Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 1013 is a conversation with breath and stress-resilience coach Taylor Somerville of Symmetry, who returns a few years later to talk about the corporate breathwork he now teaches, how cold a plunge actually needs to be, using CO2 and O2 breath-hold tables to stay calm under pressure, a ten-minute morning movement practice that took away his back pain, and a practical foundation for sleeping better.
Listen now: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · or press play in the YouTube player on this page to watch.
Taylor Somerville is a breath and stress-resilience coach and the founder of Symmetry, based in Memphis. He works with individuals and corporate teams on breathwork, heat and cold exposure, and sleep, both in his studio and virtually with clients as far away as Australia. His focus is teaching people to use their breath to manage stress, perform better, and recover.
Taylor runs corporate teams through a three-session arc he calls Reset, Recharge, and Align. The work reframes stress as something neutral that can be used for growth rather than only endured, teaches slow diaphragmatic and exhale-focused breathing, and gives employees simple tools to use in transitions throughout the day so they do not carry stress from home into work or back again.
CO2 and O2 tables are freediving-style breath-hold protocols Taylor adapts for mental resilience rather than diving. CO2 tables keep the breath hold steady while shrinking the rest between holds, training tolerance to air hunger. O2 tables keep the rest steady while lengthening the hold, training tolerance to lower oxygen. Taylor uses them to teach clients to relax into stress instead of fighting it.
Taylor has moved away from the coldest possible water. He now prefers the mid-forties for himself rather than the thirty-something-degree troughs and ice barrels he also keeps, and he caps client sessions at around five minutes. He notes that tolerance builds quickly day over day, and that much of the benefit is mental rather than purely physical.
Taylor does a roughly ten-to-twelve-minute, seven-exercise movement and breath practice from Mike Holland that combines twisting, hip hinging, shaking, and tapping. He pairs it with rapid in-and-out nasal fire breathing. He credits the twisting movement and spinal focus with relieving back pain he had dealt with on and off since 2017.
Taylor builds the foundation first: cut screens at least thirty minutes before bed, keep the room dark and cool, avoid eating right before sleep, and get ten to fifteen minutes of early-morning sunlight to set the circadian rhythm. He suggests no caffeine after about two in the afternoon, ideally noon, and treating sleep trackers as an awareness tool rather than a verdict on the day.
Taylor's website is symmetry.live and his Instagram is @symmetry.live. He works with clients one-on-one from his Memphis studio and virtually, and he sends a weekly email newsletter. The video version of this episode is embedded on this page.
Taylor and I first talked a few years ago, back when he was deep into ice, sauna, breath work, and the pool side of XPT. I do most of those same things myself, so I have always been curious where he would land once he had been at it for a while longer. I have noticed in my own life that I keep doing more of what works for me and less of the rest, and I wanted to hear where Taylor had gone with that. He is also the reason a lot of people in my world found Mike Holland, since I connected the two of them, and I wanted to hear how that turned out.
Press play in the YouTube player on this page to hear the whole conversation in his own words.
Taylor now does a lot of work inside companies, and the way he frames it is the part I keep thinking about. He does not tell people to make stress disappear, because he says that is a false narrative. He teaches them that stress just is, and that it can either be used to grow or be allowed to crush you. He walks through a human function curve, a few simple breathing tools, and the muscle-testing demonstration he uses to create buy-in with a room full of skeptics. It is worth hearing him lay it out.
I expected Taylor to be the guy pushing for the coldest water and the longest time. He is not, at least not anymore. He keeps barrels and troughs in the thirties, but for himself he warms the water up into the mid-forties and has gotten less dogmatic about the whole thing. He still caps his clients at around five minutes, even the ones who want to go longer. The reasons he gives for backing off the extremes are the interesting part, and he explains them in the episode.
This was the section I had never heard anyone teach quite the way Taylor does. He uses freediving-style CO2 and O2 tables, but nobody he works with is diving. He uses them as mental resilience training for the type-A, go-go-go crowd, teaching them to ride the wave of air hunger instead of fighting it. He describes how he coaches a first-timer through a max hold and how the numbers climb fast once tension leaves the body. Listen to that part of the episode.
Taylor had nerve pain running down his leg and had been getting dry needled for years. He started a short morning practice from Mike Holland at the beginning of the year, did it almost every day, and has not needed to get needled in three months. It is about ten to twelve minutes, seven exercises, and he layers his own fire breathing on top of it. He has a theory about why the twisting and the spinal focus did what years of other work did not. He explains it in the conversation.
When Taylor talks about sleep, he starts with the foundation instead of the gadgets. He goes through the levers that move the most: light, temperature, movement, and digestion. He gets specific about early-morning sunlight, cutting screens before bed, where caffeine fits in the day, and why he treats a sleep score as awareness rather than a verdict. He also explains the sleep diary he has clients keep for a week. The full breakdown is in the episode.
Listen to the full conversation: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · or watch in the YouTube player on this page.
What stays with me from talking to Taylor again is how much of this comes back to simple things done on purpose. None of it is new. The breathing, the cold, the movement, the sleep habits have all been around forever. What he has done is boil them down to a handful of tools a person can actually use and feel a difference from quickly.
The line I keep repeating to my own workout group is his: stress plus rest equals growth. Most of us are good at the stress and bad at the rest, and Taylor's whole approach is about giving you small, repeatable ways to put the rest back in.
Press play in the player on this page, or grab Episode 1013 on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Taylor Somerville · Symmetry · Mike Holland · Wim Hof · Andrew Huberman · Laird Hamilton · XPT · James DiNicolantonio · Memphis, Tennessee
Taylor Somerville is the founder of Symmetry, a breath and stress-resilience practice based in Memphis. He coaches individuals and corporate teams on breathwork, heat and cold exposure, and sleep, working both from his studio and virtually with clients around the world. His approach blends slow diaphragmatic and exhale-focused breathing, freediving-style breath-hold tables for mental resilience, daily movement, and a practical sleep foundation. He can be found at symmetry.live and on Instagram at @symmetry.live.
Subscribe to get the latest episodes, show notes, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.