Breathwork, Cold Exposure & Getting High on Your Own Supply | Ben Pelton | EP52 The Josh Button Podcast
The Science of Breath:
Health, Performance & Getting High on Your Own Supply
Health, Performance & Getting High on Your Own Supply
One of the First 26 Wim Hof Instructors Certified in North America
Ben Pelton started with yoga and pranayama in 2012, found Wim Hof in 2016, became one of the first 26 certified Wim Hof instructors in North America, spent years teaching cold exposure and breathwork to athletes and coaches, and eventually created his own certification: the Breath Reset. He's also a BJJ purple belt who competes and coaches — and has been in an ice bath modified from a chest freezer for the better part of a decade.
This conversation covers the full terrain: how breathwork changes your performance on the mat in real time, the epidemic of mouth breathers and what to do about it, the diaphragm's relationship to acid reflux and why pharmaceutical companies don't want you to know about it, the Breath Reset framework and what makes it different, how Ben used breath to get sober from cannabis after years of use, how your body already contains every compound you'd seek from drugs, and why the breath is not the third most important thing — it's the first.
How long can you go without food? Weeks. Without water? Days. Without breathing? Minutes. So if you put more time and energy into your diet and hydration than you do into your breath — you have the priorities completely backwards.
— Ben PeltonWhat We Cover
What This Episode Covers
What to Walk Away With
- The breath is the most important tool you have — and most people ignore it completely. You can survive weeks without food. Days without water. Minutes without breath. Yet most people spend more mental and financial energy on their diet and hydration than they ever spend on learning to breathe. Ben's closing line is the summary: if you've never added breathwork as a practice, it will change your life.
- Breathwork gives you a real, measurable edge on the mat. Ben came into BJJ in 2018 with two years of serious Wim Hof practice already built in. The advantage was immediate. He could hear black belts redlining — mouth open, RPM running high — while he cruised in nose-breathing at a significantly lower effort cost. They were more technical. The conditioning gap was visible. This is not theoretical. You can see it on people's faces mid-roll.
- Controlling your breath under pressure is the most transferable skill there is. In one match, Ben was being smothered — a bad position, full weight, stressful. The other guy was burning energy fast, face red, breathing through his mouth. Ben stayed nasal, stayed controlled, stayed patient, and waited for his opening. The same skill — breathing through stress without escalating — transfers directly into every hard moment in daily life.
- The diaphragm controls the sphincter of the stomach. This is not alternative medicine — it was documented and presented at a major gastrointestinal conference over a decade ago. When the diaphragm functions properly, it closes the opening between the stomach and the oesophagus. When it doesn't, stomach acid rises. Acid reflux is frequently a breathing mechanics problem. Continued acid exposure can create cancer cells in the throat. The fix is proper diaphragmatic breathing. The pharmaceutical companies that fund the trade magazines where this would be shared have no financial interest in that solution being known.
- Mouth breathing is an epidemic — and it's fixable. Ben was a mouth breather. Once he understood that the nose is for breathing and the mouth is for eating, he used mouth taping at night to retrain the habit and corrected it. His primary care doctor never mentioned any of this. If every GP assessed their patients' breathing patterns and taught basic nasal breathing hygiene, the downstream health impact would be enormous. They don't, because nobody is paying them to.
- Restrictive orthodontics may have suppressed your palate and narrowed your airway. The wire braces Ben received as a kid held his teeth in place but prevented his face from fully developing — leaving his palate narrower than optimal for a grown man's airway. A narrower palate means a smaller sinus cavity and reduced optimal airflow. He is now exploring palate expansion tools to correct what conventional dentistry inadvertently caused. Josh had the opposite experience: a dentist tried to retrain his tongue downward as a child, which his mother declined. He now knows that would have caused real damage over decades.
- You can get high on your own supply. Every compound people seek from recreational substances already exists endogenously — your body produces them. A properly guided breathwork session can trigger releases of the same compounds that people chase externally. Ben's students report psychedelic-level experiences during the Breath Reset class, all through breath alone. This is not a metaphor. It is the chemistry of what happens when you alter CO2/O2 ratios in the blood through specific breathing patterns.
- Feeling is understanding — and you cannot shortcut it with information. This is Ben's core teaching principle. You can read about breathwork. You can watch YouTube. You can understand it intellectually. But until you have been guided through it by a practitioner and felt what it actually does to your body and mind, you do not understand it. The information is not the experience. The experience is the understanding. This same principle applies to jiu jitsu, to cold exposure, to most things worth doing.
- The Breath Reset is designed to be a repeatable, scalable, safe experience — like vinyasa yoga for breathwork. It doesn't matter if you've never done breathwork once or if you're an advanced practitioner. The formula — specific sequences of breath, warmup, and CO2 building via Oxygen Advantage protocols — is curated to take beginners somewhere real and advanced practitioners deeper each time they return. Ben's goal is to train certified facilitators worldwide so the class can be taught consistently anywhere, the same way vinyasa is.
