and consequences.
Journal of Marriage and Family, 84(2), 447–466.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12826
Blakemore, S.J. (2018).
Avoiding social risk in adolescence.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(2), 116–122.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721417738144
Twenge, J.M. et al. (2019).
Increases in depressive symptoms and su***de-related outcomes among U.S. adolescents after 2010.
Journal of Adolescence, 76, 1–13.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197119301241

04/21/2026

Want to improve your mental health? Stop scrolling and start talking.

A 2023 study by Hall et al. found that just one meaningful conversation a day boosts happiness and lowers stress.

And it doesn’t have to be deep—just real.

✔ Check in with a friend
✔ Joke around with someone
✔ Really listen when someone talks

The more face-to-face conversations people had, the better their mental health was.

We don’t need more ""connections."" We need more connection.

04/20/2026

We can and must reduce real abuse and trauma. But we don’t have to do it by resorting to exagerations and fabrications.
Large-scale evidence shows substantial declines in child victimisation in high-income countries over recent decades, including major reductions in physical abuse, sexual abuse and several forms of maltreatment (Finkelhor et al., 2014, JAMA Pediatrics; Finkelhor & Jones, 2012, Children and Youth Services Review; Sedlak et al., 2010, NIS-4; WHO, 2020, Global Status Report on Preventing Violence Against Children). Yet self-reported trauma has increased and definitions of abuse have broadened, with more people identifying as traumatised even when exposure to extreme harm is lower. Research documenting this rise includes David et al. (2022, European Journal of Psychotraumatology) and broader reviews on “concept creep” in psychological language (Haslam, 2016, Psychological Inquiry). The Levari et al. (2018, Science) experiments illustrate why: when true instances of harm decline, people unconsciously expand the category and apply the label more widely. This doesn’t invalidate today’s emotional suffering — it simply helps explain why trauma claims are rising while objective harm is falling.

04/19/2026

📉 A 2025 study by Patihis et al. warned that traditional talk therapy might distort memories—making people remember their pasts as worse than they were.
🧠 And in a culture obsessed with mental health, there’s growing concern that therapy is turning people inward, not outward—fostering narcissism instead of growth.

But there’s another path.

📚 Miller & Nielsen (2015) studied Conscious Connected Breathwork (CCB) and found that just 4 sessions led to:
✔ Less hostility
✔ Fewer interpersonal conflicts
✔ Reduced neediness and over-accommodation
✔ More self-awareness—not less

Breathwork doesn’t just help you “feel better”—it helps you show up better.

And while therapy can be life-saving for many, it’s not the only tool.
Sometimes, growth isn’t about talking—it’s about regulating.

👇 Drop a 🫁 if you’ve experienced transformation through breathwork—or you’re curious to try.

📌 Citations:
Miller, T., & Nielsen, L. (2015). Measure of Significance of Holotropic Breathwork in the Development of Self-Awareness. J Altern Complement Med, 21(12), 796–803. https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2014.0297
Patihis, L., & Ritchie, A. (2025). Psychotherapy may alter childhood memories in negative directions. Psychological Reports. https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941241283413

04/18/2026

Yes — your breath can mimic the brainwaves of psychedelics.

A 2024 study led by Camile Bahi used EEG scans to measure the brain during Conscious Connected Breathwork (CCB) and compared it to the effects of psilocybin.
The results?
⚡ Decrease in delta + theta waves
⚡ Increase in gamma waves — the “insight” frequency
⚡ Participants reported altered states: unity, ego dissolution, emotional breakthroughs

And it happened without drugs — just from breathing.

🧠 While mushrooms are powerful tools, they’re still illegal in many places.
Breathwork, on the other hand, is legal, accessible, and already built into your body.
But don’t underestimate it:
CCB is intense. It can unlock deep material.

So if you try it, make sure you work with a qualified, insured facilitator who knows how to navigate the terrain.
You can work 1-1 with me in person in Austin or online to try this life chaning techique. Just DM me.
📚 STUDY:
Bahi, C., Irrmischer, M., Franken, K., Fejer, G., & Schlenker, A. (2024). The impact of conscious connected breathing on altered states of consciousness and EEG gamma power.

🔗 Read the study

👇 Drop an ice cube emoji if you’ve had a breathwork experience that felt like something way deeper than just breathing.

04/17/2026

Baumrind’s research (1960s–70s) showed that authoritative parenting—warmth plus limits—produces the most confident children.
Recent surveys by Twenge et al. (2017, 2020) indicate that younger cohorts report higher anxiety and lower happiness than earlier ones, a trend sometimes linked to over-protection and social-media pressure.
The takeaway isn’t to abandon gentleness—it’s to remember that resilience grows through
manageable challenge.

04/15/2026

Trauma exposure is common
Chronic trauma pathology is not
Large epidemiological studies show:
• ~60–70% of people experience a traumatic event
• Only ~5–10% ever develop PTSD
• Of those, most recover within a year
• Only ~20–30% of PTSD cases become chronic
At the population level
that means roughly 1–2% of adults suffer from chronic PTSD
(Kessler et al., 2005; Bonanno, 2004; McNally et al., 2003)
Resilience—not pathology—is the most common response to trauma
(Bonanno, 2004)
This doesn’t deny suffering
and it doesn’t deny the reality of chronic PTSD
But it does challenge the idea
that every adult difficulty
requires endless trauma excavation
For most people
skills beat storytelling
📚 References
• Bonanno, 2004 — Loss, trauma, and human resilience
• McNally et al., 2003 — Remembering trauma
• Kessler et al., 2005 — Lifetime prevalence of PTSD

04/14/2026

CBT is the “gold standard” for anxiety. But not because it works best.
It’s just the easiest therapy to study.

✅ It targets thoughts and behaviors
✅ It fits neatly into questionnaires
✅ It’s easy to quantify in research trials

But real healing isn’t always that tidy.

📉 Only 43% of people with anxiety respond to CBT
📎 Loerinc et al., 2015
📉 48% relapse rate
📎 Bandelow et al., 2017

Meanwhile, practices that work directly with the body—
like breathwork, somatic release, and nervous system healing—get sidelined because they’re “too hard to measure.”

It’s time to ask:
Are we following the data… or just what’s publishable?

🛑 This isn’t about hating on CBT.
It’s helped a lot of people.
But it’s not enough.
And if we want real progress—we need a better definition of what “works.”

👇 Drop your thoughts—especially if CBT didn’t work for you.

Address

Walnut Creek, CA

Website

https://www.runga.co/intensive

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