Ep. 66: From Choiceless to Conscious How Breathwork Breaks Unconscious Patterns with Anthony Abbagnano

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• Ep. 32 — Restore Your Nervous System and Why That is Important with Rachael Rauch
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• Ep. 61 — The Currency of Your Attention with Kathy Washburn
  
  What if each inhale is your first act of agency—and each exhale a rehearsal for letting go? Author and founder of Alchemy of Breath, Anthony Abbagnano, joins Kathy to show how breathwork shifts us from a choiceless, trauma-driven loop into creative, conscious choice. You’ll learn a simple “10-breath” practice for hot moments (at work or at home), why resistance is an informant not an enemy, and how presence turns outer chaos into inner calm.

In this episode, Kathy and Anthony discuss:

• Trauma, the amygdala, and the “choiceless mindset” (fight/flight/freeze)
• Breath as spiritual channel and daily, always-available regulation tool
• The 10-Breath practice for conflict: co-regulation, eye contact, and reset
• Agency vs. reactivity: reclaiming authorship and presence
• Resistance as data: dialoguing with it rather than battling it
• Practical rituals: beginning again after stillness; bringing breath into teams, relationships, and tough rooms

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Transcript

 Ep. 66 - From Choiceless to Conscious How Breathwork Breaks Unconscious Patterns with Anthony Abbagnano

Ep. 66 - From Choiceless to Conscious How Breathwork Breaks Unconscious Patterns with Anthony Abbagnano

[00:00:00] What if I told you that you are practicing for death 25,000 times a day? And that each of those moments is also your opportunity to reclaim your power and to shift from reaction to creation, to move from a choiceless mindset into a conscious agency. Today's guest, Anthony Abano, author of Outer Chaos, inner Calm reveals why Breath Work isn't just a trendy wellness practice.

[00:00:34] It's the most underutilized superpower that we have. Every single breath is simultaneously our first active agency and a practice for our last exhale. In this deeply moving conversation, we explore why trauma literally stops our breath. It creates a choiceless mindset where we can only [00:01:00] fight, flee, or freeze.

[00:01:02] Anthony shares the 10 breath practice that has supported his marriage during their difficult moments and why resistance is actually an informant rather than an enemy. And how awareness of our breath changes reality itself. If you are a human who has spent years living in outer calm while inner chaos ruled, first of all, you are not alone.

[00:01:31] My hand is held up high. Or if you are ready to stop abandoning yourself every time someone else's emotions flood the room. This episode will give you the most accessible, always available tool for transformation. Your breath. No apps required, no equipment needed, just you and the breath you're already taking.

[00:01:58] Let's discover [00:02:00] what's been available to us all along.

[00:02:03] Introduction and Guest Welcome

[00:02:03] ​

[00:03:46] Discussing the Book: Outer Chaos Inner Calm

[00:03:46] Kathy Washburn: I am so excited for this conversation. You are the author of a book called Outer Chaos Inner Calm, and when I received your note, I just had chuckle. It was like the [00:04:00] universe giving me a little wink because outer calm and inner chaos is how I lived for years.

[00:04:09] Kathy Washburn: The complete opposite of what you're offering outer calm. I just wanted to make sure everybody was okay. Don't look here, people look away. And I've been on this journey for several years. Trying to align with that outer chaos and inner calm. So your book has been a gift to me, and I'm so excited to bring your genius to the people that listen to this podcast.

[00:04:35] Kathy Washburn: But we're, before we get going, your bio is gonna be attached to the show notes along with your book and lots of good information about you. So I'd like to start with you just using this as a lead once upon a time.

[00:04:52] Anthony Abbagnano: Ha. So many choices, but that one so long though. Open Once upon a time. In fact, I think that's the [00:05:00] first sentence of the book is Once Upon a Time, is it? I think it is. I think it's the first sentence when you begin the book. 

[00:05:09] Kathy Washburn: Oh my gosh, it is right there in the prologue. 

[00:05:11] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. I love it because it so deeply reaches our inner child, the one that you know, because you know when someone said that you were in for a good thing, right?

[00:05:22] Anthony Abbagnano: You were gonna sit back or lie back and let your eyes close and you were gonna go for a ride that someone else was going to provide. And so I think it's a great opener. 