What Actually Keeps You Alive — In Order
Ben opens his final answer with this framework. Most people have the priorities backwards. They obsess over diet, spend money on hydration, and never once think seriously about how they breathe.
The Full Conversation
The Breath Reset — What It Is and Why He Built It
Ben spent four years formulating the Breath Reset — a structured one-hour class built around three pillars: biomechanics, biochemistry, and the psychophysiological effects of breathwork. The session guides participants through warmup exercises, builds CO2 levels in the blood using Oxygen Advantage protocols, and then takes them into a deep meditation state via circular breathing techniques developed by Dan Brule, one of the most experienced breathwork practitioners alive with over 50 years in the field.
The model Ben is building toward is vinyasa yoga: a class format recognisable and consistent anywhere in the world. You know what to expect when you book a vinyasa class. You know what to expect when you book a Breath Reset class. It's safe for beginners, transformational for advanced practitioners, and designed to go deeper each time you return — like peeling an onion. The goal is to certify facilitators globally so the class can be delivered at scale.
The breathing influences in the Breath Reset are Oxygen Advantage (Patrick McKeown) and Dan Brule's transformational breathwork. Wim Hof inspired Ben but the Wim Hof breathing method is not used in the Breath Reset itself — Ben teaches Wim Hof separately through his workshop practice.
The Timeline — Pranayama to Wim Hof to BJJ
2012: Ben begins a dedicated yoga practice and starts studying pranayama — yogic breath control — for meditation and energy alignment. He develops a strict routine including alternate nasal breathing and box breathing at counts as long as 20-20-20. This takes several months of consistent practice to reach.
Before finding Wim Hof, he also trained in DNS — Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, from the Prague School of Rehabilitation — which focuses entirely on the diaphragm's role in stabilizing the rib cage and pelvis. This gave him a deep understanding of diaphragmatic function as the foundation of human movement before he ever encountered high-intensity breathwork.
2016: Ben discovers Wim Hof and becomes one of the first 26 instructors certified to teach the Wim Hof Method in North America. He begins teaching in North America and travels internationally multiple times to train with Wim directly — including a recent instructor reunion in Poland with 250 instructors from around the world, guided for 40 minutes straight by Wim in a single session.
2018: He starts BJJ — and notices immediately that two years of serious breathwork has given him a measurable edge over training partners who have never worked on their breathing.
The Breath Advantage in Jiu Jitsu — Visible in Real Time
Ben's read on the mat is simple: he can hear when someone is running hot. Black belts, experienced practitioners, people with years of technical ability — he can detect the moment their RPM exceeds his. Mouth open, harder breathing, higher energy expenditure. He is running at a lower operating cost, buying time and waiting for opportunities that open when the other person's engine starts pushing into the red.
He also made the point — and Josh pulled a clip of it — about a specific match where he was being smothered. His opponent was burning through energy, face showing the exertion. Ben stayed nasal, stayed controlled, waited, reversed the position. The breath was the deciding factor in that exchange, not the technique.
The Diaphragm, Acid Reflux & the Pharmaceutical Suppression of Basic Information
This is one of the most significant and underreported segments of the conversation. Ben explains that the diaphragm controls the sphincter that separates the stomach from the oesophagus. When diaphragm function is healthy, that opening stays closed. When it isn't, stomach acid rises — producing the experience most people know as acid reflux or GERD.
At a major gastrointestinal conference over a decade ago, this was formally documented and presented: proper breathing mechanics can correct acid reflux. Continuous acid exposure in the oesophagus can produce cancer cells in the throat. The conclusion — teach people to breathe properly and you eliminate both problems — was met with genuine excitement in the room.
Nobody outside that conference ever heard about it. The pharmaceutical companies that fund the trade publications where that research would have been widely shared also manufacture and advertise the acid reflux drugs that would no longer be needed if people simply breathed properly. The incentive structure is not aligned with the solution being broadcast.
Proper diaphragmatic breathing closes the sphincter of the stomach. When that sphincter is open — from dysfunctional breathing mechanics — stomach acid rises. That's what acid reflux is. Prolonged acid exposure in the oesophagus creates the conditions for cancer cells in the throat. The fix was documented and presented over a decade ago. It costs nothing and requires no prescription. The pharmaceutical industry, which controls the publications that would have shared this, sells the drug treatment instead.
The Mouth Breathing Epidemic — and the Fix Nobody Is Teaching
Ben was a mouth breather. The correction was simple once he had the information: the nose is for breathing. The mouth is for eating. He used mouth taping at night to retrain the habit. He also works with tongue health and positioning — the tongue, when properly suctioned to the roof of the mouth during sleep, provides active support for the airway. Most people have lost awareness of this completely.
