#101 Anthony Abbagnano: The Illness That Sparked a Global Breathwork Revolution

When life brought him to the edge of death, Anthony Abbagnano discovered something extraordinary — the hidden power of breath.

From total physical collapse to becoming a global transformation leader, Anthony’s story reveals how conscious breathing can unlock healing, restore balance, and help us reconnect to who we truly are. As the founder of Alchemy of Breath and author of Outer Chaos, Inner Calm, he has inspired thousands around the world to overcome trauma, anxiety, and emotional pain through the simple act of mindful breathing.

In this powerful episode, Anthony shares how one breath can shift your entire reality. Learn how breathwork rewires the nervous system, releases buried emotion, and creates calm within the chaos of modern life.

ℹ️ About the Guest

Anthony Abbagnano is a pioneering breathwork expert and founder of Alchemy of Breath, the world's top-rated breathwork institute. He has helped thousands transform their lives through free weekly Breathe The World sessions, Facilitator Training, and BreathCamp retreats at ASHA in Tuscany, Italy. Learn more at www.alchemyofbreath.com and buy Anthony's book at https://iam.alchemyofbreath.com/book-podcast.

• 🌐 Website: alchemyofbreath.com
• 🌐 ASHA School (Alchemy School of Healing Arts): asha.global
• 📸 Instagram: @alchemyofbreath
• 📘 Facebook: Alchemy of Breath
• ▶️ YouTube: Anthony Abbagnano
• 💼 LinkedIn: Anthony Abbagnano

👨‍💻 People & Other Mentions

• Anthony Abbagnano – Founder of Alchemy of Breath and Alchemy School of Healing Arts (ASHA); author of Outer Chaos, Inner Calm
• Cody McLain – Host of the Mind Hack Podcast; author of From Foster Care to Millionaire: A Young Entrepreneur’s Journey of Success, Failure, and Triumph
• Deepak Chopra – Spiritual teacher and author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
• Wim Hof – Creator of the Wim Hof Method; author of The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential
• Joseph Campbell – Mythologist and author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces
• Peter A. Levine – Psychologist and trauma expert; author of Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
• Marianne Williamson – Spiritual leader and author of A Return to Love
• Dr. Hale (Montreal) – Mentioned in relation to coherence breath and trauma healing (no verified public profile found)

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Story & Near-Death Experience
• 10:00 The Lesson of Surrender vs. Will
• 14:00 Transformation & Purpose
• 18:00 Discovering Breathwork
• 26:00 Breath & Emotions
• 33:00 Science & Spirituality of Breath
• 36:00 The Hero’s Journey Framework
• 40:00 Breathwork Practices & Global Mission
• 46:00 Healing Trauma Through Breath
• 1:01:00 Practical Takeaways
• 1:05:00 Closing Message

Transcript

Cody: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Mind Hack Podcast, where we explore the psychology of self-improvement and mindset to help you live a happier and more fulfilled life. In today's chaotic world, finding inner peace can seem like an impossible task between global uncertainties, personal challenges, and the constant barrage of information.

Many of us can feel overwhelmed and disconnected from our true selves, but what is the key to navigating this chaos lies not in controlling our external environment, but in transforming our inner landscape. Today I'm joined by Anthony Abano, a renowned breathwork teacher and author of the book, outer Chaos, inner Calm.

As the founder of Alchemy Breath, Anthony has built a global community of over 170,000 practitioners and has shared stages with transformational leaders like Deepak Chopra and Wim h. Through his pioneering work, he's helped countless people [00:01:00] discover the profound healing power of conscious breath breathing.

Today we'll explore how breath work can help us maintain inner calm, despite external chaos, the hero's journey of personal transformation. Anthony, welcome to the show. 

Anthony: Thank you so much. And, and I just want to acknowledge anybody who's come to this space from being in a rush or being in a hurry or being subjected to those outer influences that we can share the space together in a space of calm, in a state of calm, uh, and see what we can see, what we can accomplish in these few minutes we have together, 

Cody: Anthony, so I know that you, you became seriously, seriously ill in Asia and that's kind of when everything changed for you.

Can you tell me about the moment that that happened and, and. What came outta that? 

Anthony: Uh, it actually started before, you know, I was, I was curious [00:02:00] to write a book about miracles. I was in discovery of miracles and understanding that, um, the way we interpret them as humans is to cast them into the remotest possibility.

Like it could never happen to me kind of thing. And so I traveled around Europe, I had a camper, and I was traveling around Europe and interviewing different people from different walks of life about this subject, about what miracles meant to them. And I was on my way back to Italy and I saw a sign to Lurd, or Lourdes, I think you say, in America, which is a, an ancient site in the south of France that people have visited for.

Centuries because of the, in the Catholic faith, the Madonna that was there, a statue of the Madonna actually bled, physically bled and miracle healings have happened there. And I thought, well, I can't really go home without honoring [00:03:00] that signpost. I've got to go there and feel it out. And I did. And I was, I was expecting this little town to be full of, um, kind of cheesy souvenir shops.

And the lured water is very famous as a healing essence. And I was expecting there to be little bottles for sale and all kinds of paraphernalia that the, that the whole matter of miracles would be commodified and monetized to the point of. I thought disgust and I actually did get there and I remember parking my, my Volkswagen and walking down the main street and absolutely right, they were full of little trinkets for sale and people hawking things from the front door of their shop, but there were also crowds of people.

And so my critical factor got melted. It melted. It melted. The more that I saw these people from every [00:04:00] nation, every color, every gender, every race, they were all converging towards this wall at the bottom of the high street where people would say their prayer and ask for healing buses from every different.

Country in the world. People have flown in from Africa, Asia, everywhere, all Catholics that were desperately in need of a miraculous healing. And I, I can't quite describe what the energy was like in that, in that moment, as you walk down in this, the, the streets, there was no traffic. The, the, the, the sidewalks were full.

