Today I'm pleased to introduce Max Strom, a global speaker, trainer, and author who has taught breathing patterns for emotional healing and personal transformation worldwide for 30 years.
Max has given four TEDx Talks; his Breathe to Heal talk has drawn more than four million YouTube views.
His earlier books, There Is No APP for Happiness and A Life Worth Breathing, have been published in five languages and used as required reading in many yoga trainings.
He speaks at well-being, corporate, and medical conferences, and also teaches through online courses, seminars, livestream events, and one-to-one coaching.
Based in the Netherlands, Max joins us to discuss his latest book, Together We Heal: Alleviate Anxiety and Grief Through the Power of Breath and Belonging, emphasizing that healing is a collective process that benefits everyone.
Norm: Max, the title Together We Heal suggests that healing isn't a solo project.
When did that idea really click for you, and was there a moment—personally or in a workshop—when you realized breathing alone wasn't enough without someone there afterwards?
Max: Thank you Norm, I'm happy to converse with you about this very important topic of healing our emotional pain and not just our body. And doing so without pharmaceuticals.
As you know, I've been teaching breath work a very long time and I've seen this alleviate so much stress, anger, and anxiety, in thousands of people. Maybe tens of thousands of people at this point.
But it was when I was in the country of Bahrain, an Arabic nation right off the coast of Saudi Arabia, that I was shown something that amazed me. Something about the culture of Arabic women that changed me forever.
At the end of a hyperventilation session, there were of course about a dozen people crying at different levels of intensity. Some just a little bit, some sobbing.
My intuition spoke through me as it sometimes does and I told the group that we were going to break for lunch now, but if they feel moved to comfort the people who are crying, please feel free.
Now the room was filled with about 70% Arabic women, and 30% European and North American women. After I said that, the European and North American women who were not crying all got up and left for lunch.
Whereas, the Arabic women proceeded to quietly sit next to people they had never met who were crying, and comfort them simply by sitting beside them and holding their hand or putting a hand on their shoulder.
I watched the people who were crying go through a different kind of process than if they were crying alone. So many of us hate to cry in public and do our best to shove it down the way we do with many of our difficult emotions.
But when someone comforted them, they would tend to let their emotions come up and out and afterward, seem to be in a different state, not just relieved from the ventilation of their grief, but they felt seen, safe, and cared for.
These are things many people do not have in their life. It's a deep, intimate connection that requires no dialogue whatsoever. It's powerful.
So, I took this template and worked with groups in Europe, Canada, and America, and refined the constellation of how people sit together over the next year or so.
Now we have a specific way of sitting together, which as an outsider, you can actually watch people shift physically and emotionally right in front of you when they are sitting this way.
I thought about this for a couple of thousand hours and I would say that my theory is that we are tapping into an ancient instinct that we all have.
Anthropologists say that we humans lived in very small tribes for hundreds of thousands of years. Tribes of 20 to 40 people mostly. Occasionally, they were bigger—up to 120. Well, if you think about this, a tribe was about the size of a yoga class.
If those were the only people you grew up with and ever saw and ever interacted with, you would know everybody very intimately. There would be no secrets. And any crisis that was yours would also be mine.
So, they didn't just gather for weddings, they gathered for what we now call a divorce. They didn't just gather for celebrating a pregnancy, they gathered for miscarriages. Because everything that was going on was right out in the open in front of everybody every day.
And when someone gathers around us to witness our deep pain in a compassionate manner, this seems to have a vivid and dynamic healing effect on us.
Norm: You point out that we gather for weddings and baby showers but often disappear after divorces or miscarriages.
Why do we back away when a friend needs us most, and how can someone who has already gone quiet reach out now without making the apology about themselves?
Max: With almost every group I speak to, I ask two questions. Question number one: Have you ever learned CPR? If so, raise your hand. Usually, about 70 to 80% of the people raise their hands.
Then I asked them to raise a hand if, when they were a child or teenager, they learned in a meaningful and positive way how to deal with their own grief and the grief of others.
