InsideAMind of Rhys Thomas - The Inspiring Comeback of a Welsh Rugby Legend | #27

:: 00:00

For a long time I thought, you know, maybe I was just, you know, carved by the culture. The truth of the matter was I fucking loved the culture. It was hell. It was hell. Seriously, it was kind of like waiting to die. Eventually I went to the doctor and I was just emotional and I just said, listen, I can't live like this anymore. I'm basically dead. I can't live like this anymore. I'm basically dead.

I joined that system then in: 2000

interesting.

:: 01:38

Yeah, for sure. How did you first get into rugby and, like, what sort of drove you to pursue it at a professional level?

:: 01:44

so, believe it or not. Um, like growing up, um, I was just, I loved sport. You know all all forms of it. Um, just being outdoors, you know I loved swimming, was a huge cricket fan. Um, was actually my first passion and first love was cricket.

I played representative cricket at a younger age and then when I went to high school I went to a very good boys-only school in Jo'burg Called King Edward VII or KES, and ended up, you know, I'd never touched a rugby ball Before I went to high school. And then when I joined the high school, rugby was like this major, you know, everyone just kind of looked up to the first team rugby. When I joined the high school, rugby was like this major, you know, everyone just kind of looked up to the first team rugby. It was this like huge honor to wear the red jersey and I kind of threw that passion and also the timing was pretty relevant when I moved into high school. So I went to high school in 96, but in 95 was my last year of junior school and South Africa won the World Cup.

So, the country was kind of going through this huge transition, not only culturally but on the field as well. We often had been in a ban for apartheid of which I knew nothing of. You know, I was just a kid growing up, didn't know what was going on really. And then, yeah, obviously that gave us like a bit of an incentive and inspiration to want to play rugby. And then that transition and timing just kind of is what led me to want to dip the toe in, so to speak.

:: 03:21

So playing in the red of, I assume, your high school, then how do you transition from playing in the red of high school to the red of Wales, from South Africa to Europe? How did that happen?

:: 03:31

Because the clue is in the name. I guess as well. Yeah, exactly At the time I played I went to in South Africa. It's like a week that all the provincial teams meet at. It's called Craven Week.

:: 03:44

So all the best talents, yeah all the provincial teams meet at.

:: 03:45

It's called Craven Week. So all the best talents yeah, all the best talents throughout the country comes together and they play for a position for SA schools, so like South African under-19. I ended up playing SA Academy but I kind of felt like there was a lot of obstacles in my way with a whole lot of laws and stuff that were changing at the time in South Africa. So I thought you know, like my dad's Welsh, I've got a British passport. Newport had offered me the opportunity to go and join their youth academy.

And I thought you know, like I play in a red jersey now it would be pretty cool to keep playing in a red jersey. So I thought, you know, let's go. I wanted to travel as well and the opportunity to travel was yeah, it was an easy sell really. So I went with it and, yeah, it was amazing. It was amazing.

:: 04:38

Obviously, joe and I both played rugby not as high a level as you played it. We know how physically demanding rugby is as a sport. What were some of the sort of toughest physical challenges you encountered playing rugby?

:: 04:52

do you mean like on the field, but also off it?

:: 04:54

yeah, kind of just both. Like what I found incredibly hard was you know how sore I was for like days afterwards and then you're straight back in on monday and then that sort of physical stress led to a lot of my mental stress as well, because I wasn't recovering properly. Did you have stuff obviously playing at a lot higher level than we did. The hits are bigger. I guess you have more help and you have more snc and proper programming.

:: 05:19

But how did you sort of find that physical side, I think I was kind of in that last era, mate of you know, it was work hard, play hard yeah but it was also, you know, there was a kind of a complete disregard for the depth of understanding that we have now with regard to player recovery.

You know, yeah, you know, play on a sat, go get pissed, have a Sunday off. Come in Monday we'll go through the analysis, we'll have a beast in and then come Tuesday, maybe Tuesday or Monday afternoon, we'll bash each other up, depending on if we won or lost. If we lost, everyone wasn't switched on enough and we weren't doing enough contact and all this bullshit and um, you know, it's just what we did. It was just so short-sighted and without any premise. Really, you know, it was just a very old school mentality, um, to which we were all just part of like, yeah, these guys are our coaches, if they think, and I mean we always had a gentleman's agreement as well. It was very rarely did anything get really out of hand, although we did do some crazy shit. We did like boxing because we needed to toughen up and all this crazy stuff.

But yeah, I think the real eye-opener started to come for me when, um, it was just going through the steps you know, going from, you know, international level at 19s, 21s to then going pro and then the difference between at at my time when I played, was the difference between that level of professional player at club level, like Magnus League or whatever that ULC or URC, whatever it's called now and then to go from that to Champions Cup or the one underneath it I don't know the two leagues, that, but all that well now. But that difference, that jump in competition, was huge. And then obviously the jump from that to international was just another huge jump again. With that came the intensity of training. So for me, the early shocks in what surprised me with the toll on the body was firstly, my inability to believe that I could be pushed beyond what I believed capable.

cially when I joined Wales in: 2006

That caught me out as a surprise. To be honest, I can't even remember it. I can't remember my games unless I watch video. I can't tell you it wasn't like I was concussed and can't remember. Sometimes I may have been, but I just the thought process of being there is not there. I can remember the anthem, the being there, the bus drive there back afterwards in the tunnel, but the pitch, nothing wow, wow, that's amazing.

:: 09:16

I wanted to talk about sort of flipping out on its head, like the mental side of things. Um, I listened to a podcast with dan bigger and he spoke of Lewis Reece Samet and they were talking about how gruelling the Welsh fitness regime was. But people, they were also talking about the mental preparation side of things, dealing with pressure. How did you find that side of professional rugby and also international rugby being on the biggest stage with the use of social media? I went on the England rugby social media after the game they just played against the All Blacks. People are getting murdered in the comments, people like George Ford, which I find a massive shame. But how did you sort of deal with that side of things and the mental, the mental side of being in the press and on the news with Wales?

