Breathing Just Got Its Film | Oxygen Advantage®
Three years ago, Patrick got a call about a documentary that wanted to put breathing on screen. He said yes before he'd seen a single frame. For him, this was never a film pitch — it was a distribution problem finally getting solved: a way to put breathing training in front of audiences who might never otherwise hear about it.
"Breathing is the most underrated lever we have."
It influences sleep, mental state, nervous system regulation, physical performance — even how oxygen moves from the blood to the tissues and organs. And it's simple. We breathe in, we breathe out. That's it.
"But it's what you do with that which matters," Patrick says. "You can breathe faster or slower, harder or lighter, through the nose or the mouth, high or low. Every breathing exercise in the world is built from that handful of variables. So the real question is, why doesn't everyone already know how to change their breathing to get what they want from it?"
That question is the engine behind the film — and the reason Patrick spent a day in a Galway gym putting ultrarunner Tobias Mews through his paces on camera.
The Three-Week Experiment
Tobias's brief was simple: reduce breathlessness.
"When people run, or do any endurance sport, it's not really their heart rate that decides when they have to slow down or stop," Patrick explains. "It's how breathless they feel. If we can improve someone's tolerance to carbon dioxide, strengthen the diaphragm, increase gas exchange, and reduce the psychological perception of air hunger — the athlete is able to keep going for longer, not having to breathe so hard and fast. That's the whole game."
Patrick measured Tobias's BOLT score before starting. He was at 15 to 17 seconds. Three weeks later, with limited time before his event, his score had nearly doubled to 24.
"Age matters less than people assume. Consistency is what moves the number."
By the time Tobias lined up for an ultramarathon across the Mojave Desert, something had shifted.
A Film for Everybody
Patrick is quick to push back on the idea that this is a film for athletes only.
"This is a film for everybody," he says. "I'm pulled toward nasal breathing, functional breathing, hypercapnic-hypoxic training. Someone else might be interested in hyperventilation-style work. The film doesn't pick a lane, and that's exactly why it works for such a wide audience."
He's just as direct about why a documentary like this matters right now.
"Breathing needs a lift to get it more mainstream. James Nestor did it with a book. This film will do the same. It strips away the woo-woo and makes it about performance instead — which gets the regular kind of person to actually try it. That's badly needed."
On the film itself, he doesn't hold back: "It's genuinely accessible. The moment I pressed play, I was hooked, totally engaged. Time moved fast, which for a documentary is a good sign. I'd already forgotten I was supposed to be somewhere else."