Usually, nobody raises their hand. It doesn't matter what city I ask this question in. Doesn't matter what country. So, we have this glaring absence of knowledge in our society.
We are emotional beings, but for some reason, receive no training on how to deal with these emotions when everything goes wrong.
There are still remnants, fragments of how to look after each other in some cultures around the world, and I have been looking at some of these and utilizing them in our groups.
So, the reason we might back away from a friend who needs us is because we don't know what to say, what to do, and we're afraid that we might make things worse because we might say something stupid or do something awkward. So, we tend to stay away to prevent that from happening.
It's a travesty. To learn what to say and do does not take long and it's not complicated. We offer this in my Breathe to Heal workshops so that people leave with real tools for the next time a loved one is in a crisis. And that day will come within the next couple of years.
The simplest way to reach out is to put yourself in physical proximity of the person who is suffering. That means go to them in person. Sit with them. Make them tea. If they don't want to talk, don't talk.
Don't try to cheer them up, allow them to fall apart because no one else is. Everybody else wants them to stop suffering as soon as possible. But we have to go through a process.
Grief is a process, not just an emotion. Grief contains, of course, deep sadness, but also anger and fear. It's a natural process that we are born with, and we need to be allowed to go through it.
If we keep trying to shut it down and our friends encourage us to do so, it just continues to live within us the rest of our life, causing problems like sleep issues, addiction issues, and other symptoms of anxiety.
Most people don't realize that most anxiety comes from not allowing our emotional wounds to heal properly.
You don't have to say wise words, you just need your physical body there with them if at all possible. Avoid communicating through text to someone who is suffering. If you can't go there in person, you could at least do a video call.
But your text messaging should be reserved for something like this: "I'm coming to be with you, I'll see you tomorrow afternoon."
Norm: Someone can have a full calendar and still feel lonely. What are they missing—and how can they tell the difference between having people around and feeling genuinely close to them?
Max: That's a really important question and the answer is surprisingly simple. The word is vulnerability. Voluntary vulnerability is what courage means. We have to have the courage to take the armor off of our chest and show our heart to our loved ones.
I've learned that in general, people are better at giving love than they are at receiving it. Most people I've met are not good at receiving compliments, gifts, praise, hugs, and love in general.
It makes us uncomfortable, squeamish, embarrassed, and awkward. We need to learn to receive because there are people around us who want to give us love very much, but are actually discouraged by our behavior, our lack of the ability to receive.
And the other way to bond more deeply with someone that you already have a relationship with is to witness them when they are in a crisis emotionally. To be a great listener and don't try to suggest ways that they can help themselves.
You can do that six months after the crisis is over. But initially, they have to be willing to just express their pain.
An analogy I use to help people understand this clearly is this: imagine that your friend Alex breaks his leg and he's in the hospital now. He just had surgery and now he's in his hospital room on his back with a cast around his leg, which is suspended from some ropes.
It was major surgery and he's in a lot of pain even though he's taking pain medication.
Then you arrive with a smile. Alex looks so happy to see you and he truly is. Does Alex think you're going to take the pain away? No. Does he think you're going to fix his leg? No.
Does it mean something to him that you're there? Yes—very much so.
It's not just this way with broken bones. It's the same with emotions. Your friend doesn't expect you to take the pain away or fix anything, but the fact that you're there again satisfies a deep tribal need we have of knowing that we will not be forgotten or shunned because we feel broken.
Norm: Your image of emotional "armor" is powerful because it protects us but can also keep closeness out. How can someone recognize when their armor has stopped helping, and what's a small, manageable way to let a trusted person see more of who they really are? Building trust is essential for openness, and taking small steps can help create that safe space.
Max: Another great question Norm. Like everything else, we have to start with baby steps. And one of the best ways you can start to communicate about your difficult emotions to a friend is by starting with something like this:
"I'm not used to talking about my emotions and it's hard for me, so my tendency is to just shut down. But I'm trying not to do that anymore because I know it doesn't serve me or anyone else. So, I want to talk about what's going on with me.
I'll probably be very awkward doing so, but please bear with me."