:: 10:00

yeah, I mean a couple of a couple obviously was obviously that revolution kind of that Craig and Gatz brought into Wales, because I think at the time there was what I had experienced because I was trained with Wales from about 2004,.

r actually made the match day: 2023

You know, like I do a lot of stuff around breath work with performance, but also transformational breath. Now as a coach and I see the gains that can be had from these areas, but also like I come across some amazing bits of research and trials and data, and one of them is just like visualization and about how potent visualization can be, and they actually did a test with two guys over the period of two or three weeks. One guy was lifting weights with the dumbbell and the other guy was visualizing lifting the weights, and the guy who was visualizing lifting the weights actually had greater gains on muscle mass in his bicep than the guy who was lifting.

:: 11:50

So it just kind of shows you right.

:: 11:52

Yeah, it's crazy right, and I don't think we've tapped into anywhere near the amount of potential that is in that space. I also think it's completely unnecessary for the amount of bashing that pro rugby does Monday to Friday.

:: 12:07

Yep agreed.

:: 12:10

I think it's completely unnecessary the amount of contact sessions that are in the off-season, the length of the seasons. There's a lot of stuff. I think that's wrong with rugby right now and I think it's why it's dropping off. It's the first time. Rugby's out the top 10 most watched sports internationally Decline in numbers. Certainly in Wales, I know that much. They'll say it's not, but they include women's rugby and men's rugby and they say that the number of rugby players has gone up, which is just a miscellaneous bullshit.

So at the end of the day, rugby is in need of some refining and also to have a clear message and strategy around safety. Right, because at the end of the day, just look at NFL. Right, they had this court case. They lost. They know that you can get CTE from American football. They took the due diligence, they knew that, right. Okay, we? How can we reduce impact? They've done all this. Research is out there. You can reduce head impacts by 80 80 percent by reducing contact sessions in training. So now I think I don't know what the exact rule is, but I think it's six or eight contact sessions in the off season. Uh, and now they even wear those scrum cats on top of the helmet and then in the season, I think they're allowed one or two contact sessions.

So like this is the kind of guidance we need because, like I think it works Right. And then we've got savages playing the game. Savages, they're monsters nowadays, right, explosive, powerful, huge, huge. Like it's so bad, like our benches are stacked with just these studs, these monsters, and it's like, right, this is beautiful, it's brilliant, like it can be really entertaining. But like what is the need of injuring these absolute specimens in training? It's not necessary. And this is where the mental aspect can be brought in agreed.

:: 14:06

I find that ct discussion like really important, especially for someone like me. My sort of story was with rugby was uh, I stopped playing about 10 months ago due to concussions. So I've had about uh six concussions. Uh three have been from in training and three have been from in games. Two I was knocked out cold completely. So I've been careful and I've kind of stepped back from it. I have played with countless people who have been knocked out cold in training.

I think the main reason is and this is sort of my view on things is when you're training at a high level every session, you don't have that same adrenaline you do as you doing games, in my opinion, and when you're going in cold and you're doing contact drills or you're basically going full goo in training as it's not supposed to be full goo, but then someone gets hit and everyone's sort of like flips and then it becomes full goo and it becomes a scrap and it's just that over and over thing.

I think a lot of it comes. You know, a lot of my head problems have come from training sessions, so I find it really interesting. You said that about the NFL because I follow the NFL as a super fan. I love it. I watch it every Sunday, watch six o'clock games, watch nine o'clock games and they're 100% changing it correctly. And I find it a shame that rugby's taking a lot longer to do that because, as you said, people are getting bigger, people are getting stronger. You know, I don't know if you've seen that French kid Pasolo to a laggy. He's like 150 kilograms, he's 19 years old and he moves.

Yeah, unbelievable player, but like if that's sort of the generation coming through, these even bigger guys, even stronger then something's got to change. If it's already bad at the moment and I know from my past teammates that a lot of people have struggled, have had problems too- yeah, I mean it's like the unspoken truth about what's actually happening out there.

:: 16:03

And I'm all for keeping rugby right, I'm all for it. And I think the values and the passion and the entertainment and the opportunities that working-class people get through the game of rugby is incredible, and what it does for certain countries Just look what it does to South Africa as as a country, in regards to bringing it together culturally as well right, it's, it is an incredible tool for transformation. Uh, in many ways brings people together, you know, no matter what race, culture. Um, it goes beyond the game of rugby, right, completely.

But it is sad to see that, like, there's no accountability on behalf and we're not blaming. You know, there's a cohort of men going through world rugby right now. They're just trying to bring this to light and just say, like, right, okay, let's put a line in the sand. Things have been let go too far. We know that there is damage being caused to the brains of athletes Okay, and that's not to say that that should stop rugby. No, no, no, that should just make it more safe.

Right, that it's not necessarily bash each other up every fucking week. That it's not necessarily bash each other up all preseasonseason and play for 10 months of the year. It's bullshit. We should play for six months of the year and then for four months of the year, we rest for eight. The other four or whatever, I don't care. Like some fatties have to go in and beast themselves a little more. Like, that's fair enough. Like you know, I've been there, so, um, so, like, it's just about.

n it went from club to region: 2003

:: 18:32

Yeah, I agree because I think it's a. It's a sport that's oh sorry, I was just gonna say it's a sport that's given myself loads of opportunities as well. And joe the same joe and I talk about this all the time like it's our main core friendship group. It's given me opportunities to do and go places. I didn't think I would go with sport on that sport side. I've met some of the coolest people. It's taught me the best lessons and I've learned from amazing people and I love that sort of gladiator side of it. I say this to joe all the time joe, jo me last week he was like do you miss playing?

