In this episode Diana interviews Tim Thomas, a veteran from Australia, who shares his experiences with breath work for stress management and healing. Tim recounts his military service, the abuse he faced due to his faith, and his mission to help soldiers who have attempted suicide. He elaborates on the transformative power of rest, overcoming PTSD, and breaking the isolation of trauma survivors. Tim's inspiring journey from a decorated soldier to a healer and advocate for veterans' mental health is both captivating and empowering.
Bio:
Meet Tim Thomas—a man on a mission to transform lives and uplift the world, one night of quality sleep at a time. With over a decade of experience in the gritty, high-stakes world of veteran recovery, Tim brings an unparalleled depth of insight, forged through lived experiences in mental health, wellness, research, and breathwork. Alongside his team, he has raised over $1 million for impactful charities like the Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation, driving advancements in veteran health, and the Queensland Brain Institute, a global leader in neuroscience and mental health research. Tim’s personal passion lies in helping people access the transformative power of rest and connection, showing how they fuel resilience, clarity, and fulfillment. He’s not just a storyteller—he’s a catalyst for change, inspiring audiences to unlock the hidden potential that comes with better sleep and a generous heart. Tim’s energy is contagious, his insights are actionable, and his message will leave you empowered and excited. Get ready to hear stories that will captivate, strategies that inspire, and a perspective that will challenge everything you thought you knew about wellness. Let Tim take you on a journey you'll never forget.
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Tim Thomas Part 1
[00:00:00]
Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful Podcast, brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer songwriter, speaker and domestic violence advocate, Diana Winkler. She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help.
Now here is Diana.
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. So glad to have you with me today. We have a great episode for you and this one will be from down under. We've had some, friends on the podcast from Australia, and so today we also have a guest from Australia, Tim Thomas. We are going to talk about breath work and how that helps with stress management and healing.
I myself have [00:01:00] done some breath work with my psychiatrist, and believe it or not, it has really helped me. So I'm really intrigued about hearing what he has to say about breath work. But he is also gonna tell his story about being in the military in Australia and how he suffered abuse for his faith and what he did, to overcome that.
And we'll talk about his, work he's doing, to help, soldiers who have attempted suicide, which that is really, really amazing to save lives like that. I'm gonna read you a little bit about his bio. Meet Tim Thomas, A man on a mission to transform lives and uplift the world,
one night of quality sleep at a time. With over a decade of experience in the gritty, high stakes world of veteran recovery. Tim brings an unparalleled depth of insight forged through lived [00:02:00] experiences in mental health, wellness, research, and breath work. Alongside his team, he has raised over 1 million or impact charities like the Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation, driving advancements in veteran health and the Queensland Brain Institute, a global leader in neuroscience and mental health research.
Tim's personal passion lies in helping people access the transformative power of rest and connection, showing how they fuel resilience, clarity, and fulfillment. He's not only a storyteller. He's a catalyst for change, inspiring audiences to unlock the hidden potential that comes with better sleep and a generous heart . Who doesn't need more sleep, right?
Tim's energy is contagious, i'll tell you. His message will leave you empowered and excited. So get ready to hear some stories that will captivate and strategies that are going [00:03:00] to inspire. A perspective that will change everything you thought you knew about wellness. So
here we go. Please welcome my guest today, Tim Thomas.
Alright, welcome Tim Thomas to the show from down under and it's, uh, 11 o'clock tomorrow over there. Yep. This is coming to you live from the future. Or time travelers. So, we've had a couple guests from Australia and tell us what is a thing about Australia that maybe is a myth or something that isn't true?
What, yeah, sure. Okay. So you guys have, uh, Thanksgiving Uhhuh where you, where you carve up the, the Turkey. We have Thanksgiving here as well, but we carve up a kangaroo. Really? I didn't know that. No, you don't. What do you serve with it? Oh, you don't? Oh, you're joking. I'm just, I'm just kidding you.