The, the actual road itself was full of the throngs of people moving towards this wall and to receive the blessing. And so I, I went with it and I almost in a trance like, oh my gosh, I've been kind of slamming this in the back of my head as a, as a monetization program. But this is for [00:05:00] real when there's this much human yearning present in the same moment, in the same place.

This has got to be where alchemy can happen, just the power of will, let alone that over higher power when we come together in numbers of that quantity. And so as we moved toward the wall and I followed on, I went with the flow and I got to the wall and I noticed this was a granite rock. It wasn't a built wall, it was a natural granite rock face, and it was very sharp.

And, uh, and yet this strip about shoulder height where people had been putting their hand as they walked and they would say their incantation or their prayer was worn smooth. And you know, of course, the, the understanding that this had been worn smooth by centuries of people walking there in this state of surrender and [00:06:00] hope and plea.

And, and I got so moved by this, that as I walked. Toward the war. I thought I, I just see so much sadness and pain in the world, and I'm so healthy. You know, I said as I put my hand on the wall, I said, take my health if it can help someone else. And I didn't. I was so emotional. So I didn't realize how unreasonable a request that was.

Even less did I realize that it might actually happen when they say, be careful what you wish for. And so I finished my visit there and I took some of the water with me back home, and I got back in my, my camper and I was driving on the freeway back to Italy and my body started to stiffen and I couldn't, I, I sort of was turning to the mirror, you know, with, with my whole upper body, not just my neck.

And I, it was almost imperceptible. Um, but as the kilometers went past and I, I probably had to do a thousand or [00:07:00] 1200 kilometers, so that must be seven or 800 miles and. The closer I got to home in Italy, the more stiff my body became until I got to my house and I had to really, I had to have support in order to get into the house.

I was leaning against the gate and then the railings of the fence and got to the front door, and I went to bed and that was when the illness began. And the illness lasted for that particular one, lasted for about nine or 10 weeks, and it was such a, such a profound illness that. I ended up not being able to move.

I call it the great illness of, of my story. I couldn't move and I couldn't even breathe. I couldn't laugh. I couldn't tense a muscle in my body without it creating an enormous flash of pain. And the response to that [00:08:00] spasm of pain if the body tightened, would be to create more pain. So I very quickly learned that the only way through this experience was absolute surrender.

And then every time that I would, kind of, my mind would willfully remind me that I, you know, you can prevail, I've, I've gotta find a way through this. I'd get slammed down by more pain. So eventually, after several days, and uh, I, and this is all with hospital visits and blood tests and everything that they were doing, I realized all I could do was lie absolutely still and breathe to the minimum amount.

Necessary in order to survive because a full expansion of my lungs would've created another one of these spasms, which would create the series of spasms. And I think that was the time for me in my life. Not only did I learn to appreciate the value of one breath, but I also learned to [00:09:00] understand what surrender really feels like and how we oscillate in our lives between will and surrender without really even knowing it.

And we tend to use will when we perhaps might be better off to surrender. And there are other times that we surrender when we might have been better off had we used our will. And I think it's part of our human paradox, the discovery of when do I use what? Yeah, because, um. There's a lot of confusion in that place when we open up that paradox and live inside it.

And then, and I don't mean to be too woo woo when I say that, but impractical terms, when you consider the first breath that you took in your life and the last breath that you will take, one is an act of will and one is an act of surrender. And we actually do that 25,000 times a day and never think about it.

So [00:10:00] when we begin to double click on that a bit and explore. Well, okay, if that was a doorway into a grande inquiry, a curiosity, what would I notice? Where would that take me? What does it make me reflect on and contemplate? And then to bring it back to practical terms, then how am I applying my will today?

And am I using it efficiently? Am I using my ability to choose when to surrender efficiently? To what is my trust of life? What is my trust of myself? And how do I use these, um, metrics, if you will, or GA way, these methods to gauge how I am in this world? How is life doing me or am I doing life? And that brings me to outer chaos in a calm 'cause we all live in that, surrounded by this swirling, chaotic world that [00:11:00] seems to be exponentially getting more, um.

Troublesome, damaging, invasive. So how do we create a calm space in the middle of all of that? 

Cody: Wow. I mean, that, that, that story is incredibly powerful. Um, I think when, when you, you've had a health experience like that, if you're on a bed and it even hurts to breathe, it, uh, makes you kind of appreciate everything that you didn't appreciate prior in life.

And, and I agree that everything that we, we do, it's either that, that will or surrender in this kind of, um, abstract meta plane. Um, and often we, we, we. Air on the side of will, and we, we burn ourselves out. We, we, we become too stressed. And this is a world that, [00:12:00] that's built for will, um, you have to keep pushing on.

And, you know, there was a point in my life because I, I myself had so much trauma early in, early on in my life, and then I was able to build up certain levels of success and, you know, money and et cetera. And my goal at one point was I wanted to make myself as comfortable as possible because I thought that is what we're striving for.

But ultimately, I think that that's, that's a perspective that is, is not, not real. Because unless you're challenging yourself, unless you're facing obstacles, you're, you're not, you're not growing. But simultaneously, if you face too many obstacles, I think we, we, we can't all be, um, uh. W we can't always be facing our demons 24 7.

Um, and so I think where, can you tell me more about that story? When you're still in the hospital, how did this transfer, [00:13:00] how did this experience kind of lead you to kind of having this transformative experience to starting this foundation for your work with others? 

Anthony: Um, yeah. Thank you. I think this was a, this was the low point of a series of experiences and, um, many of them echo what you just mentioned about thinking of a measure of comfort being a, a significant indicator in your life.

And for me it was the same as a younger man. I was involved in architecture and used to, um, restore beautiful old buildings in Italy for Americans and English people. And, um. It was a wonderful job and I was extremely successful. I have the biggest company in Italy doing that for foreigners, but it wasn't fulfilling it.

