What is Formula.life?

A conscious breathing method for a mind that won’t switch off. You breathe in seven groups of seven — forty-nine breaths — while counting and carrying a quiet syllable, so your attention has a job to do and racing thoughts have no room to run. It’s free to learn and practise.

People whose minds won’t switch off — overthinkers, high performers, and many people with ADHD or an OCD-type mind who can’t stop the loops or the mental noise. Feodor built it living with his own ADHD and OCD, so it’s shaped for exactly that kind of mind. It isn’t a treatment and doesn’t replace care — if you’re doing therapy such as ERP for OCD, keep it, and let this sit alongside it.

Instead of fighting a thought, it gives your attention a structured task — breath, count, inner sound, body sense and keeping your place — all timed to the breath. Holding several of these at once leaves little capacity for a worry to build into a story. You can’t think your way out of a loop, so you change the task instead.

Is it the same as meditation?

No. Most meditation asks you to sit quietly and watch your thoughts. For a busy mind that open space often gets louder, not calmer. Formula does the opposite — it hands the mind an active, structured job. That’s why it often works for people who say they can’t meditate.

Yes. The practice is free to learn and do, and always will be. The paid options are live one-to-one sessions with Feodor, for people who want to go further.

Can it help with anxiety, ADHD or overthinking?

Many people with ADHD, an OCD-type mind, anxiety or relentless overthinking find it genuinely helps — Feodor created it living with his own ADHD and OCD. That’s lived and reported experience, not a medical claim: it’s a breathing and attention practice, not a treatment or cure. If you’re in treatment, keep it — this sits alongside care, it doesn’t replace it.

How long does it take, and do I need anything?

A few minutes. The full practice is forty-nine breaths, and you need nothing but yourself — you can learn it free here and eventually do it anywhere, with just your own breath.

Breathing Through Pain: How I Stay Calm at the Dentist and Beyond

Real time is the whole point

This is the one line that separates Formula from almost everything else you’ll read about breathing or calm. You don’t step away to do it. You don’t need the room to go quiet or your schedule to clear. You do it during — during the drilling, during the needle, during the wait when your heart is going. The hard thing is happening, and you are counting straight through the middle of it.

In the chair

My dentist genuinely couldn’t understand me — no flinching, no gripping the armrests, nothing on my face. The truth was simple: I wasn’t there for the pain. I was counting. One cycle, then a second, then a third — breathing, counting, seeing the numbers, carrying the sound — until I was almost asleep in the chair, and still counting. The drill was doing exactly what it was doing. I just wasn’t feeding it.

Why it works on pain

Pain has two parts: the raw sensation, and the mind’s running commentary about it — it hurts, when will it stop, I can’t stand this. That commentary uses the same inner voice, the same attention, that the formula deliberately fills up. Occupy those channels with counting and breath and image, and there’s little bandwidth left to build the sensation into suffering. The feeling is still there. You’re simply no longer amplifying it into a story.

As long as I was counting, I wasn’t thinking it’s painful. And the thought is half the pain.

Not just me

A friend of mine ran the formula right through laser eye surgery — the whole procedure — and came out the other side having coped with it calmly, from the inside. Different person, different procedure, same tool: attention held on the breath and the count, in real time, while something hard was happening.

A boundary I want to be clear about

I’ve used the formula through medical procedures I chose to do without the usual sedation, including a camera examination of my stomach. I’m telling you that because it’s true and it’s part of my story — but I am not telling you to refuse anything your doctor or dentist offers you. The formula is not an anaesthetic and it is not pain relief. It doesn’t replace medical care, and it never should. If your medical team offers you sedation or pain management, that’s between you and them. What the formula can do is sit alongside proper care and help you stay calm and present while you receive it.

Where it helps most

The sharp end of this is acute anxiety — the dentist, a procedure, an injection, anything uncomfortable where the dread is as bad as the event. Because you can run it right there, in the moment, with nothing but your own breath, it goes where the fear goes. That’s the point of a formula for life: it’s meant to be used in life, in the exact moment you need it.

It’s free to learn, and you can carry it into any waiting room.

Start with the free practice

This is my own lived experience and that of people I’ve taught — not medical advice, not a treatment, and not a claim that breathing removes pain. Never change or refuse medical treatment on the basis of a breathing practice. If you’re in pain, see a professional.

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