Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 921 is my conversation with Taylor Somerville, founder of the coaching company Symmetry. Taylor and I first connected years ago through XPT and the work Laird Hamilton was doing, and he has since expanded into corporate work, one-on-one coaching, and group coaching out of Memphis, all built on the breath. He also recently became a dad, which means he is living the same newfound stress his clients bring to him. We talk about breath, the nervous system, cold and sauna, and taking your own medicine.
Listen now: Megaphone · YouTube.
Taylor Somerville is the founder of Symmetry, a Memphis-based coaching company that helps high-achieving, busy people manage stress and take back control of their time and energy. A longtime XPT coach, he uses breath as the foundation of his work, along with cold plunges, sauna, pool workouts, and nervous-system training. He is also a new father.
Symmetry is Taylor Somerville's coaching company. It does corporate work along with one-on-one and group coaching, helping clients deal with stress, save time and energy, and get back control of their lives. The work is built on the breath but also incorporates getting outside your comfort zone, understanding the nervous system, and tools like cold exposure and sauna.
Taylor uses breath as the foundation of everything he teaches because it is a direct lever on the nervous system. By learning to control breathing, clients can shift out of a stressed state, stay calm and collected when things go wrong, and build resilience, which he pairs with cold plunges, sauna, and deliberate discomfort to expand their capacity.
Taylor says he has to put his own methods into practice every day now that he has a young child. Between sleep, unpredictable childcare, and the constant uncertainty a young one brings, he leans on breath and staying calm and collected when everything goes awry, living the same stress his clients come to him to manage.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 921 with Taylor Somerville is available on Megaphone, Spotify, YouTube, and the Tom Rowland Podcast feed. The video version is embedded at the top of this page.
I wanted Taylor back because we go way back to the XPT days, and I have always valued how he thinks about stress. What makes this conversation different is that he is now living it. He recently became a dad, and that is a whole new kind of stress, the same kind a lot of the people listening are dealing with. I wanted to hear how someone who coaches stress for a living actually takes his own medicine when life gets unpredictable.
Press play in the player above to hear it.
Now that Taylor has a young child, he has to practice everything he preaches every single day. He is honest about the sleep, the sickness, and the uncertainty, and how he stays calm and collected when everything goes sideways. Hear it in the episode.
Taylor explains why he builds all of his work on the breath, how it gives you a direct handle on the nervous system, and why that matters more than any single technique. Listen to that section of the conversation.
Taylor still does the pool workouts, the cold plunges, and the sauna, and he explains how deliberately getting outside your comfort zone expands what you can handle. Press play in the YouTube player above.
Taylor's corporate and one-on-one work centers on helping busy, high-achieving people reclaim their time and energy. He shares the core of how he coaches that. Worth hearing in full.
Listen to the full conversation: Megaphone · YouTube.
What I took from talking to Taylor again is that the tools only matter if you actually use them when life is hard, and right now his life is in the thick of it with a young child at home.
Hearing him work through that in real time, not as a theory but as a dad, made this one land differently for me. Press play in the player above, or grab Episode 921 on Megaphone or Spotify.
Taylor Somerville · Symmetry · XPT · Laird Hamilton · Memphis · Tom Rowland (host)
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Taylor Somerville is the founder of Symmetry, a Memphis-based coaching company that helps high-achieving people manage stress and reclaim their time and energy. A longtime XPT coach who trained in the work pioneered by Laird Hamilton, he builds his coaching on the breath, paired with cold exposure, sauna, pool workouts, and nervous-system training. He works with corporate clients as well as individuals and groups, and is a new father.
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