And I was like, hell, yeah, I miss playing Because I miss that sort of feeling of the adrenaline rush when you go out and it feels like you're almost in a scrap for 80 minutes and then everyone's together afterwards and you look around and in a way it almost feels like you're at war with your best mates, you know, with the fans watching stuff as well, and it's an amazing feeling and I absolutely love the sport and it's a shame to see where it's kind of going, because I can see it from the outside in now, whereas before I was kind of again, not to your extent, but I was in it and I was, I was living, I was living with the boys and and seeing that people you know all these contracts that are getting pulled out and people dropping down the leagues into the national leagues because there's no, there's very little money in it anymore and no one's making money off it and uh, it's just a massive shame and the lot.

So, before we go into a full conversation of rugby which I could happily do, I could talk about rugby all day, every day um, I wanted to ask you, sort of looking back your rugby career, knowing what you know now, would have you done anything differently?

:: 20:08

I mean I'd like to say I would have changed something, but I mean it's completely pointless and even going there. So I mean it was great while it lasted. And you know, I have very fond memories, most of which I wasn't actually allowing myself to enjoy, because when I turned into this newer version of who I am today, or my authentic version of who I am today, around the way that in which I conducted myself, that maybe I wasn't perhaps a good enough professional, or that I could have done better and tried harder and applied myself better, because I was super talented but my application was piss poor. But I think I look back at it now and it just was what it was.

:: 21:02

I wanted to ask you, rhys, do you think a part of that was you fitting in to what you felt that you needed to be a part of, to fit in with your peers because of the, the cookie cutter nature of rugby? I'm a guy who, up until very recently, has played rugby and I don't I don't drink, so I found being involved in that environment really tough at first. Um, do you feel like you played along with those things because you felt like you should, or it became naturally to you? And then how did that play out for you?

:: 21:27

I've thought about this so many times, mates, I mean, and it's a great question, because for a long time I thought, you know, maybe I was just, you know, carved by the culture, and but the truth of the matter was, I fucking loved the culture, was.

I fucking loved the culture the problem was that I couldn't say no when I was on the fringe, when I was given opportunities as a young man with the talent that I had for people who could see it, and they put me in the squad and were like bro, just buckle down, put your head down and you have got like a star in Jersey for the next decade. Like I could have racked up some serious caps. But, dude, being able to have the restraint, the willpower to be able to say no when I was not picked or I was the 23rd man which, before the full front rows on the bench I had to go everywhere with the squad and do the warm up, live scrums and then, whilst the anthems were singing, I'm in the shower getting dressed into my suit, like honestly. And then on the Sunday, when everyone goes home, I was in the training facility in Wales getting beasted when everyone else has got a hangover and going out.

Now I also had a hangover but I was getting beasted so that wasn't so funny, but this is what I mean. So that's where the culture caught me out, because I didn't have I didn't have the capacity to or the foresight to know that actually for the next one, two, three, four years, five years for my career, which is so fucking short, I'm just actually going to apply myself completely, not drink or drink in like breaks or pre-season or in the in over the christmas break, who knows?

:: 23:26

right, just hypothetical, but I think, yeah, the culture did pull my pants down in that regard for sure you said your career was shorter than you wanted it to be, just then obviously stopped by reasons which was out of your control. Can you tell us a bit more about what happened on that day? Uh, I think it was in the gym on a bike, yeah, so I was.

:: 23:49

I was at the uh, at the scarlet I was. It was january the 20, 27th and, um, I probably arguably had the best season pro fit per season of my life, because it was my last year of contract and true to form. You know, when push came to shove and I knew I wanted something and I applied myself correctly and I stopped boozing and smoking fags, all of a sudden my performances would go through the roof. So I was used to this. This is what I was capable of and had a great season.

I actually agreed to move to France on a very large six-figure contract for three years and I was just in the gym doing an interval session on a bike because I had a bulging disc C2, c3. Over the Christmas period it had got inflamed. And then I was just doing an interval session, 45 minute blow, just a thousand cals, and I had about five minutes left to go. And then just boom, massive heart attack. And I was conscious but I couldn't see. I was so dizzy I managed to like, come off the bike, walk across the gym Like I couldn't have been been walking straight, as I certainly didn't feel like.

Um, the gym was quite a long gym under the stands at Parkey Scarlet's. I opened the gym door and then the physio door was directly to the right and also quite long, and I opened that and I just shouted at the head physio, pat, I think I'm having a heart attack, and yeah. Then I got taken to the hospital and they did emergency operation. I had a huge cardiac arrest. I had clots in my heart. I was very lucky to survive. I had a quadruple bypass and yeah, that was that, it was a wrap and um, yeah, for the next 12 months I just kind of was just a battle for my life really, because my health was like not good.

:: 25:54

Did you find anything was sort of going through your mind at that moment, or were you just almost fight or flight just trying to survive?

:: 26:01

yeah, I remember being at this point, just, I was so ill.

I couldn't even, you know, to walk from downstairs up to my bedroom. I probably had 10 stairs. I had to stop three times and sit on a stair and because, like three, four steps sit, I'll be so out of breath Like I'd played a full game of rugby and then next three, and so, like the thing with that was was that I knew that there was no more rugby in me. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't like something wrong with my neck or concussion or something else, that I knew that I felt like I could play, but I couldn't. Like I was fucked. So that kind of gave me the peace of mind that I couldn't play rugby if I wanted to, you know like, but right now, like I just need to survive. Like it was.

It felt like a battle and I remember being so sick and I went to the doctor and he said cause I couldn't breathe Right? And he said to me just listen, you know, just enjoy what time you have left. And I had a payment coming through for my critical illness and I took the kids away as much as I could. We went to Mexico, went to Mauritius, but I was so sick. I was so sick, bro, I was bloated, I was fucking, I was vomiting all the time. I couldn't do, I couldn't walk 10, 20 steps. I would be sleeping all the time. It was hell. It was hell. Seriously, I was just. It was kind of like waiting to die. Eventually I went to the doctor and I was, I was just emotional and I just said, listen, I can't live like this anymore. Like it's, I'm basically dead. I can't do anything. I can't live like this anymore. Like it's, I'm basically dead. I mean, I can't do anything. I can't even like. I wanted a beer and I couldn't even have a beer, because if I drank a pine lager, I felt so bloated I thought I was going to explode. So, um, and that would make me just tired and I would sleep. So yeah, so it was really tough.

