Richard Blake was offering breathwork through a charity supporting NHS staff during the pandemic when people began asking him a question he could not answer as well as he wanted: where was the research? They wanted evidence before deciding whether to try it. That experience helped give his doctoral work a direction.
Richard tells Tab about studying conscious connected breathwork and his effort to bring it into a wider conversation about mental health. He describes a trial in which people took part in guided online sessions while another group waited to begin. He shares the changes he measured in anxiety symptoms and explains why he wanted to investigate the practice rather than rely only on personal accounts.
Tab asks the questions of someone who has heard friends talk about breathwork but wants to understand what they mean. They discuss different experiences associated with the practice, the language people use to describe them, and Richard's interest in altered states of consciousness. His work sits between the experiences that draw people to breathwork and the research questions he wants to pursue.
Richard also offers strong critiques of aspects of talk therapy, medication, and the way mental health problems are discussed. Tab brings in stories from people he has known and asks how an individual can make sense of the options available. These are the speakers' perspectives, with Richard explaining the approach he advocates and the reasons behind it.
The conversation returns to evidence: how a study is designed, what a comparison group can show, and what a reported result actually means. Richard explains why he pays attention to the size of a change as well as whether it meets a statistical threshold. He also acknowledges that people respond differently and that breathwork does not work for everyone.
He wants more opportunities to investigate it and more room for different approaches within mental health care. The question from those NHS staff remains a useful one. A person considering a practice should be able to ask what has been studied, what was found, and what still needs to be understood.
Discussion of mental health treatments is informational, not individualized medical advice or a reason to change prescribed care.