Life was definitely comfortable. I had every material gain one could [00:14:00] ask for. Um, and yet I wasn't, I I was really feeling like a part of me was undernourished and starving. So it, it wasn't that this illness is what did it, I think this illness, it was kind of the last straw in a way. Um, but as a result of understanding that my old life was one that I wanted to transform, I actually moved east, I moved to Asia, and that's where of course I contracted the illness.

Um, but, uh, but I spent seven years kind of detoxing from the whole a. Type, a triple, a fast lane character that I used to be and sat, I learned to sit, uh, and meditate, which for me, prior to that I couldn't have meditated for more than 15 or 20 seconds without something happening or twitching or having to make a change [00:15:00] myself.

So it took several of those seven years to be able to understand what stillness did mean and to learn to let those motors slow down to an idol, those, those mind motors, just to take a break and know that safety is not to be achieved by running faster than what haunts me. That's not the way it works.

That actually safety comes from a different place. It's, it's, it's, I believe where I understood that. I am not the victim of the outer world. And indeed, if I want to be a creative human being, I need to stop reacting. And I love how the word creative and reactive, actually the same letters just in a slightly different order 

Cody: where we're talking about your kind of transformational ex, [00:16:00] like, like the experience that you had.

Um, and I, I was interested in how that health scare kind of transferred into you starting this foundation and really devoting yourself to breath work. Um, I don't know if that helps at all. 

Anthony: Yeah. Um, it certainly does. I, I, I, you know, when, when you are having to, when you are having to breathe imperceptibly so your own body doesn't notice it really.

Puts a lot into question. It's an existential issue, I I in, in the sense that I can't partake in that which gives me life force. I have to do it to such a bare minimum. So it, it made me [00:17:00] forcibly curious about where's the brake and where's the accelerator? You know, where's the gas pedal and where's the brake pedal?

And um, and I, and I think it also was an introduction to considering what life would be without purpose. And I, I'd already come out of a past life where I would give the purpose probably a. Seven, seven and a half out of 10 rating. You know, I was dealing with people who had dreams they wanted to retire to, to the most beautiful part of one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

And I was able to help them fulfill that. And so there was a lot that was fulfilling about that, but there was still something at the core that was missing. This didn't feel like I was really contributing to a purpose bigger than myself. And so when the breathing almost stopped, it gave me the opportunity of kind of looking over the edge [00:18:00] into a purposeless world.

What, what would that mean? Or a purposeless life? What would my life mean without purpose? And that was a, I called it a conundrum. It was a quantum conundrum to be in that space to, it was such a confusing space. And, um. And one that was full of Enigma and I'd kind of reached for things to grasp on, but there was nothing to grasp.

It was like really questioning the value of not just of my existence, but of existence itself. And so I think it was as close to a zero purpose point as I could have got to as a human being that has a beating heart and a mind that's functioning. And um, and then what I understood was, okay, I can draw a line in the sand.

Because this could [00:19:00] be overwhelmingly depress depressing, right? I mean, it could be suicidally depressing to, to feel utterly purposeless. And I deal with a lot of people who feel that in my life now. And perhaps having navigated that inquiry and that investigation diligently myself, it helps me help other people who are in dire straits of that nature.

But for me, in some way, it meant drawing a line in the sand and saying, okay, whatever choices I do make, it's like I've kind of cleaned the slate. Now I can, any choices I am going to make. I just wanna be sure that they're ones that are, they are purposeful choices and they are also conscious choices. And that what I rebuild, I want to rebuild not on the foundations of personal aspiration or gain of wealth or the things that have motivated me in the first half of [00:20:00] my life.

I want them to be about helping people and giving back. And, um, I think admitting that I am humbled in the face of a higher power. That for all the dominance that I had and the people that worked for me and the families that I helped support through the income generation, livelihood, generation of all the teams that worked for me, this was actually, there was something else that wanted to happen and I needed to find out what that was.

And, um. I had always met breath work. Breath work had always been important to me. From the age of eight years old, I met breath work in an astounding way that completely. Disrupted any sequential thought processes I had about what life was. It was like a, a bolt of lightning opened my head and, and I saw stars.

It was an [00:21:00] extraordinary experience. And so I, I, ever since then, I'd always been in curious about breath and I studied pranayama when I was in my twenties and went quite deeply into that. And then into Sufi breathing practices, which involved chant and breathing and, and then, uh, holotropic breath work and all kinds of breath work that I could find going on.

But I didn't really know that that's what I didn't think my life could be that simple. And of course it is. That's, you know, that's really what I do is I get people to breathe on the surface of things. That's what it looks like. And that's like, I mean, you know, it's like giving candy back to the baby.

It's like the biggest gift that people can have to become aware of what they're doing when they breathe. People don't realize that until they realize it and then it pops in their head and they go, oh my God, I never, I never thought about it that way. This thing that's right under my nose can create so much shift in my life in 60 seconds [00:22:00] just by paying my attention to it.

So this became all then about, you know, as as my work has gone on and I've helped millions of people with breath now, and all my facilitators around the world that I've trained to do it, have helped people as well. And actually where it comes to. 'cause my organization has become big. It wasn't intentional, that was almost accidental, but it was from the principle of serving.

You know, there are more people that need help. Let's do more. How much more can we do? How can we, how can we meet the cry of humanity for a life that is in positive relationship with its trauma rather than haunted by its trauma? And, um, so it's actually, as I say, it's about breath work on the surface underneath, on a deeper level.

It's about deep healing. It's about healing the elements of the human condition that trouble us most. So that not belonging, the, [00:23:00] the, the, the shame, the shadow, the inner child. That those aspects of us that we don't really know how to negotiate. We, the outer world doesn't teach us that kind of thing. But these, to me, are actually essential teachings that every child should have.