Oh, you see my [00:04:00] eyeballs go really big. No, they're, they're too hard to catch. Yeah, I, I venture that. People think that, you know, crocodiles live in your backyard and, you have kangaroos as pets, but that's not true. Is it? No, although I was fortunate enough to grow up with my father working with the Aboriginals, and so, eating kangaroos, eating, anything that crawled or, walked on the ground was part of my, uh, diet growing up.
Yeah, my dad actually worked in the church, with the indigenous, in some very low socioeconomic, circumstances. There's on the YouTube, there's those clips called Restoring Faith in Humanity, where there's these acts of kindness to people that could, you know, never potentially repay it.
But that was just my day to day seeing my parents and their sincere, service, going beyond any sort of physical restraint. The older I get, the more I [00:05:00] appreciate it. I like that. Tell us how you came to know the Lord. What was your spiritual background? You mentioned your, family in the ministry.
How did you know, Jesus personally? What did that look like for you? Well, having a faith based background, you think, you know, going to church every week, Sunday school, my father was the pastor, uh, that I would have a faith and I did, but I feel like it was someone else's. I didn't really own it.
And the thing is, there's no bottom to the depth of the relationship. So I'm always finding this new depth of relationship, which makes the old relationship redundant. You know, letting the old self die. What you once clinging to and almost to find yourself with, you've gotta literally let that die and allow yourself to, to be transformed.
And I've had, uh, quite a few deepening transformative experiences, most of which come out of, uh, [00:06:00] getting in some way, shape, or form broken. And there was something that happened. So my background is, I was a professional fighter, in the early mixed martial arts scene, which was, no rules fighting is what they called it back in the nineties.
Mm-hmm. Uh, I joined the special forces and. Before you go on deployment, they get you to write a letter to your loved ones, uh, in case you die. And that was very confronting for a lot of guys. So you coming up against, you know, fear of death, uh, and, and fear in general, right? Mm-hmm. And I thought, well, there was only one time in the Bible where Jesus was afraid, and that was in the garden of Gethsemane.
And he wasn't just a little scared. He was so scared he was bleeding blood. and I started thinking, why was he so scared? Why was he so fearful? And I'm like, it can't be for any fear of physical pain because I. I know guys, I can just flick [00:07:00] a switch and they can control their physical pain. And, and I'm sure he had that ability, he had power over his physical body.
And I started thinking, what Jesus was really afraid about was that when he was on that cross and he was bearing our sins, he couldn't be with God. So this bond that had been there since the beginning of time, for the first time ever was actually severed.
Mm-hmm. And Jesus, for the first time ever in his, in the in, since the beginning of conceivable time, he was alone. He was completely alone. So yes, he experienced everything that us humans experienced while he was here, but he did something that none of us, I.
need to experience, and that is separation from God. Yeah. So when he was on that cross, that was Easter is a time of loneliness. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You know that, it's a bit like, you've got a child, you just put 'em outta the car and drive off.
There's no physical harm being done, but those golden threads get severed. So, because I saw that, [00:08:00] because Jesus experienced separation from God, we never have to, and it doesn't matter if I'm alive or I'm dead, I'm doing well, I'm doing poorly. Nothing's gonna separate us because of Jesus experiencing that separation for us.
And I, I completely lost my fear of death, um, to the point where I literally had fun with it, you know? Um, I remember guy saying, Tommo, you're not supposed to be having so much fun. But, that was my detachment from, from any fear because I, I realized that nothing could separate us. Oh, I Amen.
To that. Wow. So when was your faith real to you? Was there a, a particular event that happened in your life, or?
Well, to be honest, I have played in both realms. You might call it the woowoo, energy, whatever you wanna call it, um, new age. But there are some principles that they have in there and they talk about, uh, lower energy frequencies or what we would call in the Christian faith sins, you know?