His current work-in-progress: a 70-year-old client who has been using a CPAP sleep apnea machine. Ben is working on throat and tongue strengthening exercises with the goal of eventually getting him off the machine entirely. The test is ongoing.
Restrictive Orthodontics — The Palate They Narrowed and What It Cost
Ben received conventional wire braces as a kid. The new understanding — which has emerged through the work of people like Dr. Mew — is that this approach is restrictive orthodontics: it holds teeth in a fixed position but prevents the face and palate from fully expanding during development. The result is a palate width that is narrower than what a fully developed adult male airway should have, which means a smaller sinus cavity and suboptimal airflow for life.
He is now exploring palate expansion tools to create the space that the orthodontics suppressed decades ago. Josh came at the same issue from the opposite direction — a dentist tried to install a device to train his tongue to sit at the bottom of his mouth, which his mother declined. He now understands that if that had been done, the long-term consequences to his airway and health would have been significant.
Get High on Your Own Supply
This is one of the most misunderstood concepts in breathwork — and Ben explains it plainly. Every compound people seek from cannabis, psychedelics, or other substances already exists as an endogenous compound in the body. The reason drugs produce their effects is that they mimic or trigger systems the body already has. A properly guided breathwork session — particularly one that alters CO2 and O2 ratios in the blood through specific techniques — can trigger releases of those same compounds without taking anything.
Ben's students regularly report genuine psychedelic-level visual and sensory experiences during the Breath Reset class. He understands what they're describing not because he can see what they're seeing, but because he has felt the same class from the inside. Feeling is understanding.
Breathwork, Addiction & the Wim Hof Method as an Exit Ramp
Josh shares that breathwork — specifically Wim Hof — was one of the most effective tools he found when overcoming addiction. In moments of craving, withdrawal, or the conscious awareness that something still had power over him, sitting down and doing Wim Hof was the most therapeutic thing he had available. It didn't just distract — it chemically shifted what was happening in his body and gave him something real to hold onto.
Ben's own sobriety story runs parallel. He used cannabis for years — eventually moving from recreational use into a spiritual framework through Rastafarian Jamaican practitioners who showed him how the plant is integrated into the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church as sacrament. He was brought into that tradition and found it removed the shame and guilt from his use. But eventually he reached a point where the pattern felt like dependence — always chasing the next high, needing it before activities. He and his wife went sober together. He now approaches cannabis neutrally but is not using it.
When Allopathic Medicine Is Actually the Right Call
Both Ben and Josh are clear on this: there is a time and a place for conventional medicine. Ben got a staph infection. He tried oregano oil and every natural intervention he had. He was developing night sweats and fever — it was moving into his blood. He went to the doctor, was identified immediately, received antibiotics, and felt better within 30 minutes of the first pill. Josh had the same thing two years earlier — two staph sites on the same leg, couldn't beat it naturally despite everything. The antibiotic was the right call.
The framing Ben uses: take the antibiotic, accept that your gut bacteria will take a hit, eat fermented food and take probiotics to rebuild, and move on. The alternative — losing a limb to a staph infection because of ideological purity — is not a real position. Discernment is the skill. Not blanket rejection of conventional medicine, and not blanket acceptance of it either.
Mentioned in This Episode
- Ben Pelton — Website benpelton.com
- Ben Pelton — Instagram @benpeltonplan
- Oxygen Advantage — Patrick McKeown oxygenadvantage.com
- Dan Brule — Transformational Breathwork (50+ years) breathmastery.com
- DNS — Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, Prague School of Rehabilitation rehabps.com
- Dr. Mew — Oral Health, Tongue Posture & Palate Development Search: Dr. John Mew / Orthotropics
- Skinny Beats — Sound Healing (North Carolina) Search: @skinnybeats on Instagram
Creator of the Breath Reset certification. One of the first 26 Wim Hof Method instructors certified in North America (2016). Pranayama practitioner since 2012. DNS-trained. Oxygen Advantage practitioner. BJJ purple belt. Former collegiate lacrosse player and defensive coordinator at Florida State. Philosophy graduate. Eight-plus years of daily cold exposure. Has traveled internationally multiple times to work directly with Wim Hof. Currently building the Breath Reset facilitator certification program to bring the class to practitioners worldwide.
Hard to Kill Starts With How You Breathe.
If this episode opened something up for you — ancestral health, breathing, performance, what your body is actually capable of — the free Ancestral Nutrition Guide from Stop Killing the Plants is your next step.
Get the Free Guide Or comment ANCESTRAL on any @stopkillingtheplants post — we'll DM it instantly.Disclaimer — This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing discussed here constitutes medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before beginning any new breathwork, cold exposure, or health practice — particularly if you have a pre-existing medical condition. The views expressed are those of the guests and host and do not represent medical recommendations.