Um, rather than waiting until. Until the, the, the, the crisis comes to, to be forced into discovery. So it's inspiring to me to meet someone like you who at a, at a, at a younger age, you have achieved awarenesses. That took me much longer to have and, and that I see happening in the world today. That, that if I can serve that, and I do work with a lot of young people, that really does feel like a win.

That really feels like a wealth, a, a, a mental wealth, a spiritual wealth, and a, a, a heartful wealth that I, that outweighs any of the other wealth that I have celebrated in the past. [00:24:00] 

Cody: Yeah. Thank you for that. Um, we, we, we inevitably all have some obstacle that, that we, we have to overcome, and I think that that can be what gives our life meaning.

And to be able to, to take that experience that, that, that gift that we were given in a way, and then to give it back to others who are struggling. I mean, I think that's the most powerful practice that, that we can have as human beings. Um, and breath work is itself, I mean, I've done, I've done multitudes of different types of breathing work and, uh, I've, I've seen how powerful it can be.

And it, it seems to be the one thing that we can do to, to ground ourselves, uh, that no matter how physically distraught we are, it's, it's the one thing we can do at any moment to, to separate our mind from the, the swirling of thoughts to [00:25:00] just what's right in front of us to the here and now. And I think it's definitely underappreciated.

Um, it's, it's, uh, it's not, as you say, it's not taught in schools, so somebody. Has to be the one to, to help people understand the power of their breath. So I, I'm wondering, I know that your, your book is The Outer Chaos Inner Calm. And so what is the relationship between our, our our breath pattern and our emotional state?

Anthony: Well, there's direct correlation. Um, one is the lever of the other, and it that can work both ways. Our emotions have leverage over the way we breathe, and conversely, our breath can have leverage over the emotions we feel. Um, and the difference is that, uh, we're using consciousness when we breathe. The [00:26:00] fact that we're aware that we breathe.

Is already a, an uplift of consciousness in the sense that we step back from being the, um, subject of the emotion and we step more into a place of witnessing what's going on rather than being thrown around by it. So it's a bit like, okay, you're with a mad taxi driver in Istanbul and he's rattling you around in the back of the car.

That's one scenario. If our emotions are controlling our breath, the other scenario is, hang on, move over. I'm gonna take the wheel and I'm gonna drive a bit more calmly. And that's really what's our offer if we, if we learn to pay attention to our breath. So like you said, there are so many, there's a multitude of ways that we can breathe.

Um, I like the analogy of just thinking of it as [00:27:00] a tool. Some of us buy tools and leave them in the box, right? Let's say it's a knife. Others of others of us will use a knife to cut our bread or our food when we eat, and others yet will take a knife and sculpt something out of wood of great beauty. So it really depends on where we choose to be.

If we use those three levels of interest and let's say intimacy with this tool that we call breath one is just to carry through life and you know, happenstance and it's just what happens. And I don't pay attention to it, which is what unfortunately most of us live, including me, because that's why I do this work, right?

It's 'cause I need to remind myself that it's important to be aware of my breath. And then there's that middle range where just being conscious of it is. Going to change the way we breathe. Have [00:28:00] you ever been conscious of your breath and not change the way you breathe? I just came out of a somatic meeting with someone I met at the, um, intelligent Change Summit in Abitha last year, and she offered me a, a session of her work, which was somatic experiencing, and she was, she was just noticing when I, when I did give my attention to my breath, that my whole body changed.

Just the act of like, we know in co quantum physics, the act of being present with something changes the actual event that occurs. So likewise with our breath, when we give it our attention, that is a huge leap away from the norm of ignoring it. It's a massive leap. It's highly significant and already it puts us in that front seat.

It gives us the tool that we need now to regulate our nervous system. We can upgrade it, slow it down, speed it up. We can do anything we want with our [00:29:00] breath, and that's not to speak of what happens as a result of that nervous system being hacked. Then physiological conditions can change. So HRV, heart, heartbeat, blood pressure, all of these things can be affected on a physiological level.

That's just by giving awareness to our breath. When we, then the third stage is when we connect the breath, and there's been an interesting study that just came out of, um, Sussex University, I think on a less than a month ago, which is, um. Which was a study of alter states of consciousness and levels of alter states of consciousness when people do breathe a conscious connected breath and, um, is conclusive of things that we in the breath work world have known for years.

So it's nice to see science catching up and, and, and really underscoring it and emphasizing its validity. Something extraordinary happens [00:30:00] when we breathe a conscious connected breath. And this is really where we enter into quantum possibility. And I, my interpretation of it is really quite straightforward.

We consciously use our breath and we can access the subconscious by using our breath for, for, for a number of reasons. Num, the most important of which is that it's repetitive. And as an adult to access my sub subconscious is very difficult unless I use something like hypnotherapy or something re repetitive, which will eventually make its way in there.

The only other ways we can really enter into our subconscious and change it as adults are things like accidents or impact or extreme domination, something like the Stockholm Syndrome when someone's kidnapped or something where we're disempowered completely. But what I'm saying here is that when we can access our subconscious, [00:31:00] using our conscious mind to breathe repetitively, we're going to enter that archive where all those trauma deposits are from our, especially our younger years.

And then. Something is happening with the super conscious as well. There's a reason we call it getting inspired. It means bringing in spirit. So the conscious use of breath repeatedly when we connect it. That quantum element that I spoke of earlier is where we also bring something supernatural, something that's beyond our normal awareness into being.

And when that's in the same space as the conscious and the subconscious, that's where what some people call miracles happen. There are miracles of consciousness, upleveling of awareness, um, and sometimes physical healings that can be instant as well. And that's what fascinates me about [00:32:00] the conscious connected breath is how can we let go of this drudging through life.