Mm-hmm. Fear, anger, hatred, you [00:09:00] know, lower energy frequencies. And if you are stuck in those frequencies, then you can't transcend to the higher connection with the divine,
and then the difference between, your lower energies and your higher energies is courage. And as a Christian you'd say letting the old self die, that which you are familiar with. Okay? I always know Tim, as this particular type of person, this is what I do. This is what I think, this is how I react.
And so to. To let go of that and to let that self die. And it is essentially a death, takes a lot of courage to step into the unknown. It's that leap of faith, catch me, Jesus. And, so I found it very useful to use the, technical breakdown in the sort of woowoo space to help me access the sins that I've been hanging onto.
All the poison I'd been drinking to try and help hurt [00:10:00] other people. And I'm sure I was still saved by grace, but to, I think we naturally connect with God provided the blockages are removed. But we tend to hang onto these blockages. We hang onto to that which we are familiar with. I was very familiar with going, that person wronged me and I'm angry, so I want revenge.
Or I might say I forgive them in my head. And yeah. But that just means that, I've cut them outta my life and I hope God punishes them some way somehow. You know? Yeah. That's not really connecting to something higher. And the way I sort of saw it was, you can draw these wrongs or sins closer to you.
Uh, and so, my pathway to a living, breathing, active relationship with God and the divine, has me understanding that it does start in this physical space. It does start with me getting forgiveness for the things that have me in fear, shame, guilt.
So, I'm a big fan of breath work and if you wanna look at it from the parable of, the [00:11:00] king giving his servant talents, pieces of gold, do something with it.
And then when I return , I'll see what you've done with it. So inside of us is this, let's just say gold. And my experience of my true connection with the divine is he's given me this bag of meat around this wondrous, gold. And when this bag of meat does what I've been put here to do, it's like, it lines up to, to amplify the gold that's inside of me.
And that's unique to each individual. Some people get it through playing music, some people get it, with exercise, some people, me, it was combat. I have to be honest. I feel like God put me here to do the things I was made to do. Ah, when, I believe, you're on, purpose.
When energy's like money, how you invest, it's how you get it back. And when you are doing the thing that you felt you've been put here to do, you get an incredible reward.
So when I started tapping into, getting rid [00:12:00] of the sin, the lower energy stuff and getting into the divine, uh, that's when it became like a daily loving, abundant.
I have to reconnect, realign, and, to get that power, get that abundance. We get lost. We get lost in what we can see. We're a very visual society, so we're only looking at what we can see and, what is unseen is what's, super powerful.
That's the stuff that I tend to lean into because, and I don't think we say this loudly enough. A man's happiness and generosity is relative to how powerful he feels. 'cause if you wanna see an unhappy stingy guy, I
they're not feeling powerful.
And I believe that starts with us. So I tell my son, our power starts with us.
Um, I hope that lands, so you've probably heard the phrase, you are a soul. You have a body. You heard that before? Yep. Yep. And so a lot of people, they mix it up as they have a body and my soul's here just for the ride. It's, no, we are a soul. We are spiritual. And, yeah. I think, [00:13:00] folks can relate to what you've been saying.
You, mentioned your military experience in Australia. Now I'm familiar with American military 'cause I come from a military family. Uh, but what is it like in Australia? Are there any differences? What is it like being a soldier there? Well, I would say it's,
I've worked with some of the US troops, and to be honest, I didn't see there was too much difference. Of course as Australians, we'd just say we're much tougher than the US troops. But, but no, I work with some really, switched on guys from the us the Navy Seals in their special forces of selection, they got a hell week.
In the Australian Commandos, we have a hell 28 days. Oh, okay. So something similar. And, you mentioned that you had gone through some abuse because of your faith. Was that connected to your military service or in, other areas of your lives? Well,
I will caveat this. I struggled with military, [00:14:00] culture and I was always trying to figure it out. So I was always asking questions and, asking questions was probably not encouraged, but I always did it. Uh, so I was always that guy. So insecure alpha males always need someone to, you know, kick sand in the face of, 'cause that to them there's only so much energy in the room, so they have to take it, um, from someone else.