You see, just acknowledging that it's new and that you're going to be awkward is in itself vulnerable, and will get the attention of the other person. Because it shows a degree of courage when someone steps up to do something scary no matter how awkwardly they do it.
Norm: Many of us think breathing exercises are just a way to calm down. When did you first realize they could bring up something deeper, like grief or an old memory? What happened next?
Max: Well, as a student of Yoga, in my first year of practicing six days a week, to my surprise, I had tears running down my face at the end of every class. I'd lie on my mat with a trickle or sometimes a stream of salty tears coming out of my eyes.
This occurred for almost a year and then eventually it stopped.
Around that time, my friends started noticing that I seemed happier, lighter, more apt to laugh. Those that didn't know I had started yoga were perplexed at what had happened to me.
And when I would tell them that it was the Yoga, they would just get confused, not understanding how "just stretching" could cause all this to happen.
But at the time I started practicing it was 1991 and there was not a lot of emphasis on breath work at that time in the United States. Not in general classes and there weren't even that many workshops available on how to breathe.
But fortunately, I had guidance from a great teacher and mentor, Dena Kingsburg, a gifted teacher from Australia.
She taught me how to breathe in the way I call ocean breathing, but in Yoga they usually call it Ujjayi breathing. She taught me to expand my chest like an accordion every time I inhaled and exhale nice and slow.
She refined my breathing practice quite expertly, and it caused me to become adept after only a few months.
Because of this, I know now, it released deeply buried grief from my childhood, and from my body itself. Past emotional pain which I was still holding onto for years, and also a lot of physical pain I went through as a child because I was born with club feet and had five orthopedic surgeries.
I went through a lot of physical pain and confinement as a boy, so in that first year of Yoga, the tears came. And they came and came again until finally it was finished. And my heart was partially healed after this.
So, when I became a teacher a few years later, of course, I emphasized the breathwork as a principal feature of the class. I became known for this.
People who didn't want to do breathwork avoided my classes, but people who found it valuable and healing gathered on a regular basis with me.
And of course, in every single class, at some point, there would be several people who were crying. Every time. Eventually, I started to figure out that the people who were most apt to start crying were the people who had anxiety.
No one taught me this, but it was obvious. The people with anxiety clearly had a lot of buried grief within them that the practice would ventilate, and out it came.
But to be clear, it isn't just picking at the scab as they say, they're different afterward. It seems to give a restart to our heart to begin healing again, instead of just suppressing as a way of life.
Norm: When someone feels anxious, how do you help them understand whether they're reacting to something happening now or carrying something from the past? And when is breathing practice not enough on its own?
Max: That's two questions so I'm going to answer them separately.
Number 1. Fear and anxiety are not the same thing. They are separate emotions. Fear is our preservation instinct that occurs in the present or a possible threatening future.
For example, this dog has his ears down, is not wagging his tail, is growling and staring at me, and slowly walking forward. What I feel now in my body is fear. Or, I get a letter from the tax man who wants to audit my bookkeeping.
Maybe I feel fear of a possible unpleasant future.
Anxiety comes from the past. You can feel the emotions and symptoms of anxiety in the present, but the root cause comes from before. That's why it's really called post-traumatic stress. This means stress that you feel after the trauma.
And of course, post-traumatic stress could stay with us for years or the rest of our life even. One of the reasons this confuses people is that when we feel fear from a present situation, it will often trigger our anxiety, and so we feel them both at the same time. This kind, of course, manifests as a panic attack.
Number 2. I feel that having a daily breathing practice is essential for well-being and emotional health. I don't call it mental health, I call it emotional health, because that's usually what it is.
For example, if you're grieving, this is not a problem with your brain. It's not mental health. It's a broken heart.
One can also use breathwork, particularly hyperventilation, to release our buried emotions and memories that have been in our body for years or decades. It's just basically a deeper form of breathwork that works quite quickly.
But once we open, then what? This is why it's important to have people around us who care about us who can witness us when we go through this.