And then they told me I was untransplantable because I had pulmonary hypertension after they did the test. So then they said, oh well, actually we can't transplant, you know. So you just need to go home and assess where you are. And I said, well, how long have I got left? And they said you've got about 12 months to live. So I was like, right. I said, well, what's the other option? And they said, well, we can implant a machine in your heart which can reduce the pulmonary hypertension and hopefully make you transplantable. But he said, just go home and digest it. And I just remember going home and just being like just devastated, absolutely devastated. That that was the case and yeah, I mean that's where it went from there. From there, I just that's where it went from there.

was half man, half machine in: 2014

:: 29:53

And then the real battle began really yeah well, did you find the mental battle, you know, on par with the physical battle? You're saying how you walked 10 steps and you were out of breath. How was that mentally for you sort of dealing with that? Were they kind of similar, that the stress you were going through, physical and the mental, or was one outweighing the other at that point?

:: 30:12

So, apart from directly afterwards, when it was just more survival, it was like survival, like it was just pure animal instinct.

It was just like I'm going to get from A to B. I'm not overthinking this shit, I just need to just stay here Like I don't want to die. I've got a young family, you know. I had a wife. My ex-wife, like people, had a great support network. I must note that right. I wasn't like this rogue dude that didn't have a good support network. I had a solid support network and physically was like familiar, you know, like the suffering was familiar. It was. I've been injured, I've overcome injuries, big injuries. So I was like I'll get through this. Like do you know what I mean? I'll be fine Six months, one year, whatever. Whatever it takes, I'll be right.

So like the physical, actually part of it I find right, like you know, the sawing through the sternum. I had two of those. I never really suffered too much with that pain. They took the vein from my leg for my bypass. I mean, after I woke up, my first surgery that was more painful than my sternum. I was like what the fuck's wrong with my leg and then I'll be took the pain from there. I was like why? But um, so like the physical part, albeit challenging, is something like I think it's. It's like it keeps us going too, don't know. Do you know what I mean? It was like, yeah, this, I'm going to overcome this, like the belief in that.

But the real battle came then, with the mantle and going home after my second op with this machine, knowing that I was attached to it for eight hours a day, after eight hours, if it beeped for 15 minutes it would tell me I needed to change them to a new set. 15 minutes it would tell me I needed to change them to a new set. And if I hadn't changed them to a new set, the machine would stop, my heart would stop and I would die. So like plenty of incentive to get you know to grips with this machine pretty quick, which took time, but I was grateful. I was home, I was with my support network, with my family, my children, my pets, and it was like amazing, right, like to be. It was a blessing and I saw it as such, especially after what I witnessed.

But then over those next few months and at the time I didn't know anything else to do with my life other than rugby, rugby, and my self-worth was so low that I still attached myself with my identity and my purpose was that I am just going to be a rugby coach because, like, that's all I do, it's all I know, it's all I'm good at. Um, so I went into that and I started doing my coaching badges. I started coaching a like division two, one side. I can't remember what we were at the time, you know, coaching a school, and slowly, bit by bit, I kind of got sucked back into that toxic culture and then I found a different identity.

You know, I'd always been like a bit of a clown and a bit of a pisshead and I could do things to excess. But obviously now I'm on a heart transplant waiting list, but I've got a machine. But again it was like, oh, I can you know I've got a machine. But again it was like, oh, I can you know, I've got a fluid restriction because my heart was fucked. But you know, two and a half liters a day of any fluid. But well, I can't drink lager because that's only four pints. But fuck, if I switch to whiskey, tequila, gin, vodka, I can get a hell of a lot out of that. Obviously I don't want to put too much mixer in it because then I'm stealing from my water retention. So then I was like right, it became more straight, more potent, more, and then all of a sudden, things started to just go so yeah, that's like it was dark, bro, you know.

tacks. And had you told me in: 2012

Obviously, here I stand today, 12 years later, and I can tell you, you know, I would have addressed that situation had it arisen in a very different manner, and I don't blame me at that person then that's just the way I believed and perceived the world, which was a shame.

But, as most men do, especially in that environment, we don't really understand our feelings and emotions. And I think what men need to start to understand is if we had a better grasp of understanding our feelings, emotions, sensations, we'd actually be better off, not only as a species to mankind but also to our sport, to be more connected, more present, to be able to connect and communicate more efficiently and more effectively with how we feel of how more we can get out of ourselves. You know the depth of which we could achieve greatness with each other and manage to communicate that without the need to check out with this falsehood of of pretense and bullshit and bravado. It's all fucking bullshit and it's masks. It's completely unnecessary if we'd just been taught correctly from a younger age. But no one's to blame for that and I and I don't blame rugby or anyone or myself for that, it's just how it is.

:: 35:43

On that note, I'd love to get your opinion on on on what advice you'd give to a young man or woman listening to this who might be going through the same thing as you, who might be really struggling in the identity piece and potentially using alcohol as a crutch to to cope. What would you say to them? And it's quite hard advice to give because some people just don't want to hear it, I guess yeah, first thing I would say is that it's okay that you've done a great job.