[00:05:33] The Power of Storytelling and Personal History

[00:05:33] Anthony Abbagnano: Well, once upon a time,

[00:05:37] Anthony Abbagnano: my dad was at the American Embassy for a party with his brother Ronald, and they looked at this really pretty girl across the room and they both wanted to meet her. And so he told me they took Aroy bit, which is three pence. That's a, like an [00:06:00] octagonal piece of coin of the day. That would've been 19 50, 19 49.

[00:06:08] Anthony Abbagnano: And my father won the toss. And so he went over and he talked to this woman and they introduced themselves to each other. And within an hour they'd expressed to each other that they didn't want to get married, they weren't interested in relationship or anything like that. And six months later they were married.

[00:06:30] Anthony Abbagnano: That was the precursor to how I came into the world. 

[00:06:33] Kathy Washburn: How beautiful. 

[00:06:34] Anthony Abbagnano: I do remember every birthday to thank them for what they did. Yeah. I'm super grateful to them. 

[00:06:40] Kathy Washburn: That's funny. I didn't start thanking my mother until I was a mother. 

[00:06:45] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah, that's, yeah. 

[00:06:47] Kathy Washburn: And then it all became clear. 

[00:06:49] Anthony Abbagnano: I wonder what the other side of that is.

[00:06:51] Anthony Abbagnano: 'cause my youngest son just called me up last week and said we're pregnant. And I thought to myself, oh, I'm so glad he's gonna get to find out what parent[00:07:00]

[00:07:03] Kathy Washburn: it is. Such a gift and a curse. There's all kinds of stuff entangled in that. 

[00:07:08] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:07:09] Kathy Washburn: That is a beautiful story. And you talk a lot about I don't wanna get too ahead of myself, but you're reminding me of the part in the book where you encourage the reader to really like, discover how they came to be, you know, ask parents or caregivers, like what it was like even before they were born.

[00:07:33] Kathy Washburn: Like what the environment was like. And I have yet to get the courage to bring that up to my own mother. And I have all kinds of. Things I play out in my head that this is what happened as this middle child. I am the well adjusted one. 

[00:07:51] Anthony Abbagnano: Right. 

[00:07:53] Kathy Washburn: But it reminds me of that idea of what a beautiful gift it is for you to know [00:08:00] that you know, you came to be in such a loving way.

[00:08:03] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. Well, I have to confess it took me until my fifties to be able to say thank you for that too. So, you're not, you are not alone in in, in it not being, not having been there since youth. But I I am super grateful to them. And I think if that's, you know, when we look at our past, I, first of all, I don't encourage people to do it.

[00:08:25] Anthony Abbagnano: In order to dwell there. Mm-hmm. I encourage people to do it if they're willing to put on their kind of hero's cape or their detective hat or whatever you want to call it, and go back there and sort of nose around because I think there's so much in the way we were born and in the environment before our birth that has kind of scribed what our possibilities are in life.

[00:08:53] Anthony Abbagnano: And I know research supports this in so many ways. When we teach at our [00:09:00] academy about birth and all of the things that can happen, we have, I think about seven or eight pages of things that happened. Just this is just during the birth and seven, seven or eight pages of what the consequences are of each.

[00:09:15] Anthony Abbagnano: Individual thing. So it could be that you were twins or you lost a twin, or you are the delivery process was really long or it was anesthetic was used, or a cesarean or mom, you were premature or post mature. And any of those things have ways that show up for us in our life afterwards. And so it is important just to know our starting point.

[00:09:41] Anthony Abbagnano: It's important, and I think in the book, I use the analogy of if you pick a destination on your satellite, the next question it's gonna ask you is where from, you know, now you've said where you want to go to, where do you want to start the journey from? And there's that wonderful. Often your location is [00:10:00] sitting there as a default and.

[00:10:03] Anthony Abbagnano: Where is your location? If you don't know where you started, how can you possibly design where you want to go? And so that's really the idea of it, is to take stock, but not to dwell. 

[00:10:14] Kathy Washburn: Wow. I love that analogy. And one of my teachers Shaza Charmaine, says that you need to take on the role of a fascinated anthropologist.

[00:10:25] Kathy Washburn: And when he talks about it, he kind of, has that same warning, fascinated anthropologists are really looking for facts. They're not dwelling in emotion. And I love that discernment of, you know, you don't wanna go down a rabbit hole, and if you're in that victim stage or something that you call a choiceless mindset, which again, I love your wording.