The daily breathwork keeps us much less stressful. Occasionally doing hyperventilation sessions in the scenario that I have spoken of can help us to heal our reaction to past events. I'm a big believer in Talk Therapy if you can find a great therapist.
And support groups can also be extremely helpful, particularly if you start your session where everyone does a bit of breathwork. This helps the work go deeper.
But I think every one of us needs to feel loved, seen, and emotionally safe for us to have well-being. And by emotionally safe, I don't mean protected from insult or injury. These things are going to happen on a regular basis in our life.
I mean safe enough to be able to express our emotions during difficult times and we will not be in fear of being shunned or left alone. We know our tribe has our back—and we have theirs.
Norm: Most of us instinctively try to cheer up a grieving friend, but you suggest giving them permission to fall apart. What might that sound like in a real conversation, and what's one well-meant line you'd replace with something more helpful?
Max: Well, once when my friend, I'll call him Michael, called me and he told me that his father had just died of Covid in the hospital and the family was not allowed to see him, he was quite devastated.
I did not ask him if he was OK, because obviously he wasn't. I asked him if he's allowing himself to cry and grieve. He said sometimes. I said alone or with others who love your father? He said mostly alone.
I said, "Grieve sometimes with others, it's more healing than being alone in a room by yourself." At some point, he told me he felt like he was being a burden on me from the simple conversation, and I told him this:
"Listen, you and I are going to be friends for life. We're going to go through a lot of things like this together. And I'll always be there for you, and you'll always be there for me."
And that's when he started crying because what I said made him feel seen, safe, and loved. And basically, I was reassuring him that I will not leave him, that I'm his friend for life. I think we need to hear this during our darkest times.
Norm: The book encourages us to say more than "I'm fine," but opening up can feel risky. How do we know whom to trust with an honest answer, and what should we do if the first person we try responds with awkwardness or silence?
Max: That's exactly what's going to happen if you try this with just anybody. Just any friend. You have to carefully think about who you know that will have some emotional intelligence that you can depend on when you are going through a dark night of the soul.
Additionally, it's hard to learn to swim during a big storm in the ocean.
We should talk about these things before we are in a storm. Basically, we should have conversations that bring all this up with our close friends. It actually makes for great conversation. You could start by saying to your friend or friends:
"I just read this interview about how most of us don't know what to do when we're in a crisis. We don't know how to communicate about our emotions. I don't want to live like that anymore.
I want you, my friends, to know that I will always be here for you when you are in a crisis. I want you to count on me whether it's emotional or physical. I have your back. And you can tell me anything."
Start with that and see how they react. This conversation will change the nature of your relationships. Someone will come closer to you while others might drift away because they aren't ready yet. But don't give up on them.
They may show up a couple of years later when they're in a dark night of the soul and there's no one they can turn to.
Norm: You suggest getting a few people together to breathe, talk, and share a meal. How is that different from a regular dinner with friends? What would help everyone feel comfortable—including someone who would rather listen?
Max: Well, it would be very, very different than a normal dinner with friends. Start small, invite one or two friends over that you know are open-minded and are going through a difficult time. Tell them that you've learned some breathing exercises that can help them.
You're going to teach them one or two. If you don't want to teach them yourself, you could play a video on your TV screen to lead you through a session. I have some you can use.
Then after the breathing session, you have a potluck meal. But no alcohol. We need to learn to communicate with vulnerability without using alcohol or any other drug. If alcohol was helpful, we would all be healed by now.
It makes us more likely to speak from our heart while under the influence, but we also say a bunch of stupid stuff in stupid ways, which is why sometimes we have to apologize the next day and say something like, "It was just the vodka talking."
In other words, if someone only says I love you when they're drunk, you don't entirely believe it.
You can have the breathing session repeat every couple of weeks or once a month. At some point, people will open up emotionally and start to cry from the breathwork opening the door to their armor.
Then you could initiate a sharing circle where you sit together in a circle—on chairs or on the floor, it doesn't matter. And you take turns speaking.
And of course, you emphasize that no one needs to speak and that if you listen well without interruption or comment after that, you are doing a great service to the others. Most people do not have anyone in their life who is a great listener.