:: 36:06

You know and and well done on you for getting to where you are today. You know, and if that young man, young woman has um lost something that was probably the the most important thing to them at that point in their lives, wherever that time in their lives might be, and also not to carry the guilt if that loss is impacting your inability to love the things you have in your life, like a child or a partner or a job or something of that nature, that that is okay too, and just know that like. One thing that was so helpful for me was to understand that I was actually grieving, but I was like but that's impossible, because that's when someone dies. And they were like no, you grieve in a career because you're living in the past and until you come to terms and accept that you are no longer Reese the rugby player, you will continue to live in the past and that all that's going to do is bring you low mood and depression and you're going to live and continue to be in the cycle of grief. Now I think one thing that's very helpful and I offer it to my clients when I work with them is about looking at the I'm sure it's called the Kubler-Ross grief cycle. I'm sure it's called the Kubler-Ross grief cycle and it's a cycle that shows where you are in the cycle of grief and the first one is just having awareness. And it could make so much sense to you like fuck.

And it doesn't matter if you're playing for Wales or whether you're playing for Newport High School, old Boys, thirds, it doesn't matter, because that game is your life, that game is your, it's your routine. It's the way that you release tension, frustration, anger in a healthy way with your mates, putting your body on the line and then having a laugh afterwards, just like we talked about at the top of this podcast. So like that is the beauty of it. And I think when we start to compare is when we start to go wrong, because comparison is the thief of joy. It's no point, it's completely subjective. We cannot look at another person and compare our lives to them, because you losing a rugby career is the same as me losing a rugby career, no matter what level you played at. It does not matter. Career is the same as me losing the rugby career, no matter what level you played at does not matter, and whatever injury you had and that caused you to career end whether that was it doesn't matter. Like if it's, oh you're, mine wasn't as bad as yours, you know well, no, it's, it still stopped you playing, right.

But how can we park that? How can we make peace with that? Accept that and not live in the past anymore, but not shut a door on it that we don't remember the good stuff, like for me. I hid my welsh cap, I hid all my jerseys. I didn't. I fucking hated rugby when I quit it because of the way I was treated by the game, and absolutely rightly so. I mean the way they try. I was treated. No man or woman should ever have to go through that. It was disgusting, right. But again, I've made peace with that and I expect no apology, and I have yet to have one from any of the regions or from the WIU, and I don't want one. It's not necessary.

But it's really important to make peace with that.

:: 39:26

How do you kind of fine piece of that, because I don't know how you felt, joe listens up but that kind of hit home with the last nine, ten months for me and I know probably the same for you is joe's was a neck injury, mine was concussions, and it's just like everyone in your, whether it's in your family, whether it's your close friends, whether it's your teammates, they know you as kind of the rugby guy or the sportsman. And then when they're like, what are you up to at the moment? Are you still playing rugby? You're like no, it's kind of like it's all you know.

Really like it was rugby and cricket were my two sports and you know I didn't reach the goals I wanted to in rugby. I played, played at high level, but um wanted to reach the Scotland 20 squad. Uh got injured the day before, a week before I was supposed to go up and it was just it's things at which that that really messes with me to this day where I didn't get to achieve that, what I wanted to, what I set out to achieve, and I now haven't come to grips with the sort of transition. And I know a lot of my friends who would be listening to this who are professional rugby players at the moment, and a sort of that phase of coming out where they haven't quite reached where they want to go and they're not quite good enough to kick on to the level they want to. What sort of advice would you give there about dealing with that? What, like, is there anything in particular you found, or is it kind of just figuring out your way? Uh, person.

:: 40:51

Well, yes and no. So we are always our most potent healer, right, and finding our way out of our mess and how to make our mess into a message or our pain into power is where it's really at right. But sometimes, when you're in it, you can't see the wood for the trees, right, because then we start to have um again, we, I feel like a failure, I didn't achieve my goals. But then you start saying I, I didn't do this, I didn't do that, and that's ego, right, so it's understanding that. At the same time, what is your identity like? Like we've said, right, and if that identity has been your whole life to be you, you went out and you performed because of what? Who were you trying to? Who is? Who is it to be seen by? Were you trying to be an athlete for a reason? Because you wanted your mother, dad, your carer, your aunt, uncle, grandfather to see you, to see your worth, because maybe you, your worth, wasn't good enough to them as just joe, joe blogs. But if you were joe blogs, that was excellent at football, rugby, tennis, cricket, swimming. All of a sudden, like they would then come watch you. Maybe, or maybe that's what you told yourself, but maybe that wasn't the case anyway. But anyway, then we fall in love with the game and we don't think about these things anymore and it just becomes a passion and love and you know, and I enjoy this stuff.

But ultimately it is important for us to understand that the greatest self-awareness is going to help you through your transition. So, understanding that we need to make peace with the past. So that is about acceptance, understanding where you are in the cycle of grief. So, looking at that Kubler-Ross grief cycle and just being really honest and compassionate with yourself and being like right, I'm looking at this, my career's over, I'm a bit lost, but I need to slowly, compassionately, over time, give myself time to maybe start writing some stuff down, journaling, and being like right, I'm going to start navigating how I'm feeling.

Maybe you can start taking a little logbook about how I feel emotionally, mentally, physically, every day. I'm going to start doing this and then, like, start feeling into my grief instead of like numbing it and going to booze, alcohol, drugs, phone, sex, food. I'm going to actually start like leaning into this feeling, like what is this feeling that I'm feeling? This is where feelings are super important and where the sensations and emotions we need to have a great grasp and understanding on, because through this also lack of identity or this egoic identity that we may have through being praised throughout your especially in the UK right, your little village, your little town, where everyone knows you as, oh, johnny the rugby player, like you said, like you may not see someone for two, three years and you go back to the village and it's like how's the rugby boy still going?

And it's like I've been. I haven't played rugby for three years. I had a career ender. Oh, what a shame, you were so bloody good at that one. You know they go fuck, you know, you know what I mean. So it's like hard to get away from.

So it's like how do we? One thing that helped me a ton was to ask this very simple question, and that question came to me in deep amount of suffering, at the end of what was a really horrific time of alcohol abuse, and I asked myself a question and the question was who am I? Because I was fucking lost. I felt vulnerable, I felt empty, I felt numb, I felt heavy, I felt a deep mixture of guilt, of shame, of remorse, and I was just in this really terrible place and I just thought to myself like I've had enough of this, I've had enough of this fucking feeling this way and acting and behaving out of alignment with my truest self. And I didn't know who that person was.