And. there was a drinking culture there hanging out with the boys. You know, I had a young family. I didn't hang out with them. And I also had a Christian faith. And I remember there was one particular sergeant that, really tried to break me. Mm-hmm.
And the thing is, my physical body, you can't break. You know, my, my mind, you can't break. I'm too tough. You know, I'm connected to something so powerful. but then something happened that I didn't expect. He managed to attack the people I cared mostly about. So I was on deployment and I made a promise to my then wife.
I call her my then wife, not my ex-wife. 'cause I, I stand for a positive future. and I promised my then wife that I'd write her a letter every day. And this particular [00:15:00] sergeant, , said, um, you, that's a security risk. We want to take your laptop off you. Now, my wife had given birth, uh, to our second born two weeks before deployment.
Mm-hmm. And I had all the pictures of my wife giving birth, my kids in the bath on this hard drive. Mm mm-hmm. And he took the hard drive and he put it on the, the army's equivalent of the internet so anyone could see it. And I'd never been in a situation where the people I cared about most was used against me like that, you know?
And obviously that freaked my then wife out, you know, and she was scared that her milk will dry up. She was so stressed. And now then that then of course freaked me the hell out, and so I'd never been. Like, I got a, armor of God man, but it was like a knife got un underneath under all of it hit my heart and I just bled out.
and I, I literally, in this lucid state, I saw a bird fly out from inside of me, just jump around in a rock and then fly off. And I'm like, what is [00:16:00] that? And I was later to realize that was the bluebird of happiness leaving me, and for about a decade there, 'cause, and when I went back to Australia and I, and you know, they decompress you with psychological stuff and, and I shared that the psychologist re reacted how you react and said, that is so wrong.
Right? Yeah. Um, and so I put in what's called a an ROG redress of grievance. That's when the second layer of abuse started happening, because what the army is particularly good at is if you challenge rank, and I was just a private Okay. Nothing, nobody, oh, you know? Right. So, so they all thought, well, he's an external threat.
Let's all bond together and, and screw this guy over a second time. So on every level, people who are really friendly then just treated me like I was invisible. No one would talk to me on base, yeah, I was kind of dead inside for the longest time, and, it really impacted my relationship with my then wife.
Um, I was, it was the classic term where my [00:17:00] husband came back from deployment a different man, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, Out of all that because I'm, I'm the toughest guy I know, right? Yeah. No, no one can break me. But the thing is, God put me in that place because it's not so much what we do that gives us value to others. It's what we've come through. And, and I had to go through that so I could actually have a heart having empathy for other people needing healing.
You know, I was one of those tough guys that, if you couldn't handle it, bugger off mate. You can't handle it. Get out. There is a time and a place for that. There is a time and a place. I think this country is made great by that, but it's not the only option that, that is in your tool belt.
What I didn't know was that when I got out, something happened when I got out. So in 2011, I think it was April. And this is just a true story. So I, I'd reached rock bottom.
Well, long story short, I was about to kill a man. The Australian government wasn't paying me. Uh, this is gonna be murder. Mm-hmm. [00:18:00] Um, I'd, I'd reach rock bottom. PSDI didn't even know I had, I just had to drink half a car and a grog every night before I spoke to my then wife. Family was going to hell.
what do you do when you're experiencing something you've never experienced before? And you need help or you see a psychologist? And that was such a strange concept for me, Diana, because I'm hurting and I've gotta go speak to a stranger. How does that make sense? I don't know this guy. I don't trust him.
So I am completely triggered just driving in there, right? And after I told him all I saw in service, all the abuse, this guy wasn't just incompetent. Incompetency I can handle. This guy was apathetic. And at the end he's like, oh, so you think it was a problem with your mom and dad? And, and everything in the room just froze.
