Advanced Oxygen Advantage Instructor Training – Porto
Why Porto
Porto offers a setting that supports both focus and ease. It’s a place where learning can feel spacious without becoming disconnected from everyday life – making it well suited to an instructor training that values understanding, integration, and practical application.
This training is delivered as a workshop (English language), but with room to breathe. The pace allows concepts to settle, questions to be explored, and connections to be made without the pressure of constant momentum. For many people, Porto provides a middle ground between the depth of a retreat and the efficiency of a city-based course.
The environment plays an active role in how the training unfolds. Alongside studio-based learning, participants take part in guided qigong and functional movement practices, including sessions in the Palácio de Cristal gardens overlooking the Douro River. These practices support awareness, posture, and regulation, helping make breathing patterns more visible and easier to understand.
Being immersed in a walkable city, with regular access to outdoor space and movement, supports attention and clarity – without requiring a full retreat format or time away from everyday responsibilities.
This training suits coaches, health and movement professionals, and anyone who wants to develop the skills to teach functional breathing with confidence.
Some participants arrive with years of experience, others are newer to this work. What matters most is curiosity, openness, and a willingness to engage with the learning process.
How it feels to be here
The Porto training has a calm, open quality. Days are structured, but not tightly compressed, allowing learning to unfold with a sense of ease. There’s time to focus, practise, and reflect – without feeling rushed or overstimulated.
Learning takes place through a balance of explanation, discussion, and practical exploration. The environment supports curiosity and engagement, making it easier to stay present and absorb new ideas without cognitive overload.
Outside of teaching sessions, there’s space to step away, walk, and reset. Many participants find that the combination of focused learning and time spent outdoors helps insights land more clearly and feel easier to integrate.
What you’ll explore
Foundations
You begin by exploring the foundations of functional breathing. This includes observing everyday breathing patterns, understanding how breath responds to physical and psychological demands, and recognising common habits that affect efficiency, comfort, and regulation. There’s space to revisit these fundamentals, ask questions, and notice subtle shifts as understanding develops. The focus is on building a solid base that supports both personal practice and future teaching.
Awareness
Awareness sits at the centre of effective instruction. During the training, you spend time developing the ability to notice how breathing patterns relate to nervous system state, posture, and attention. You explore when intervention is helpful and when observation is more appropriate, learning to work with the breath as feedback rather than something to fix. This section supports clarity, sensitivity, and better decision-making as a coach or instructor.
Application
Application brings the learning into real-world teaching. Through guided practice, discussion, and shared reflection, you explore how to apply Oxygen Advantage principles with different people and in different contexts. The setting allows time to practise teaching, explore case scenarios, and build confidence without pressure. By the end of the workshop, application feels less about following protocols and more about responding appropriately to the person in front of you.
How we teach in this setting
The Porto training emphasises integration. Teaching is guided and responsive, allowing concepts to be introduced clearly and then explored through experience, discussion, and application.
Coaching skills are developed through observation, questioning, and shared reflection. You learn how to adapt language, pacing, and approach based on who you’re working with, building confidence in your ability to teach without relying on rigid scripts.
Supportive movement and awareness practices are used where they help clarify breathing patterns and support regulation. These practices remain accessible and optional, offering additional ways to sense, understand, and integrate learning.
The aim is to support instructors who can think clearly, respond appropriately, and teach with confidence across a range of contexts – bringing structure and flexibility together.
Supportive movement practices, including qigong, are used to enhance awareness and learning – not as a separate discipline, but as a way to support clearer observation of breath, posture, and regulation.
What’s included
The in-person workshop
Pre & post-retreat integration
Ongoing learning & certification
Personal support
Certification Pathway
A clear, supportive process
Attend the workshop
Complete the online modules
Build your case studies
Submit your assessment
Achieve certification
Why train with us
Learn in-person from an experienced master coach
You’re guided by Oxygen Advantage Master Coach Gray Caws, with years of experience across:
You learn to adapt the method to the person in front of you, not copy a script.
You get practical, human, hands-on coaching support
Functional breathing is simple. Teaching it requires skill. We help you:
You learn how breath, posture, and movement work together
Breathing doesn’t exist separately from the rest of your body. We show you how it interacts with:
This is where movement and awareness practices add depth to OA.
You also learn directly from Patrick McKeown
You’re not choosing between us and and world-renowned breath expert Patrick McKeown. You also learn directly from him through:
You don’t just understand the method – you know how to teach it
The difference is simple: This training develops practical instructors – not just people who know the theory.
Your Coaches
This training is led by Gray Caws, who teaches breathing in context – shaped by years of coaching, movement practice, and real-world application – and supported by the wider Oxygen Advantage faculty.
Gray Caws
Master InstructorGray’s work centres on the belief that sustainable health and performance emerge when breath, attention, and movement are aligned with everyday life.
His teaching style brings clarity to complex ideas, helping people understand not just what to do, but why it matters and when to apply it.
He is a Master Instructor in both the Oxygen Advantage® and Buteyko methods, with a background as a specialist personal trainer and running coach.
His approach has been shaped by extensive training with internationally recognised teachers across breathwork, meditation, qigong, and movement, alongside many years of hands-on coaching with a wide range of clients.
Gray has delivered breathwork programmes for initiatives such as ASICS Movement for Mind, working alongside mental health researcher Dr Brendon Stubbs. That programme followed nearly 200 participants and demonstrated meaningful improvements in activity levels and wellbeing, reinforcing his emphasis on understanding over pressure.
He is a member of the EMCC UK, a professional body committed to maintaining and developing high standards in coaching and mentoring practice.
As founder and director of Adventures in Movement, Gray focuses on teaching that is grounded, adaptable, and human – supporting people to carry learning confidently into daily life.
Patrick McKeown
Founder, Oxygen Advantage – onlineThis training is delivered in collaboration with Patrick McKeown, the founder of the Oxygen Advantage method.
Patrick provides the foundational framework for the training and teaches a series of live online sessions as part of the certification pathway. These sessions connect reminders of core principles, deeper theoretical insight, and long-term perspective on the method’s development and application.
While the in-person retreat is led by Master Instructor Gray Caws, Patrick’s ongoing involvement ensures the training remains aligned with the integrity, evolution, and original intent of the Oxygen Advantage approach – while allowing space for thoughtful coaching, discussion, and real-world application..