Or even striving and gaining quickly through life and think in terms of a whole different matrix of possibility that exists. And that's really what the book is about, is exploring how we can make quantum leaps of consciousness using our breath and making it normal to have an oasis of calm inside us in the, amongst the mess outside.

Cody: Hmm. Yeah. And it's, it's amazing. Uh, I, I, I was able to have, uh, an experience one time of, of a hollow tropic, uh, breathing and that it, it was the first time I had done that, you know, lying on the floor, everybody just, uh, breathing in and out very, very quickly and then holding our breaths and, you know, your, your body starts to tingle.

And, uh, I, I, I can see [00:33:00] how it's, it's possible to even have that kind of like a psychedelic experience of sorts, just with our breath and. I think you're, you're, you're right in that it's, our breath seems to be this, this really powerful bridge between our conscious and our unconscious mind. And our breath is a tool that we can use to, to regulate our response to the chaos around us.

And it's also fascinating that we can use this same tool as a means of, of calming ourselves, uh, for, for those who've had like those panic attacks, you know, and you think you're about to die, and yet maybe somebody just points out to you that you're hyperventilating, uh, that you're not, you're not breathing calmly.

And the moment you start to take control of your breath is the moment that your, your mind starts to follow your breath. And it's also fascinating that we can do something like, you know, what the, with Wim Hof kind of popularized, uh, with, uh, with, I think, I think that's a form of holotropic [00:34:00] breathing. Um, where we, we, we can actually speed up our mind, we can create that, we can release that, that surge of adrenaline.

And feel like we're, we're on our toes in a way. Um, so it's, it is this really powerful tool that it seems to be that something that you have been able to help teach people that this tool is available to them and they, they didn't know it was, was there to be begin with. Yeah, 

Anthony: exactly. That's, and that's what giving the candy back to the baby is, I mean, the, the change, the change in countenance when people have experienced it, the smile that comes like, oh my gosh, I never realized I've been sniffing this all day long.

And not understanding how powerful it can actually be. It's, um, it's very heartening and, uh, and it, it helps me really love my work. 

Cody: Yeah. 

Anthony: Hmm. 

Cody: And your, your, your book, you structure your book with 12 chapters and kind of this, this [00:35:00] arc of, of the Hero's Journey. Morning. Can you describe why you kind of chose this, this framework for, for your book?

Anthony: Well, Joseph Campbell's work really resonated for me from a, from a relatively young age. Um, one of the main takeaways from the Hero's Journey, I think that's super reassuring to us who struggle through life in one way or another, is that there's always something waiting to happen. That's a fact, right? We can all accept that as a truth.

There's always something waiting to happen, and so even in the worst state of overwhelm or crushing depression or all the things that we consider enemy actors in our life that make us the victim or for which we may allow ourselves to become victims, there is still something waiting to happen. So if, [00:36:00] if we're willing to.

Believe that to be true, then it becomes, the task becomes to ask what it is rather than to sit there in the mire. It gives us a chance to gain agency, a foothold, traction, whatever, whatever analogy works for you. So, um, that really moved me in my life. It changed the way I lived because even when I was desperate, I was like, hmm.

What it ended up doing for me and what I teach my facilitators to, is how to use that moment, that knowing that something is going to happen then is an opportunity to be diligent, to be a student or, or a detective of our own experience. So even when we're really feeling broken. There's purpose, there can become, there can be purpose in that, and that purpose is to navigate a way [00:37:00] out, but not to miss the jewelry that's there.

I think one of the things Joseph Campbell said was that the treasure, the, in the, in the cave, you fear most lies the treasure you seek. So I really encourage my facilitators when they feel challenged or fearful, to really explore that experience almost with the mind of a scientist to sort of sniff around the corners and find out what the shape is and the texture and so on.

Because then when we do come out of it, we're not coming out of it by mistake. We're coming out of it by choice. And choice is where we develop our agency. So there are different stages of this cycle of traction that I. I'm referring to, and one is to acknowledge ourselves for the choices we've made that have created positivity in our lives.

The [00:38:00] next is to celebrate that acknowledgement. Don't just say, yeah, I did it, and go on to the next goal. That can develop into a nasty habit. Um, and then the third is to make choices, to make conscious choices. Each choice that we make, and for example, choosing to breathe repetitively in a conscious connected breath session is stacking your choices.

The more empowered we feel and the more empowered we feel, the more wise choices we'll make. So that awful general anxiety disorder that we can suffer from the traumas that might have lowered the ceiling of our possibility, uh, and kept us restricted and managing with coping systems that. Years old and completely outdated can actually be addressed just by conscious choices.

And the book is really about regaining choice from a choiceless [00:39:00] mindset, how can we actually begin to do that,

Cody: right. Regaining agency? 'cause I, I guess in some ways, uh, life can kind of take that away from us, slow, uh, very slowly until we end up in a life in which we've questioned how did we get here? And, uh, I think even, even breath work can help teach people to, to regain that, to, to think for themselves. Um, and so I know that you do a lot of, you do a lot of retreats.

You have the A SHA retreat, uh, you have breath camps. It seems like you, you've been doing this, uh, I think I know, I know you started your organization back in 2012. Um, is there any kind of breath work that you do? I'm wondering if you can walk us through kind of what, what do you teach people and what do they come out of, of these retreats kind of having learned?

Anthony: Oh my [00:40:00] gosh. Um. Yeah, well, we teach, we teach two things. We, the, the big kahuna is the conscious connected brand that's the most profound, the most moving, the one that is most impactful for us. And we do that both online and, uh, and, uh, in real life. Um, and we also teach breath awareness and how to use the breath in different circumstances in the most functional and healthful way.

So it could be as simple as breath patterns. If you feel anxious or if you feel tired and listless and you have to do something that's going to need your energy, how to breathe when you are, um, when you're sleeping, that you should breathe through your nose, not through your mouth. How, how to breathe if you're an athlete and you're expending a lot of energy.