A deep listener. Here we provide witness for each other as we talk from our emotions and not about them. It's not a complaining circle. You want to speak for five minutes or less and talk about how something makes you feel, not how wrong other people are.
So now the event will begin with a breathing session, 20 minutes or so, followed by a sharing circle for as long as it takes, followed by a potluck meal together. This is now your new tribe. These people will be there for you the next time you go through a crisis, and you for them.
Norm: For someone who's never tried a breathing exercise, what's a gentle place to start? How can they tell if it's helping—or if they should stop and seek guidance?
Max: Ideally, you would work with a competent breathing teacher. But the easiest practice to start with, in my opinion, is what I call the calming breath. It's very basic but effective.
So, imagine that you have a bowl of soup in front of you. It's very hot and it's the best-smelling soup you've ever experienced. This is unbelievably good soup. So, you take a spoonful up to your lips and you smell the soup because it's so close to your nose now.
That's step one: smell the soup through the nose. It takes 2 to 3 seconds. Expand the side ribs as you inhale to fill your ribs more fully.
After the inhale, pause one to two seconds only, and then because the soup is so hot you need to cool it. So purse your lips and exhale very slowly—cooling the soup on the spoon. If you blow too hard, you'll blow the soup all over the table.
You need to purse your lips and push the air out strong enough to reach the spoon and cool it.
You want your exhale to be longer than your inhale. You might try to exhale for four or five seconds. Keep doing this and very gradually make the exhale longer, until perhaps you're exhaling for eight or 10 seconds.
But don't force this; it's meant to relax you and if you get competitive, it'll just be something else to stress you out.
So, in summary:
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Smell the soup while expanding the side ribs horizontally.
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Pause one second.
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Cool the soup with a long exhale.
Do this for 3 to 5 minutes. You will feel much better afterward. The first time. Not someday—the very first time you do it.
Norm: Your book links anxiety with grief and disconnection, but many use therapy or medication. How does your approach complement these treatments, and what advice do you have for those with severe anxiety or thoughts of suicide?
Max: Many therapists and psychiatrists take my teacher training to learn how to use breathwork in the context of a therapy session. Life coaches also join us for the same reasons.
I advocate that they teach their clients a simple breathing exercise like the one I just explained and have them use it while they're in the waiting room, waiting for the session with you.
So, while they're waiting, they can do the breathing exercise for several minutes. This way when they come in and you begin the conversation, they have much deeper access to their emotions.
Many psychologists who have studied with me are very surprised how much this helps the therapy sessions. One said that she had been working with a client for a year and a half, and they never showed any real emotion.
But after the breathwork, boom, the flood waters came. First time. So, it will actually speed up your therapy session, which is useful for everybody. In other words, maybe instead of one and a half years of therapy you only need one or two months—or less.
If you have thoughts of suicide, and you don't have a therapist to reach out to, and none of your friends know how to talk to you or more importantly, listen to you, please do call a suicide hotline.
The people on the hotlines are very well trained, and a lot of them have been through this themselves.
And something to remember, if you ever feel that way, taking your own life, you probably are misdirecting your anger. You want to kill your life, not yourself. You want to change your life. Change it.
Use all that energy to make big sweeping changes. People need you and love you and you have a place in this world. You just haven't found it yet. Your presence matters.
Norm: As we end our interview, where can our readers find out more about you and Together We Heal: Alleviate Anxiety and Grief Through the Power of Breath and Belonging?
Max: I have a comprehensive website at: maxstrom.com. You can also find me on the usual social media channels. I have a lot of free content on YouTube. And I have entire courses available on my website.
If you can't get to one of my live events because you can't travel for whatever reason, I give regular livestream events, and work with people all over the world this way.
My new book is available on all the major book-selling websites. I suggest that if you get meaning from reading this book, you pass it along to other people because we all need to educate ourselves as quickly as possible on how to talk to each other during a crisis and how to be there for one another in our darkest times.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I agree, but I also think it takes a village to heal an adult. Your presence matters.