[00:10:53] Kathy Washburn: I love your writing. You write beautifully. And you call this ordinary world that we live [00:11:00] in. Sometimes we, when we are not aware we're just going through the motions, checking boxes. But there's a point, I think, in everyone's life, and I'm a cancer survivor, and so I call myself a chosen one because I came that close.

[00:11:19] Kathy Washburn: And it, I think my body was sensing that something was up, but my mind where I lived wasn't connected. I got really good at this out outer calm. And when you talk about this choiceless mindset, at first I was like, Ooh. That's interesting because all the choices I used to make all day long.

[00:11:46] Kathy Washburn: They were I got 'em all done. The boxes were checked, but I was actually picking from a menu that had nothing to do with me. And I wonder, can you talk more about this [00:12:00] choiceless mindset and what shows up differently than we might expect? 

[00:12:04] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah, of course. Just wanna take a breath. 

[00:12:08] Kathy Washburn: Thank you for that invitation.

[00:12:09] Kathy Washburn: I'm gonna do it too. 

[00:12:12] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah, because it's, it, this is one of those places that could become a rabbit hole in the sticky, swampy moment. So I just wanna take a breath before I go in there and make sure I can come back out and get every help everyone else get back out to. 

[00:12:27] Understanding Trauma and the Choiceless Mindset

[00:12:27] Anthony Abbagnano: But it, this comes from trauma, the choiceless mindset and.

[00:12:35] Anthony Abbagnano: If we imagine any time we felt a sense of heightened anxiety that could be described as trauma, certainly if there's been a disaster, an accident or a loss of somebody or abuse or anything of that nature. And this is where the, all the mental capacity and the processing [00:13:00] power moves from the frontal lobe back to the amygdala.

[00:13:03] Anthony Abbagnano: And we have a very small menu as you referred to, which is to fight, freeze, or flee. And those are the only choices that we see. And they're not really choices at all because this is our survival brain. This is our reptilian brain, and it is what an animal would do under the same circumstances. And.

[00:13:27] Anthony Abbagnano: So if we take a trauma, we don't need to necessarily know what it is, but if we take a trauma, we know that what happens is we lost our processing power, we lost our choice. And unfortunately, what happens unless we create resolution with our trauma and understand it more deeply, is that each time that there's a suggestion of it being reactivated or renewed, it's called triggered or awakened as well.

[00:13:58] Anthony Abbagnano: The body is [00:14:00] gonna do exactly the same thing as it did during the trauma itself, which is there'll be a huge surge of adrenaline, norepinephrine, cortisol. We'll feel this rise in energy in the body. I can just feel it even talking about it coming up my belly and my chest and toward my throat, and it kind of gags us as well.

[00:14:18] Anthony Abbagnano: We can get gagged from it. And everything stops. And to me what's really significant is the breath stops too. We stop breathing and so every time the trauma is, let's say refreshed or we're reminded of it, it actually gets worse, not better. And they used to be in trauma work, the philosophy of if you face your trauma and you matter your way through it, that you'll get stronger.

[00:14:47] Anthony Abbagnano: But we've now understood that it doesn't work like that. It's actually the opposite. It's every time that you get reminded of your trauma that it becomes further embedded in the body. Now we're looking at people [00:15:00] talking about how those traumas, if they're not resolved, they not just embed in the body, they also stay in the body, and that is a precursor to physical illness.

[00:15:13] Anthony Abbagnano: The unease then can become disease in the long term. So if we, that's just one trauma. But of course trauma is happening all the time and sometimes, many times in a day, if I'm a baby and I'm crying and my mom isn't there to feed me, that might be traumatic for me. If I'm a young child and I see my parents arguing and I'm thinking, oh my God, the foundations of my life are an earthquake right now, that's traumatizing.

[00:15:39] Anthony Abbagnano: Sometimes it's traumatizing to hear a story from someone else about trauma. It could be on television. It could be because you're shamed or embarrassed. It could be because you're in an argument and you've lost control. All of these things add up to the same energy, which is an energy that stops us from [00:16:00] thinking freely and from a place of spaciousness or stillness.

[00:16:06] Anthony Abbagnano: Mm-hmm. So. How do we deal with that? How do we actually make changes? And of course, what we need to do is to learn how to restore choice as a practice. Mm-hmm. First time to do that is when we're not traumatized in between those moments, that is, is reawaken. 

[00:16:24] Kathy Washburn: Is this what we call resilience, building resilience?