So then it was like I'm going to start here, like who am I? And I don't know who I am. Yet I'm 38 and it's pretty horrifying that I don't. But I know one thing I don't like the man that I've been. I've actually never liked doing those things that I was doing, because the next day I fucking hate myself for it. So do you know what? I'm going to start changing those things. I'm going to start creating a different way of operating, because I may not be able to change the past, but I sure as hell can change the future, and for me then it was like as hell can change the future.

And for me then it was like I was like right, what is the foundation? Because my foundations were non-existent, they weren't even built on sand, they weren't even fucking there. Because I didn't have a moral compass, I didn't have values. If you asked me what my value was, I wouldn't have been able to tell you that's the theory. Right wasn't a thing. And then it was like where is my integrity? Where's my honesty? Where's, like you know, as a man, not only as a man, but as an athlete, not not to anyone else, but to myself, never mind my children, my ex-wife, my family, my friends, my teammates like me. I'll start with me, because, if I can be honest and transparent and brutal with my, with showing up to who I wish to be and hold myself accountable, make peaks with the past, accept my situation and begin to lean into the work of finding out who I am.

:: 46:54

I love that. I think I want to take you back, if I could, to very briefly, to that really dark time. What was the turning point for you and where were you In that headspace? Where does it suddenly just change to wanting to make change? Because for so many people we spend years and years and years telling ourselves that we want change and ultimately it never comes and never happens for us. So where, where were you and what was the sort of main catalyst for that change?

:: 47:16

the main catalyst, was suffering a tremendous amount of it and it was a wonderful teacher. It was a fucking. At the time didn't feel like, but the the, the longest show of it was uh. First of september 2019, I crashed my car drunk and, um, the events that evening that followed were like something out of the truth. Like um, what is the uh, what's that? Like like jeremy, jeremy Kyle, or like the American version of it. It was just horrendous. It was fucking horrendous. And a few months later, I actually ended up on going to visit one of my best friends, elif de Mauritius, because I had been sober over Christmas For the first time ever, I had gone for a stretch without booze because of what had happened on the 1st of September.

:: 48:09

Yeah.

:: 48:09

And I knew things needed to change because they were bad. Three of my best mates from school, my dad and my brother, all chipped in financially and sent me to a rehab facility about 45 minutes from here in Cape Town.

:: 48:25

Wow.

:: 48:26

And I didn't want to go. Genuinely, I didn't think like I had a problem. I thought I was. You know I had a problem but like I was, at this stage, former and sober, like I've got this. You know I've gone to AA three times, I know everything. I'll heal myself. And because of the pressure my friend and my ex-wife put on me to go, I said, right, I'll go. I said, but I'm going to go and I promise you they're going to let me go after one day, because they're going to tell me I'm fine.

That's how fucked up I was, anyway. So I went through, walked through the doors of rehab and I just melted into the ground like a puddle and it just felt like all of the bullshit, all of this pretending and the masks and all of the lies and secrets and bullshit that I had spun for all those years and just got lost in the woods. It felt like I was carrying a rucksack with about 30 kilos in it and when I got through those doors it was just the first guy that came up to me was a recovery assistant and he said Rhys, if you wish to change, if you be completely honest and put all of your shit on the table and just put it out there, he said, you'll have a chance of recovering. And I remember the first meeting we had, like in a circle with all these different addicts, and the one woman said straight off the bat she said only roughly about five percent of the world's population are addicts, but only 5% of that 5% will fully recover from whatever their addiction is.

:: 50:17

Wow.

:: 50:18

And I remember sitting in there and I was like I am going to be that fucking 5% and although I was just so broken mate I was so broken, it was so hectic and I can't explain to you the process that I went through in that house was absolutely life-changing. It was a beautiful, beautiful experience and I had also some form of spiritual awakening there, to which I was also very resistant to, being this macho rugby guy. But someone also gave me a good piece of advice about just thinking about good, orderly direction as God, and I thought I can handle that for now, whilst I lean into like what is you know spirit, god, you know the universe, you know? So I started to look into occult-type histories and our past and our different cultures and I was very intrigued by all of that. And then it's kind of led me on this wild journey.

And then, with all of that therapy and also when I left, I started to work with AA 12 Steps of Recovery and the 12 steps are amazing. I would recommend anyone to do the 12 steps. You don't have to be an alcoholic to do them. It's very, very revealing. It's free as well. And what it gave me initially and what I don't understand, but now I do understand, and what initially that context was within AA is that? Why is it effective? Albeit, I don't think it is ultimately going to fully cure you of addiction. What does it give addicts or alcoholics is? It gives people a community. It gives people connection where they're not judged and they can come in and they can be honest and tell you the most fucked up things and no one is going to judge them for it, because everyone in that room has been there. It doesn't matter what age, race, sex or creed those people are. They just get you. So then, through that connection and community and belonging it creates, through also this value system, these steps, accountability, it allows you to kind of unravel right In a safe environment and is, in inverted commas, safe, because only we can create that, but the environment is there for safety. And then it was just this process of, and then I was like I wanted more, like I was so interested by this. After this darkness, I felt then feel this because I lost everything.

Ultimately, when I came out of rehab, you know, the universe really threw it at me. It was like, right, you want to change, let's start, but you're going to start from the bottom. Brother, um, my ex-wife left me. I did a podcast. They they sacked my insurance. I went from a very decent sum to zero, uh, got evicted from my house.

Yeah, and honestly, it was the biggest blessing because I was just like right, like the universe has kicked my ass and like, but now I've got this beautiful opportunity of leaning into, like who I am. And if you have the luxury in the UK, don't forget that we get universal credit, that if we don't have a property, they'll put us in a home. You know that's not a luxury in Africa, mate, and in most of other countries. So, like, I was very, very blessed.

