I came from technology, not the wellness world.
Before I ever thought seriously about meditation or conscious breathing, I was building technology businesses, raising investment and working in startups.
More than ten years ago, my life was moving very fast.
I was helping build a technology startup that had raised millions of euros. At the same time, I was living with chronic pain, severe stress and a mind that rarely stopped.
I was travelling, building companies and pursuing the version of success I thought I wanted.
But the pace hid what was happening underneath — and underneath, things were starting to come apart.
From the outside, things looked very different.
We had raised millions of euros. I was travelling, building companies and pursuing the version of success I thought I wanted.
But none of that mattered very much when my body hurt, I couldn’t switch my mind off, and the business I’d spent years building began collapsing.
By 2015, things were falling apart.
My health was deteriorating. I was burnt out. The company was in crisis. And the medication I had been taking for a diagnosed autoimmune condition was creating problems of its own.
Someone suggested meditation.
There was only one problem: I couldn’t meditate.
The abstract visualisations and traditional instructions didn’t make sense to my technical mind. I needed something practical. Something I could understand, test and actually use while running a company, taking calls and dealing with real life.
So I started experimenting.
That experimentation became Formula.life.
I discovered that breathing became much more powerful for me when I combined it with deliberate attention, counting and visualisation.
Instead of trying to force myself to stop thinking, I gave my attention something precise to do.
I practised it at my desk. Between meetings. During stressful situations. Wherever I happened to be.
Over time, that experiment developed into what I now call the Formula.life Breathing Method.
Formula wasn’t something I learned on a course.
It grew out of my own need to find a practical way of working with my breathing, attention and relentless internal dialogue.
And it became the beginning of a much longer journey.
Formula was the beginning, not the end.
Once I experienced what deliberate breathing and attention could do, I wanted to understand it properly.
Over the years that followed, I studied conscious breathing, meditation and different approaches to attention with a number of teachers and practitioners.
I also trained formally in breathing physiology and became a certified Buteyko instructor.
Buteyko gave me another framework for understanding breathing. It isn’t the origin of Formula and it isn’t the entirety of what I teach.
My work today brings together more than a decade of personal practice, experimentation, formal training and techniques I’ve learned from others.
The common thread is simple:
“Your breathing is happening all day anyway. What changes when you finally start paying attention to it?”
This began as something I needed myself.
My experience with breathing coincided with profound changes in my health, sleep, attention and relationship with my own mind.
Those experiences ultimately changed the direction of my life.
They are also personal experiences — not medical claims, clinical recommendations or promises that another person will experience the same outcome.
Today, I teach because I believe conscious breathing is one of the most accessible ways of beginning to observe your own state.
No special environment.
No equipment.
And you don’t need to become a different kind of person before you begin.
You can start exactly where you are.
“Let’s Get Some Air”
The first full account of my journey — from Leningrad and technology to chronic pain, burnout and the conscious breathing that changed my life. Also published in Russian as «Воздух».
The full story
The complete account of my health journey, the collapse of the startup and the experiences that eventually led to this work lives on my personal website.
Start with five minutes.
You don’t need to believe any of this because you’ve read my story — experience the method yourself. My free five-minute mini-masterclass introduces the Formula.life Breathing Method: I’ll show you the basic principle and guide you through it. No previous experience, no equipment, no credit card.