[00:16:29] The Importance of Breath and Spiritual Connection

[00:16:29] Kathy Washburn: And one of the ways that you do that so beautifully in this book is the breath as a way in, into this spaciousness or at least I always think of this Bible verse or a psalm, be still and know that I am. 

[00:16:51] Kathy Washburn: It's this moment that you can take to just. Be still, and the breath [00:17:00] is there for us all the time.

[00:17:01] Kathy Washburn: working whether we're aware of it or not. If you're on this earth, it's working in some form. this as an anchor practice kind of a direct line to that be still. And even that spirituality of I am in that in this moment. It's also a really hard thing to wrestle with. I have so many clients and I work with a lot of women who kind of align themselves with this type C behavioral patterns, which is giving, doing people pleasing, resisting conflict.

[00:17:40] Kathy Washburn: Let's just everybody get along. And I do believe that this contributed to my dis-ease for years that eventually became disease. That's why I was so fascinated with Lydia TE's work. And I, when I work with people, and I'll say, close your eyes, take a breath. I have [00:18:00] one client who's older, she's 84.

[00:18:03] Kathy Washburn: She's like, don't ask me to do that. I don't wanna breathe that. Every time you do that I just don't wanna do that. And I, and she's a type C and I just wonder, like, do you run into people that just say, I don't wanna breathe. I can't breathe. 

[00:18:20] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. I mean, you know, I te I teach facilitators of breath work.

[00:18:24] Anthony Abbagnano: I have an academy that does that. And so when people ask me what I do and I say, I teach people how to breathe, I people, sometimes people even hostile 

[00:18:34] Kathy Washburn: really? 

[00:18:35] Anthony Abbagnano: Or Derry, like, how could you do something so useless? And a student said to me four years ago I've used this as a quote ever since, which is emotional intelligence and emotional resilience is the ability to take a breath when you don't want to.

[00:18:52] Anthony Abbagnano: And I think that's so true because if we can learn to do that when we do want to, then we can lean into it [00:19:00] when there isn't the time or like that client of yours, you know, is disinclined. But if we practice these things when we don't actually have to, then it becomes the easiest tool to reach in our box.

[00:19:14] Anthony Abbagnano: But there's something else about breath that, you know, when you mentioned spiritual I think that we just don't, we don't, we've never been taught about the breath. I mean, I remember being in boarding school when I was seven years old and having to go to church every morning for 10 minutes to pray. And it was a Church of England church and.

[00:19:34] Anthony Abbagnano: It became normal for me to have a church in between my physical being and a higher power. You might say this represented the channel to a higher power. What I discovered when I developed intimacy with my breath, quite apart from the factual things, like every scripture of every religion refers to the breath as a supernatural [00:20:00] power.

[00:20:00] Anthony Abbagnano: The more I developed intimacy with my breath, the more I realized that actually this is my channel to a connection with the greater power. I don't actually need someone else interpreting what that is for me anymore. I need to turn towards this as my practice, and then it's. I often say this during a breath work, when I do sessions with people, actually every breath is a prayer.

[00:20:28] Anthony Abbagnano: It's so loaded with meaning and potential, both in terms of letting go and both in, and also in terms of receiving how willing I am to receive something fresh and new. And this seems a little simplistic to say this, but perhaps I can underscore it by asking people to get as close as you can to remembering what your first breath was.

[00:20:58] Anthony Abbagnano: And you're gonna have to use your [00:21:00] imagination of course, but if you can just take a moment and understand that not just physiologically are you.

[00:21:11] Anthony Abbagnano: Employing your first active agency in your entire lifespan. Not just are you emptying your lungs from any residual fluid that might be in there. Not are you just kickstarting your autonomous life,

[00:21:29] Anthony Abbagnano: but you are also inhaling a supernatural power and it's full of inquiry and curiosity and grace, and unconditional embrace of being human. And that's just one inhale. And then we consider our outbreath and well, I like to say we're practicing for the last one. If we could be aware of that more often, how would that [00:22:00] inform the way we actually live?

[00:22:02] Anthony Abbagnano: Because we don't know when we've got 10 left. We have, most of us have no idea at all that could be 10 breaths away from now and in the world right now. That probably is happening for a good few people. So if we then consider that we're doing this inhale and exhale 25,000 times a day, what have we forsaken here?