And to have the NHS, right, yeah, so like, those three things were just so amazing for me to be able to like be grateful for the UK's assistance in that help, but also to like just be like right, right now I'm just going to use those things and I'm going to find who the fuck I am and then I'm going to find a way out of this mess. But I want to build a life that I'm aligned with, that I feel purpose, that I feel that it doesn't feel like work. And that's what I did, bro. And here I stand today, self-employed, five years sober, happiest I've ever been, mate, bro, honestly, what a blessing. Like rugby was amazing, but the last five years pales rugby into insignificance love that, mate.

:: 54:42

I think that also leads perfectly into, uh, breathwork and I guess that's sort of how. Where were you on your journey after you came out of rehab and you had all these shit things happen to you that ended up being the best thing of rehab, and you had all these shit things happen to you that ended up being the best thing that happened to you. Where does breathwork fall into that for you? What happened?

:: 54:58

yeah. So in the this, like in the inevitable journey of self-discovery, um, I ended up teaming up with craig white again.

Um, the snc guy well, the snc coach, who is now an amazing men's uh, men's transfer, like he's a business coach, a leadership coach uh, he also holds leadership retreats for men. Um, she's a really powerful human and um, he messaged me a few times and said come join my running a men's retreat in Yorkshire. And I was like no, I'm good, bro, I'm healed, I'm good, I don't need anything. And he's like yeah, I think you'll enjoy it.

And I was like, yeah, I thought, fuck it. Do you know what? I'm going to go for it why? Not yeah, I didn't have the money and but thankfully he allowed me to pay um a payment um installments called rupture.

Yeah, yeah, and um, it was very somatic. It was, uh, going by the archetypal and male archetype systems. So it's a very deep dive for me, all stuff I hadn't and didn't really understand being held just by men, very vulnerable space, but the space was held beautifully. It was a very deep dive but very familiar and beautiful to be around men again, you know, and to notice how much men needed men and for us to be able to be vulnerable with other men but be held and to be seen and to tell other men about our suffering and our pain and the shit we've been through and the shit that we've done and regret and have shame over and sexual shame and all this stuff. Right, very so it blew my mind actually, but it was all somatic work, like we were doing asha meditations and yoga and breath work and cold water plungers and sweat lodges and all these things that were just testing us in the different ways and then using that camaraderie and, um, it was just beautiful.

It was beautifully constructed as a retreat and then on the last day we did breath work and uh, dude, it was just this wild journey, um, completely unbelievable, transformational breathwork session I did with a good friend, matt dunn, and we went. It was the first time I ever experienced on my own the ability, ability to use stillness. I've meditated and I'd had gains initially, but then, with breathwork, it brought a different level of presence and it took me from my head and it just opened my heart like poof and all this just baggage of repressed and suppressed emotions that I'd held for a very, very long time Just boom On cue, on cue. I'll try again. Yeah, so it just, it just really took me into the heart and I had a really I had a incredibly profound experience and I just knew there and then I needed to practice and train and conscious connect the breath, transformational breath work you do immediately literally I went home.

I looked online for a course. I spoke to a few different courses in schools. I was recommended the same woman a few times her name's Steph Magenta, seven directional breath work, and I did it through Intricative Breath. Dr Ray Rydell and Steph were a partnership then and I went. It was just, it was phenomenal. I loved it. We trained for like eight months. Then our case studies were a couple more months on top of that and I've been practicing ever since and then after that I got more intrigued. Ever since and, and then after that I got more intrigued by the breath and started to lean into the more breath science side of things. So about mechanics and chemistry and nervous systems, sleep, stress, burnout, performance, um, hot and cold, um, contrast therapies, so, and just how they can be impacted through the breath. So all this stuff has just brought us just amazing ways in which I've now learned and now teach for others to to understand, feel and be able to regulate themselves or get better performance or whatever it may.

:: 59:31

You know, whatever they desire uh, I don't know if you saw the just coming back to rugby slightly. I don't know if you saw the england all-backs game this weekend, but marcus smith was taking conversion and I think it was. Austin hay was talking about how he's incorporated uh, breathwork techniques into like taking the conversion, taking the kick. We had jamie clements on the podcast uh, twice, unbelievable, did talks about everything, breathwork as well, and he took us through like a five minute sort of breathwork uh, not routine but like exercise type thing at the end and I thought I was saying the marcus thing before because he said it how much like peace of mind gives him and it quietens his head.

I have ADHD. I have a very sporadic, very uh, impulsive brain. I like I'll do things. I have five different tabs going on and I know Joe's quite similar as well. That was the first time in years I felt proper peace and like quiet. Yeah, it almost felt just like someone had switched a tap off in my head and it was the weirdest feeling ever. But the one thing I found really hard is when Jamie guided us through it. I got it completely, but the minute I tried to do it myself at home it was almost like I couldn't do it again. I couldn't emulate what he did for us. What advice would you give people there? Is there a way that they can do it on their own, or was I just doing it wrong?

:: 00:57

so what? No, I mean, you can't really do it wrong. I think this one thing really important for us to to understand about these meditation, breath work, obviously there's if there's certain techniques you're trying to do and you're trying to get to a uh, an end result, that that technique is important for, like some sorts, some techniques like conscious connected, um, but if it was for down regular, was it for down regulation or were you up regulating the? Was it quite a vigorous breathing technique or was it quite a gentle?

:: 01:30

it was, I think it's joe, do you know? It was like it was breathing for I think it was four seconds, and then like blowing out through a straw for eight seconds. Yeah, uh, and then it was multi. We did like three different exercises, but that was that was breathing would have been one of them yeah, I think breathing, yeah, it was something like that. So I'm not too sure.

