Martin McPhilimey - School of Breath Science

Martin McPhilimey - School of Breath Science 🧠 Helping coaches build clinical-grade breath, sleep & nervous system skills.

I’m Martin McPhilimey, a respiratory and sleep scientist, educator, coach, and founder of the School of Breath Science. My work sits at the intersection of breathing science, sleep, nervous system regulation, stress resilience, and human performance. With over 15 years of experience across respiratory and sleep science, clinical practice, education, and applied coaching, I help individuals and pro

fessionals better understand how the body works — and how to use that understanding to improve health, wellbeing, and performance. Through my consulting and educational work, I support people in building stress resilience, improving sleep, regulating the nervous system, and developing practical tools to feel calmer, clearer, and more capable in everyday life. Through the School of Breath Science, I train coaches, breathwork facilitators, health professionals, and practitioners to apply breathwork and breath training safely, intelligently, and effectively using evidence-informed frameworks. My mission is to raise the standard of breathwork education by bringing together science, practical coaching, and a deep respect for the human experience. Whether you are here to improve your own health, deepen your understanding of breath and the nervous system, or become a more confident practitioner, you are very welcome here.

11/09/2026

Failure does not automatically make you stronger

One of the clichés I don’t really agree with anymore is:

“Failure makes you stronger.”

It can.

But failure can also make you bitter, defensive, avoidant, or convince you that you are simply not capable.

The useful part of failure is the gap between what you expected to happen and what actually happened.

You expected one outcome.

Reality gave you another.

The question then becomes whether you are willing to investigate that gap and update your approach, or whether you use the result to reinforce an existing story about yourself.

I explore this in Episode 2 of Beyond Breath, through a clinical assessment I failed, Jiu-Jitsu and building a business.

Comment PODCAST and I’ll send the episode straight to your DMs.

This isn’t another course to add to your collection.I’m opening a small number of places for professionals who want to c...
11/09/2026

This isn’t another course to add to your collection.

I’m opening a small number of places for professionals who want to complete the Breath Science Practitioner Certification privately, 1:1 with me.

You’ll still work through the certification process and develop the knowledge and competencies required of a Breath Science Practitioner.

The difference is the level of access.

Rather than simply moving through the material, we work together around you, your clients and where you want to go professionally.

That might mean bringing me complex cases, challenging your clinical or coaching reasoning, refining assessments and interventions, reviewing presentations or programmes, developing your teaching, or working through bigger professional and business decisions.

That’s already how I work with many of the people I mentor. They don’t need more information for the sake of information. They need someone who can challenge their thinking, spot gaps and help them make better decisions.

This is not designed for someone at the beginning of their journey.

It’s for established coaches, practitioners and health professionals who already take their work seriously, already implement, and want to see how good they can become.

I’m only taking on a small number of people this way.

If it sounds like you, DM me MENTORSHIP and tell me:

What are you trying to become exceptional at?

We’ll then have an alignment call to see whether working together makes sense.

I’ve been reflecting on what it means to lose.In a recent Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competition, I changed my perspective on w...
10/09/2026

I’ve been reflecting on what it means to lose.

In a recent Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competition, I changed my perspective on what losing actually meant. That shift changed my outlook, and it changed how I approached the competition itself, with less fear around the outcome.

I then brought the question into the School of Breath Science community:

What do you view as losing?

And how can you start to see loss as a pathway towards success?

In this episode of Beyond Breath, we dive into that idea. I also reflect on some of the biggest losses and failures in my career, and how many of them ultimately contributed to later success.

Comment PODCAST below and I’ll send you the episode.

One of the most common ideas in functional breathing is that a low BOLT score or Control Pause means you are sensitive t...
08/09/2026

One of the most common ideas in functional breathing is that a low BOLT score or Control Pause means you are sensitive to CO2, have low CO2 and are overbreathing.

The problem is that this chain contains several assumptions.

BOLT and Control Pause are not blood gas measurements.

They are perceptual thresholds taken after a normal exhalation, where CO2 contributes to respiratory drive, but the point at which you first feel the urge to breathe is influenced by far more than CO2 sensitivity alone.

Starting lung volume matters.

Metabolic rate matters.

Oâ‚‚ and COâ‚‚ matter.

Chemosensitivity matters.