And I saw he had a glass framed, you know, psychology degree behind him. And it made a lot of sense to grab that and feed it to him because he was a healer and he was supposed to be healing people, but he wasn't just not healing people, he was harming people. And in my state of [00:19:00] disconnection it made sense to do that.
So I get outta my chair to do it. And this, this is really real, right? But then I felt this hand on my chest saying, red flag, Tim, you're the toughest guy. You know how many other guys are struggling in a, in this system that doesn't seem to care or want you to get better? And that's when I sat back down, Diana.
And then I saw them, I saw all these people left and right of me just willing me on saying, you know, Tim, if you can find a way forward for you, you can find a way forward for us. And, and I really need people who are listening to this to draw this question to them.
' cause I didn't just go through that for myself. All right, there's a spirit at work here. Everyone's up against something. And the the golden question I asked, I invite everyone to ask, and that is how many other people are in your situation right now? And that, that's a real question. Give it a real number.
And, and when I looked to my left and my right, there was no depth of people in my space. And I thought, well, look. It doesn't [00:20:00] matter if it takes me a week, a month, a year, a decade, I've gotta find a way forward. 'cause if I can find a way forward for me, I can find a way forward for them. And if it takes me a decade, I'm pretty sure that's the amount of time I'm gonna be able to save these people.
And I was pretty sure that at some point in the future there's gonna be people that possibly haven't even met yet. Really glad I made a decision to move forward positively as opposed to going to jail. I understand that you saved, what, 17 people from committing suicide? Uh, I, I stopped counting at over 40.
Oh, well that's even better. Um, I'd certainly like to hear more , about that. Okay. So my lifetime goal was to say, 'cause we've lost about 40 troops to bombs and bullets in Afghanistan, in Australia. But we've lost 30 or 40 times that amount to suicide. And so I had this goal in my head that if I can, save, 40 guys from suicide, I'll die a happy man.
I don't care if it takes the rest of my life. This is what I wanna do. and I had no qualifications, but God had prepared me for this. So I'm [00:21:00] dyslexic. I, failed high school, but I could see patterns. And the pattern I saw happening is, is something that the mainstream spreadsheet never saw.
And that was this. And these two things enabled me to save those 40 guys within a year. All right, so this is, this is powerful stuff that I'm showing. I need everyone to listen to this. It doesn't matter if the pain's physical or emotional for us humans, it'll get to a certain duration or intensity that it transforms from just pain into loneliness and isolation.
And when we're all alone, when we're feeling isolated, all sorts of crazy crap. It can be justifiable. I was about to kill a man, and that was justifiable in my isolated state, but my isolation was broken. When I asked the question, how many other people are going through this? So I saw that, of all the millions of dollars of resources that get poured into veteran, it's all water off a duck's back if you're not breaking the isolation.
And it's as simple as understanding that, especially for us guys [00:22:00] when we experience trauma. Yeah, we want to talk about it, but we are waiting for another, especially we need another bloke who has walked the same path to speak the unspoken words inside our hearts. So we've got these unspoken words that we can't speak ourselves, that we need to hear another guy who's walked that path.
Speak, and then all of a sudden the jaw pops open. And I can't say what they normally say, but let's just say they say things like, gee whiz, I thought I was the only one going through this. Exactly. So, so breaking the isolation is the first step that it cannot and should not stay there. Uh, a lot of people get stuck in the feel goods of breaking the isolation.
Oh, I'm not the only one going through this. Right? And veterans are really good at forming these anti-social social groups where, oh, look, we've broken our isolation, but I can only be myself around these people, and I'm only around them for one hour a week. You know, for the other times, I have to sort of go back [00:23:00] in my shell, right?
Mm-hmm. So, yes, breaking the isolation's the first point, but it can't stop there. The next point that needs to be, uh, addressed is the plain and simple fatigue. I'm alone and isolated. I'm the only one that's got my back. I can't drop my guard for a second. Everything's a threat. 'cause everything is a threat.