How to extend your stamina, um, how to, uh, activate the brain, how to calm. The brain, it includes every kind of breath practice there [00:41:00] is include from pranayama to Wim Hof to whatever it might be. Uh, we don't, I mean, we call it alchemy breath. And I, I've often said that alchemy breath is more of a, a belief than a brand.

It's not that I wanna call it the abano breathwork style. We incorporate holotropic breathwork, we incorporate rebirthing. I remember buying the URL hollow birthing.com, I think in 2013, thinking this is a perfect marriage of the two. Um, so, uh, we teach everything about breasts from the science, from how it affects the body, from how to use it, and how to help other people use it.

My vision is to empower people. To empower people. And the big vision that I have is. What we call 10 to the power of nine. And what that means, it's a mathematical formula that means a billion, as I'm sure you [00:42:00] already know, but many may not. Uh, and that's based on if I can get 10 people to uplift their consciousness and their empowerment and they can then get another 10 people each, and we do that nine times, we've reached 1 billion people.

So I feel like every person I deal with is one in a billion in the most special way possible. There're a doorway to this actually being true. And I think also not just empowering people, there's a, there, there's a lot of, um, modification of self-empowerment, but I believe true self-empowerment is really gonna happen when we actually help other people do it too.

So how can we pass the bat? How can we spread the seeds of this? And the wonderful things that it can do. And at asha, which is a SHA is Alchemy School of Healing Arts. We, um, we run [00:43:00] retreats, uh, not year round. We run about seven or eight months of the year. We just actually close for the season now, and we do breath work all the time.

Now, those that breathe with us online, we have a once a week event on Sundays. When you come to a breathwork, a breath camp, we're breathing twice a day, every day. And if you do that for a week or two weeks, or even some of our courses are three weeks long. Like I said, if you stack each choice, you are building something.

If you stack each choice and stack each breathwork, especially with good guidance and professionals holding space for you, uh, the, the things that happen at those retreats are. They, they, they beg a belief. They're, they're sometimes difficult that to actually believe that they could be true, especially if you haven't done it yourself.

But he, physical healings, emotional healing, psychic healings, relationship healings, um, uh, you know, some of the, [00:44:00] some of the sweetest stories are the most simple ones too. Like, I remember an, an elderly couple coming to me, uh, after a breath work and saying, we've been married for 45 years and my husband hasn't told me he loves me in 25 of those last years.

And he did just now as a result of that, that breath work. And that's, that's a tiny example. I've seen unsighted people regain sight. I've seen people who, uh, uh, are, are disabled, lose their disability. And this is also because of the study of. Miracles that I've done, and I've understood that miracles are not remote happenings that always happen to someone else.

Miracles are available to us all indeed. They're actually happening right now. The question is not whether the miracle is happening. The question is whether you notice it. That's where the lack is. So we want to polish your lens [00:45:00] so you notice things differently because when you notice things differently, you open new doorways to different things instead of living in the same cyclical behavior that we're accustomed to.

So it's really learning to live in that miracle matrix then, rather than being stuck with the two choices of the red or the blue. 

Cody: Mm-hmm. And, and I know that some of your work is, has an application for kind of trauma resolution. Uh, I'm, I'm wondering if you can, uh, elaborate on kind of the, the breath work process and how you release trauma.

Like what does that, that, that look like to help somebody release, uh, trauma in the body? 

Anthony: Um, well there are techniques of releasing trauma in the body that actually have very little to do with the brain. And if we, very little to do with thinking at all. Um, one of the greatest researchers of this is Peter Levine, who wrote a great book called Waking the [00:46:00] Tiger.

And one of the things, uh, one of the, one of the examples he gives that works very well, I believe, is that when an animal is wounded, it will often go into an involuntary shaking afterwards, which is the discharge of the trauma. And that's also been developed in, in the breath work world and in many.

Different healing modalities to create situations in which the body can vibrate away the tensions that would've been stored in the body at the time of trauma. So that's one aspect for me. The concept of trauma release is a bit, it needs a big caveat because we can release the trauma physically, but the next time that the mind believes that trauma is coming close again, we are going to secrete all those same hormones again.

The cortisol, the norepinephrine, the [00:47:00] adrenaline, or going to surge through the body again, and the, and, and it will likely refreeze, which is one of theosis it would've had at the time of the trauma itself. So physical release of trauma to me is not a solution. It's, it's, it's a temporary, let's say it's a temporary solution, but it's not resolution.

The way that we deal with trauma is actually not to try and get rid of it, but to create relationship with it in a healthy way. That doesn't mean the old style of, you gotta muscle up to this, we're gonna talk, put you back in the trauma, and you're gonna, you know, muscle your way through it. That's not what I consider and neither does the world of trauma consider it healthy anymore like they used to.

Um, what I'm curious about with trauma is how do we, how do we rescue that part of us that got traumatized? [00:48:00] So, for example, in your own life, if you think of the most shocking experiences that you've had. What happens as a result of the fight, fight, flight, or freeze response that we have is that we lose our processing power of the frontal lobe.

It goes back to the survival brain, the amygdala, and those are the three choices we've got. Fight, flight, or freeze. But what also happens, because we don't want to remember the difficulty and the pain that the trauma caused in the first place, is that. We don't want to remember the person behind it, either the person it happened to.

So inadvertently as we block memory of the drama and the, the horror of the actual event that occurred, we inadvertently block also a part of who we are. And my experience with the work that I do, I [00:49:00] have a, I have a process called the Bridge, which is a very simple 30, 40 minute process to help people recollect or re-identify with that path of themselves that got fragmented away from their awareness and buried in their subconscious to bring that part back again.

So it, it's a, it's a form of inner child work. It's a very six step, very simple process. It's an acronym bridge and um, and it helps people regain who they are. And, and it. To me, what's underneath this, and I think this is really the cause of all the chaos out there in the world, is because as people who are traumatized, and I, and trauma has so many different forms and natures that we're still discovering, that we're discovering new kinds of trauma every day.