[00:22:26] Anthony Abbagnano: Our connection to being spirited, because to inspire is to import spirit. So bringing spirit, being spirited people, bringing spirituality into our life, bringing amplitude, you know, grandness, the magnificence, the hugeness of the mystery of life that we inhale 25,000 day times a day, and also the 25,000 times a day that we're dying, that something is dying.

[00:22:52] Anthony Abbagnano: Cells are dying, we're exhausting, we're exhaling until the final exhaustion. Until the final expiry. [00:23:00] So this is significant. This is not, oh, yeah. Don't tell me when to breathe. Actually, I find this, for me, it's the altar in front of which I kneel. Because to me, this is so magnificent and so huge, and I always say I've been doing this since I was eight years old.

[00:23:20] Anthony Abbagnano: I've been conscious of my breath and I feel like I know that much about one breath, so much to be discovered. So there's a sense of proportion and context for you that I, to me, I might just be my myopic viewpoint, but that's the way I feel about the breath. 

[00:23:39] Kathy Washburn: There's so much in there. And I can't help but be pulled onto a yoga mat as you talk because there's so many times in that space.

[00:23:52] Kathy Washburn: Where I've had that consciousness of my breath, whether on my own or with the [00:24:00] guidance of a yoga teacher. And a few ways that just kind of leaped into my head, one was after Shavasana, you know, the invitation to begin again and take that first inhale after Shavasana, you know, as you're rolled into a fetal position before you move.

[00:24:22] Kathy Washburn: Take that first breath and begin again. I remember one teacher, Krista, I can hear her voice. The other invitation that is so fascinating, I've never heard it again. After the end of class, you know when there's a moment of gratitude for everybody in the room. One teacher said, open your eyes. And turn to look at the people that you have been sharing your breath with.

[00:24:52] Kathy Washburn: And I thought, wow, that just brings me to this human level [00:25:00] that you're speaking of this sense of grace. And from that place it feels so generative. You're in that positive affect where there are so many things possible just with the breath. 

[00:25:17] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. we do is possible because of the breath.

[00:25:21] Anthony Abbagnano: That's what's so magnificent. And I love what you say about those phrases and sentences and that experience of being on the yoga mat too. I know with my wife, part of our marriage contractors that we both have. We are both committed to accepting when the other one says, let's take 10 breaths together and look at each other in the eyes.

[00:25:41] Anthony Abbagnano: And I think in 15 years we've called upon this maybe five times. You know, when you are in one of those super crunch moments in a relationship or a friendship, and it's like you, there's a part of you that wants to throw in the towel and we forget that part of you that wants to throw in the towel, towel is the [00:26:00] one that wants to flee because we're traumatized.

[00:26:02] Anthony Abbagnano: And the cortisol and the pin of prine and the adrenaline of are shooting up there. So our choices are narrowing and this is it. And that's like a, and that's when we call upon it. And the transformation that happens during those 10 breaths is just from no matter what level of hostility one might be feeling.

[00:26:22] Anthony Abbagnano: In that moment, it melts. It might start with, well, I'm not gonna show you I'm breathing, but I'll look you in the eyes as if I if lagers in them. You know? But by the time you reach the fourth or fifth breath, you're beginning to understand, oh my God, we're both human. We're both human, and we're actually doing the best that we can.

[00:26:41] Anthony Abbagnano: And then by the time you reach the 10th breath, it's like, okay, got it. That's the gift that's in 10 breaths that I can reinform my whole psyche in 10 breaths. 

[00:26:51] Kathy Washburn: And the possibilities that come from that nervous system regulation with another [00:27:00] human blows open the doors of what's possible. What can, where can we go from here?

[00:27:08] Kathy Washburn: How can we put that forensic or. Fascinated anthropologist hat on and discover what's beneath those hidden wounds. And you talk about the gifts of hidden wounds. And if there's nothing that I've learned in the last seven years, it is that these wounds are gifts. Every Rick Hansen calls them second arrows.

[00:27:33] Kathy Washburn: they are gifts. And when we understand that A, they are gifts and b, with this sense of breath that we have choice an agency. I love that you are aligning our first breath with our first act of agency. So much power. 

[00:27:57] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah, it is. It's the original act of [00:28:00] agency. 

[00:28:01] Kathy Washburn: So when we can go back to that again and fill ourselves with agency.

[00:28:06] Kathy Washburn: Can you just talk about the word agency? 