So I'm not sleeping, if I drop my guard, something bad's gonna happen. It's gonna be my fault. And it's this loop and it just becomes normal. Not sleeping, being hypervigilant, drinking lots of alcohol, lots of substances. And I made the mistake of telling the doctor I couldn't sleep and I lost six years of my life to pills, and initially
i'm like, this is great long service, leaving a bottle. But no one tells you the cost of taking them. Yes, there's a benefit, but there's a massive cost. You get something, but it takes something from you. Mm-hmm. I lost a lot of memories. That's kind of a, a real gray patch in my life. Those six years I was on all these pills and I'm pretty sure I lost a bunch of memories from before that.
So I. There's a time and a place for pills. They're [00:24:00] sometimes are lesser of two evils, but no one tells you the cost and especially nobody tells you just how hard it is to come off these things. Mm-hmm. You know, if you wanna feel like a minute, turns into an hour, be in the kind of pain that the withdrawals put through your system.
I, I nearly went completely insane coming off of these things. So point I'm trying to make here is the two things I did that say 40 guys within, um, a year, and then I stopped counting, was breaking the isolation. And I want all the listeners to understand that what you are up against when you come through that, that gives you the qualification to break the isolation of other people going through it.
You know, my pathway was a veteran, but it could be breast cancer, it could be a relationship, it could be anything. Whatever you're up against, you get through that. Live the life you wanna live. That gives you the qualification to break the isolation. Now, you might not say anything that that person hasn't heard before, but coming from you and your lived experience, you can put that from their head [00:25:00] into their heart, into their soul spirit.
And then they get a chance to start making powerful choices, in a place of connection. And then getting them out of fatigue was where, when they gave me a bunch of pills, I didn't know breath work was something that could alkalize my neural pathways, turn my overthinking head off, give my body peace, give my body healing.
It is the piece that transcends all human understandings. And I, and I don't just wanna talk about this there, there'll be a time at the end of this podcast where we'll have a lived experience of this. those 40 lives were saved by two simple PR principles that aren't addressed.
Breaking the isolation, through authentically spoken words. I've got six pages of weapons I'm qualified in, but the most powerful thing I own is the authenticity in the words coming outta my mouth. That literally changes the axis of the world. And then getting people out of fatigue because people have 98% of everything they need inside of them.
But if they're feeling [00:26:00] alone, if they're feeling fatigued, they can't access their own resources. But when their isolation is broken and they're out of fatigue, it's like their inner compass just turns on and it, and they, they know where they need to go. And it's just, it's, it's amazing how little people need when they get exactly what they want.
Um, yeah, definitely. You know, I know there's a shark story somewhere.
How does the shark come into play with, is that, just something you survived or is that.
Oh, look, that was a fun NBE near death experience where, um, okay. Yeah. Very relevant. It was the classic one where you have your life flashing before your eyes. Right. Um, and the important part about this isn't so much the shark attack in the, in the context of a, a, let's say Christian faith afterwards, because I, I love the ocean, I love spearfishing.
And there's always sharks where there's fish when we're chasing fish. There's, it's always a good sign when there's sharks around because that tells you you're in the right area. [00:27:00] And it's a fun story. Like this thing had my leg, and I don't believe it when people say, oh, I punched it and then it went away.
I'm stabbing this thing in the eye and it's not letting go. And I'm about to drown, right? As a fighter, I've taken a lot of hits, but never, ever, ever has my body felt like a ragdoll being shaken by a dog. Mm-hmm. Um, so I literally felt that my body going, oh yeah, yeah.
Like just so rapidly shook. I'm like, whoa.
This is a great place to stop and continue. Next time on the podcast, I know that you'll wanna hear the rest of his story and what helpful things does he have for us to better our health and and handle the stress and heal from our trauma. So [00:28:00] thanks for listening today. I wish you a great week, and we'll see you back next time on the Wounds of The Faithful Podcast.