So this could be trauma that happened to you in your life as a [00:50:00] loss of your parents or being in foster care, or it could be the trauma of a nation. Like the Jews have suffered awful trauma as a result of the Second War. Like the Palestinians are now in the process of suffering trauma. Now this is inherited.

It's not just because it happened to me, it's because it happened to my great-grandparents and my par, my grandparents, and my parents. So there's an inherited trauma, there's cultural trauma, there's shock trauma, there's sexual trauma, there's physical, you know, there's all all kinds of different, different natures of trauma and.

What? What happens each time we're traumatized if we go into a trauma reaction, is that we are fragmenting parts of ourself away from our current consciousness. So that leads me to the question, well, who's left? Who's sitting here right now talking? If I've left, you know, for all the times I've been traumatized, which are probably over a million, you know, we see a bad [00:51:00] accident.

It could be something seemingly insignificant that traumatized us If we keep chopping parts off who we are, 'cause we don't want to remember the event, then what's gonna be left? And then you look at the world stage and you look at what's being played out by nations and prime ministers and presidents.

Or you look at those debates that happen before elections and you see. Is that a real adult talking or is that a 12-year-old showing how much hair he's got on his chest? You know, we get, we get to ask ourselves, well, like, who is it? Who's got their finger over the button? Is this, is this, is this something I want to control my life?

Do I want this human nature that exists in the world today to dictate what my possibilities are as a human being? No, I don't. I want to reclaim my agency and part of reclaiming my agency is being [00:52:00] able to rescue the parts of myself that have been left behind. Now if I don't do that, I'm gonna go through life blaming other people for the condition that I'm in, right?

I'm gonna blame my uncle because he abused me. I'm gonna blame my mother because she never hugged me and she didn't breastfeed. I'm gonna, I'm gonna find all kinds of reasons to blame my abusers, but actually that's not gonna change anything. It's even gonna make it worse. I'm gonna keep living in that cycle of abuse and I'm going to unconsciously keep creating it.

So I see people who've been sexually abused, for example, or women that have been unreasonably dominated by their male partners in their behavior, and this is, this is profound. They will unconsciously invite the same thing to happen again, because that's what their normal was. [00:53:00] It's normal that. I get hit by my dad.

It's normal that I get hit by the world. So I, I'm just gonna spend my life subjugating myself to this as truth instead of rising up and creating my own sense of agency and writing the story of the life that I want to have. And it, and it ends up with, well, do I wanna write that story or am I gonna let someone else write it for me?

So the invitation is, and I, I have absolute empathy with all the wounds that we feel as human beings. I do believe the truth is we should lick our own wounds. We should not externalize the solutions for the problems that we have, just like the animals do. You know, nature works a hundred percent. Animals lick their wounds and, and they clean them until they heal.

For some reason we hand that over to somebody else. But [00:54:00] what say we reclaim that as our human ability. Like I'm gonna learn what it means to lick my own wounds. And every wound I heal, the stronger I become and the more resilient I become and the more robust I become as a human being. So that's what's on offer, you know?

Cody: Yeah. I. A powerful, uh, statement. I'm not, I'm not sure who said this, uh, but it just sticks in my mind, is that just because you were raped as a child doesn't give you the right to, to rape a child. And, uh, I think we, we do tend to externalize our traumas. We externalize our shame, um, and we compartmentalize and we don't know that, that we're acting out or that we're, we're hitting our, our girlfriend or boyfriend because of this previous trauma.

And I think that that's what, uh, so much [00:55:00] mental health work is about today. So many, uh, modalities, I know that we have IFS internal family systems or, or you know, mentioned somatic therapy where it, it seems like, like the bridge kind of therapy that you mentioned is, is in terms of, uh, of bringing up that trauma.

Maybe it's also like there's EMDR is, is. Is recalling that, that trauma, um, but then assigning a neutral value to it. So, uh, I I guess is, is that one way to view the bridge is that you, you, you help the person recall the trauma and then you have them calmly breathe through it to shift how their body responds?

Anthony: Uh, no, that's not this EMDR is that kind of thing. And the, the, you could do that using breath work, and there's a, I think, I believe a Dr. Hale in, uh, in Montreal that uses the coherence breath and has people revisit their traumas in a certain [00:56:00] way. Um, so it is possible to do it that way, but the bridge is actually much easier to endure than that.

It's, it's, I, it's not the trauma. It's like, okay, so I hit my thumb with a hammer. Am I gonna blame the hammer? Am I gonna have against something against the hammer? No. I want to heal my thumb. So that little kid is the one I'm interested in. It's actually not the trauma. I don't need them to go revisit the trauma that will be potentially traumatizing.

So what I want to do is rescue the kid. I wanna sneak around the trauma, that wall that that kid's been living behind. Or I often refer to it as the fridge that's been closed and unplugged. And they're stuck in that stifling, horrid environment. Those parts of who we once were and going and opening the fridge and sneaking 'em out so they can come out and play again.

And the result of that is a more joyful. A more connected, a more compassionate [00:57:00] life for others as well. Because when we, when we do the work in ourselves, my goodness, it really helps us understand what humanity is going through. It helps us really understand why the chaos is there. So it's not push the chaos away, it's actually transform it, use it as compost, as a reminder of the significance and the importance of me creating my own agency in this human mess.

So we can move more towards a stafe of, dare I say it, unconditional love. Uh, a dear friend of mine refers to that state that we all in our hearts would like to have. Really, it's about loving ourselves in all our conditions. And if we can do that, then we are in a state of unconditional love. 

Cody: Yeah. I think there's only two relationships in the world in which I think we can expect unconditional love, and that's between a mother and [00:58:00] a child and ourselves.