But so do attention, expectation, previous experience, interoception and anxiety.

And when researchers actually compared Buteyko-style breath holds with resting end tidal CO2 the relationship predicted by the model was not there.

So a low score may still tell us something useful.

But it does not, by itself, prove low CO2, chronic overbreathing or poor “CO2 tolerance”.

I go much deeper into the evidence in the full essay.

Comment ESSAY and I’ll send the article straight to your DMs.

The connections between breath, sleep, and consciousness continue to amaze me.The breath plays a role in the scaffolding...
07/09/2026

The connections between breath, sleep, and consciousness continue to amaze me.

The breath plays a role in the scaffolding of sleep.

Fascinating research by:

Sánchez Corzo et al., Progress in Neurobiology 2026; Liang et al., Journal of Applied Physiology 2026.

What are your thoughts below?

Blue skies, cold feet, dolphins in the ocean.Grateful to live in such a beautiful part of the world and be able to get o...
31/08/2026

Blue skies, cold feet, dolphins in the ocean.

Grateful to live in such a beautiful part of the world and be able to get out for a morning walk.

There’s something about the change of season that always creates a natural moment to reflect. On what’s working, what needs to change, what matters, and what probably doesn’t deserve as much energy as we give it.

Life has been full lately. Work, family, training, building things, trying things, getting some things right and plenty wrong along the way.

But mornings like this are a good reminder that sometimes it’s worth slowing down long enough to actually notice the life you’re living.

So, welcome spring.

And a genuine thank you to everyone who follows along, supports my work, challenges my thinking, learns with me, works with me, or has simply been part of the journey in some way.

A lot to be grateful for.

You’re not just buying a 12-week course.You’re accessing more than 15 years of experience across the clinical, research ...
31/08/2026

You’re not just buying a 12-week course.

You’re accessing more than 15 years of experience across the clinical, research and applied spaces.

Very few people in the breathwork industry sit at the intersection of all three.

And when you train with School of Breath Science | Practitioner Training, you’re also joining a community of professionals who are pushing for higher standards in how breathwork is understood, taught and applied.

The Breath Resilience Instructor Training is your entry point into that space.

You’ll get:

• A nine-module, fully referenced course grounded in the scientific literature
• Practical breakdowns of how to apply the work with real people
• Seven live teaching and integration sessions
• Six months of professional development access
• Workshops and case study discussions
• Breakdowns of new and emerging scientific literature

The science around breathing, stress, resilience and the nervous system is constantly evolving.

Our job is to stay at the front of that evolution, translate it properly, and help you actually apply it.

Early bird pricing closes today.

You can enrol now, get immediate access to the course, and start learning before the October cohort begins.

Comment BRIT below and I’ll send you the details.

These three layers might help explain why anxiety and breathing are so often interlinked.It’s not always just about what...
31/08/2026

These three layers might help explain why anxiety and breathing are so often interlinked.

It’s not always just about what the breath is doing.

It’s also about how we sense it, how we interpret those sensations, and what we predict they might mean.

I wrote a full essay exploring respiratory interoception, the relationship we have with our breath, and how this may shape experiences like air hunger, breathlessness and anxiety.

Comment “INTERO” below and I’ll send you the full article.

30/08/2026

Hi I’m Martin , a respiratory and sleep scientist and this is the biggest misconception in the breathwork industry.

Mouth breath does not equal over breathing

Follow Martin McPhilimey | Breath & Sleep Scientist | MSc, MRes and School of Breath Science | Practitioner Training for more tips and education

The Breath Resilience Instructor Training was designed to fill a gap in the space: how to actually coach.Not just how to...
30/08/2026

The Breath Resilience Instructor Training was designed to fill a gap in the space: how to actually coach.

Not just how to apply a one-off technique, but how to understand the principles of coaching, assessment, dosage, timing and progression.

If you work with humans, you are working with nervous systems that require load management.

BRIT is a shorter professional training designed to give you these foundations so you can integrate them into your existing work or build a new offer around them.

Whether you work 1:1, with groups or on retreats, the system is designed to be scalable and can be delivered fully online if you want to build a business with more freedom.

Next cohort starts October.
Early Bird closes Monday.
Enrol now and get immediate access to the course.

Comment BRIT below and I’ll send all the details directly to your messages.

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