:: 01:49

I think it was relaxed, yeah, so I mean it's really important. I think it's a great. It's the, it's the easiest, least expensive, but it's free. Yeah, um, way to for us to understand how to biohack our nervous system right, our autonomic nervous system, straight in and, you know, get to the breath and just find, like, what works for you, because there are so many techniques.

Now, the beauty of it is that there are that many people doing breath work now and if you go around and put it in and do a little bit of research, whether that's on social media, and then go online and look at their breath schools or become a subscriber to one of their many websites, to one of their many websites, it's pretty inexpensive actually for you to pay a very small price in most cases to learn, and sometimes people may be burnt out or they may be at that point where they're in deep, having issues with different things in life.

So you may need to seek one-to-one and work with a mentor, a coach, a breath coach, you know, a therapist, whatever it may be, but breath if we can get it right and understand the huge gains that we can make in regulating your own nervous system and bringing you the ability to actually digest food better, to sleep better, to train better, like dude. It's a no brainer, seriously, though, and people need to get onto it Like Marcus Smith, well done. I mean, it's the last frontier. You know, like we can go with like 20 days, 21 days plus, without food. Right, we can go three, four days without water. Some most people can't go three minutes without air, so, like I can guarantee you, 95 plus percent of people are dysfunctional breathers, and that's okay because we come from a completely fucking traumatized society, right it's high stress.

Our environments are stressful, life is fast. It's coming at us hard right, coming from a completely fucking traumatized society. Right, it's high stress. Our environments are stressful, life is fast. It's coming at us hard right. So a lot of us are mouth breathing. We're living in environments that vary. There's a lot of natural toxins, environmental toxins, and if we're breathing in and out of the mouth, if you have the luxury of being able to breathe through your nose it's not halfway across your face, like smith then you know you need of being able to breathe through your nose. It's not halfway across your face, like Quaker Smith.

Then you know you need to learn how to breathe through your nose. And why aren't you breathing through the nose and that's okay? It's not like, oh, I'm a bad person, I can't breathe properly. Is there something wrong with me? No, it's cool, you're good. Like you know, no one taught us how to do this shit, so, like it's okay, just start somewhere, go online, go on YouTube and just have it like a guided breath work or a guided meditation, you know, and just feel your way into it. Just see what works for you.

:: 04:45

There's so many techniques we get um, since we had jamie on, actually we've had, I mean, a plethora of messages personally or on our insider mind socials about breathwork itself and where they can find them. Where can people because you've got your own business as well through through breathwork tell the people who might be listening to this a little bit about that?

:: 05:03

yeah. So I mean I work with one-to-one clients, um, over a period of eight weeks to kind of it's a transformational type of course where you can be coming at it. When I say transformational, you can be going through any transformation in whatever part of life it can be. You know, maybe it's an athlete transition, maybe it's you found a lack of purpose in a high-end job, or maybe you're just looking for change and you want something a bit more from life. But also maybe your health's not optimal, maybe you're finding yourself a bit lost.

So this is where I help through the different techniques, tools that I've been through and through my own experience of life. I just give people a bit of a way to dial back in whether I'm using breathwork, whether it's a functional breathwork or transformational, whether it's coaching, because that's also a part of the work that I do. But I also will be doing a couple more online breathwork sessions. I'll be doing one a month. That'll be free because obviously, now that I've moved to South Africa, I've still got quite a big network that I've built in the UK, so I want to keep tabs with that. So if you just follow me on my socials, it's RealReeseThomas, so R-E-A-L. Reese, spelt R-H-Y-S and Thomas and I'm on Instagram, facebook and or catch me on LinkedIn.

:: 06:38

Amazing. I'll make sure to put all the links below so people can go to your website, go to Instagram and make sure that's all working. I want to ask you one last question before we go, and it's what piece of advice would you give to the people listening from the experiences you've gone through, to better deal with their mental health, especially going into that christmas phase when it gets darker earlier and, predominantly, people's mental health starts to get worse at this time of the year?

:: 07:02

it's so much um just slow down, if you can yeah try getting nature as much as possible, even if it's raining, you know, just really trying to make time for being outside. Um, I would highly recommend um downloading an app called breathing app. It's free, looks like a little gray moon, it's very basic, but it's a great way for you to start putting some routine into your life now. I would, I would do that. I would start with a coherent breath which is just like, depending on your capacity to breathe at this point in time, how dysfunctional you are I can guarantee 90 plus percent of people will be dysfunctional breathers is to use the nose, if possible, all of the time and just breathe in for like a coherent breath of four, four, five, five, four, five, five or six, six. So five second inhale, five second exhale. And there's a, there's a little app, it's super basic. Just do five, ten minutes morning and evening, just before you get going, upon rising, before sleep and those. So that alone is going to make an impact.

You know if you can add a meditation, start your journal, catch a gratitude list. It takes very little impact to make huge change. But it's the small things, incremental steps done daily with discipline, because motivation and it's just not. It's got a shelf life. It's not going to fucking work. So you need consistency and you need discipline and if you can have a reason to do that, so give yourself a purpose, a goal, something that's going to do for 21 days. Just give yourself a goal and then work towards a journal every day, gratitude list, do your down regulation morning, evening, get in nature and speak, you know. And if you can't speak, move, embody some movement. Go for a run, go to do yoga, tai chi, qigong, maybe go for painting, do some pottery lessons. There's a whole bunch of shit we can do that gets us out of here and gets us back in the body.

Amazing, we can do that and all of us are limited, right, I can't go for a run, swim, jog, ride a bike, that's okay. So I shake, I do a little bit of like very low-key yoga, I meditate, I do breath work, because that's what I can do. So it's not like bumming yourself out Well, I can't do that, I can't do this, I can't do it. Okay, Well, what can you do? What can you do? And if you can only do two minutes, start with two minutes and then the next week go to three and then you have to go to four. You know, don't beat yourself up for not being able to do something, but don't give yourself unrealistic targets and goals, cause that's just going to make you feel like shit.

:: 09:43

Completely agree. Well said Amazing.