Anthony: Yeah. I, I love ourselves because I think that's where it then begins to become an example for other people. You know what it's like when you see someone who's at peace with themselves? It's magnetic. It's like admirable. It's inspiring. And the more we can commit to that destination, I believe you don't even have to be there.

Just, just the fact that you're on that road is a reminder that anybody else who's not on that road that, wow, that person is inspiring me. What is it about them that, that attracts me? And I wonder what that would look like for me. And it's like your own story, like my own story. When we meet our greatest challenge, it becomes the greatest gift that we could offer to humanity because we've cut [00:59:00] the long grass, right?

People can see, see? Oh yeah. It can really, it can really, I can really be restored to my wholeness as a human being. It is possible. And so the more of us that do it, the closer we get to that tipping point where it will be normal, it will be the, it will be the new normal. The real normal.

Cody: And, and, and just what I love about breath breathwork is that it's something that, that we don't need, like special equipment. Um, we, we don't need to, to dedicate our lives to this. This is something of just a few minutes of, of conscious attention. Can, can shift our entire state. Uh, I'm, I'm wondering before we wrap up, if you can share some insights in terms of some, some takeaways, like how can people, what can people learn?

What kind of breath work can they do on a daily basis, uh, that they can apply, uh, kind of just, just by listening to this episode? Yeah. 

Anthony: Well, okay. 1 [01:00:00] 0 1 breath work is to pay attention to it. That's 1 0 1. See how many times a day you can actually be aware of how you're breathing, notice what emotional state you're in, and connect it to the type of breath you're breathing and what you're doing.

The more you, the more you do that noticing is you are developing your toolkit. Because if you are feeling enormously happy and you're breathing a certain way, or if you are feeling tired and you're breathing a certain way. If you are making love and you're breathing a certain way, those are all changeable.

You can change those emotional states by changing your breath. So the bigger the catalog you create of noticing how you're breathing in different conditions, if you want to recreate that condition, you can. So a simple example is if I want to panic, I hyperventilate. If I want to be calm, I breathe slowly.[01:01:00] 

So there's, there's the break and the accelerator. There's actually a whole dashboard of knobs and dials and things to twiddle and play with, like you mentioned earlier on holding your breath or the holotropic breath, which is one that's more focused on a forceful exhale than a willful inhale. You can be more forceful with the inhale than the exhale or vice versa.

You can breathe in in three stages like that all through your nose, the same. You can breathe through your mouth or your nose. Do know that you shouldn't breathe through your mouth. In normal life, that's that's not what you should do. But there are so many thousands of ways. What I would love to just leave as a taster is the coherence breath, which is the one I mentioned that Dr.

Hale uses up in Montreal, and the coherence breath is a five second breath. Spin and a five second breath out through the nose. It doesn't need to be connected. You can pause in between your inhale and your [01:02:00] exhale, and you should do it five minutes a day, three times a day when you wake up, when you go to sleep, and before your main meal of the day.

If you do that, you'll find that you are really beginning to regulate your nervous system. You're creating a state of equanimity in the face of things that might normally challenge you if you do it for a week. You'll find it automatically. As soon as you feel a certain level of tension or adrenaline in your body, you'll immediately just drop into that breath.

If you do it for three weeks, instead of being your go-to, it'll be your come from breath and you'll just not naturally start doing it anyway. And what you're actually doing to your body is you are adjusting your HRV, your, um, heart rate variability, which is a measurement of how quickly you respond. Your, your heart responds to different stresses and different conditions.

The higher your HRV, the better, [01:03:00] and this is improving your HRV to make you more resilient. So that's, that was discovered by the HeartMath Institute in Palo Alto, and it's probably the, the base standard breath to use, even if you've never done it before, you could do it safely. On the other hand, if you're going to do a conscious connected breath, that's the one I called the big kahuna earlier on.

That's the one that's really quite transportative really. You should have a, a well-qualified facilitator next to you. So check where they come from, check where they studied, check whether that where they studied has been accredited. Go all the way to the top because you want to be able to explore in a safe way, and you need to be with someone who's safe in order for that to happen.

Cody: And if someone listening is feeling kind of overwhelmed by the chaos in their life or, or the world right now, what's kind of the, the, the take home message that you'd like to leave them with? [01:04:00] 

Anthony: Something else is waiting to happen. And if you're willing to pay attention, then you will discover what it is, you know, at the bottom of every muddy pond is a golden key.

This isn't. Just me trying to be inspiring. This is based on having worked with thousands and thousands of people and watching it happen again and again. That moment of discomfort is a moment actually to be explored, not to run away from. And so with support, if you can manage to do that with the small troubles, then you get stronger.

And then the bigger challenges can be met the same way. It's a, it's a muscle, like any muscle in the body. So please don't lose hope. There is hope. And the more you choose your breath, even now as you're listening, the more [01:05:00] empowered you are becoming. You just need to notice that that's all and you can breathe with us.

We breathe online with hundreds of people every Sunday. Um, uh, there are. Loads of people from all around the, what we call, we call it breathe the world. And people from both hemispheres in the morning and in the evening, u uk time that come together and breathe. There's a great community of people who have probably very similar challenges than your own.

Some of them probably more drastic and, and even more challenging. Come together and breathe together in community and see the magic that can happen for you. 

Cody: And I think that's the, that's the perfect note to end on. Anthony, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and experience today. I think your, your journey from personal crisis to helping thousands find inner peace is, is really inspiring.

And I think for our listeners who wanna dive deeper into these ideas, Anthony's book, outer Chaos Inner [01:06:00] Calm, is available on Amazon, and you can also connect withAnthony@alchemyofbreath.com and see maybe even join his breathwork sessions. And we'll include all those links in the show notes below. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review or sharing it with someone who might benefit from these ideas.

Until next time, I'm Cody McClain and this has been mind hack.