Hard Reset for the Introverted Leader — Breathwork to Cut Anxiety & Self-Doubt
Richie Kiryaku · Episode 41
Manage Your Energy & Thrive in Extroverted Cultures
Richie Kiryaku is a mindset coach and founder of Reset with Richie who went from high-performing financial services leader — hiding anxiety behind alcohol, cocaine, and a corporate mask — to walking away from that world entirely and building a coaching practice that combines deep self-awareness work with therapeutic breathwork. His central argument is that most coping strategies (therapy, meditation, gym) are sustainable only as long as you keep stacking them, and that the real transformation comes from going inward through felt experience rather than intellectualization. Breathwork, particularly the holotropic and Wim Hof styles, is presented as the "hot knife" that cuts through subconscious blockage faster than years of talk therapy.
I spent years running around trying to be accepted by everyone else and never stopping to find acceptance for myself. Self-acceptance — let's call it what it is — it's self-love. And when you get there, the opinions of others just don't bother you. You become almost indestructible.
What you resist is going to persist. Go with the emotion, surrender to it — that's where the shift happens.
Imagine your subconscious as a big block of butter. The breathwork is a hot knife. It goes straight through and accesses those deep places to release blockages that hold people back.
Key Stories
- The engagement party blackout: Richie woke up the morning after a party back in his own apartment with his clothes still in the host’s wardrobe — he spent the weekend checking news to see if he’d been reported, which led to a GP visit, an anti-anxiety prescription, and years more of the same cycle.
- 2020 quitting everything: After a senior promotion in 2019 with an escalating party lifestyle, Richie quit alcohol and cocaine in 2020 — describing the process of grieving the identity of “that Richie” as the hardest and most essential part of the transformation.
- The Monday presentation coaching call: A potential client asked for presentation tips at the end of their intro call; Richie ditched the hacks and told him to surrender to the emotions he was feeling rather than fight them. The man emailed mid-week: the presentation to US executives went “way better than expected” — and he signed up for coaching.
Techniques & Frameworks
- Inner confidence vs. surface confidence: Distinguishing the inner calm and clarity that comes from genuine self-awareness from the performative confidence Richie wore throughout his corporate career — the former makes you “almost indestructible.”
- Breathwork styles and their purposes:
- Box breathing / 4-7-8: Regulates emotional state directly; accessible anywhere.
- Wim Hof method: Rounds of connected breathing induce a physiological stress response with no external stressor — training the mind to stay calm within stress.
- Holotropic / psychedelic-style breathwork: Circular, fast, guided breathing with evocative music that induces altered states; accesses subconscious blockages (described as a “hot knife through butter”) to release trauma and unlock creativity.
- Surrender, not fight: The key instruction for intense breathwork — willingness to let go to the breath rather than analyze it. What you resist persists; going toward the emotion releases it.
- Coaching + breathwork integration: Breathwork insights fade without integration; Richie’s cohort model pairs breathwork sessions with group coaching to translate altered-state clarity into daily behavior changes.
- Self-awareness layers: Coaching begins with deepening self-awareness, but Richie flags the trap of over-intellectualizing feelings — he probes until clients move from narrative to felt experience.