[00:28:08] Agency and Presence in Life

[00:28:08] Kathy Washburn: Because I have so many people that I work with that actually say to me, I don't know what you're talking about. 

[00:28:14] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. I didn't know at first. 'cause everybody started using the word and I was a little bit nonplus there, like, oh, okay. I think the way I would explain it in this moment is

[00:28:24] Anthony Abbagnano: reclaiming my authority and reclaiming my authorship. In other words, I am going to pick up the pen to write the book of my life rather than let. Anyone else do it or tell me what to write. So there's an inner authority that you probably notice in people when someone walks into a room who has inner authority, it's almost as if the world morphs around them.

[00:28:58] Anthony Abbagnano: You know, things begin to [00:29:00] comply with them because they have a sense of presence and bearing and bit like the water's open. You know, things. Things move and accommodate that sense of presence. So agency to me is about reclaiming that presence. It's about dropping all the stories that stop us from being in that moment of stillness where I can be.

[00:29:30] Anthony Abbagnano: And then from that moment of stillness I can. Make fresh choices. I can create, I can be creative instead of reactive and there's not a lot of difference between being creative and reactive. If you look at the word and take the C outta reactive and put it at the beginning of the word instead of as the fourth letter, all of a sudden we've become creative.

[00:29:53] Anthony Abbagnano: And I think that's true in real life too. We can lose our creativity in a flash if we're [00:30:00] antagonized or awakened or triggered. That's when all the chemicals flow again and we lose our choice. And we're like, no, it's you. It wasn't me. And we get es, we escalate issues rather than accommodate the energy that's in the room, achieve that sense of stillness that I amness, and then offer an active agency back.

[00:30:22] Anthony Abbagnano: And I think people who do that as a cycle, once we. Greet life that way. They're the ones that actually have that sense of presence. That is so appealing when you meet someone who's like that you want to be in it because it feels like being blessed. It's attractive. Is that a fair explanation to you?

[00:30:43] Kathy Washburn: Yes. Age is agency. It's interesting when one feels they lack agency and they're spinning in that fight flight, 

[00:30:56] Anthony Abbagnano: you 

[00:30:57] Kathy Washburn: know, dysregulation and can't quite [00:31:00] step off that wheel. I love this gift that you just shared of the 10 breaths, like really looking at somebody in the eye and inviting somebody to breathe with them.

[00:31:15] Kathy Washburn: There's people that I've experienced with that's not even that won't even work. There's a reluctance or a resistance. And I wanna talk about resistance in another form, but I'm just thinking of this moment of meeting when there's you know, there's so much contagion in somebody that's regulated that presence, but mental illness, post-traumatic stress there are times when the dysregulation of another, my presence, can't fix it.

[00:31:54] Kathy Washburn: It has to come from inside the other human. And, [00:32:00] it really requires that human to make that decision. Is that right? 

[00:32:04] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah, I think it is. I think it always is up to the other human in the sense that we can't do it for anybody else. It's actually disempowering if we try to do it for someone else. But what I do notice is that if we, because it's so easy for us to lose our center in that moment, right. You know, it's like, gosh, I can just all the questions I'm asking myself in that moment, am I ineffective here? Have I, am I failing? Am I, it's all about me? Of course, you know, they're all about the stories I'm telling myself, but that's part of the mental process, right?

[00:32:40] Anthony Abbagnano: Those 60,000 thoughts a day that are flowing into this moment. But actually presence. If I'm in a, if I'm in a pure state of presence, then I don't have to trouble myself with those thoughts. And I can take my breath, I can take my 10 breaths. 

[00:32:57] Practical Applications and Real-Life Examples

[00:33:00] Anthony Abbagnano: I have an interesting story that happened in a boardroom alchemy.

[00:33:01] Anthony Abbagnano: I found it a restaurant in Bali, in Asia, in UD six 16 or 17 years ago called Alchemy. And we had eight shareholders and we had a shareholders meeting, and there was a big issue at hand. And one of the one of the shareholders was resisting. And she was a kind of, she was kind of got energy out of creating issues.

[00:33:22] Anthony Abbagnano: She wasn't really resolution orientated. She was more wanting the drama of emmic and argument. And so I walked in, I said, can we all just take 10 breaths before we start? And everybody went, oh yeah, okay. So we did there and eight of us were doing it. She didn't, she refused. She was the one who refused.

[00:33:46] Anthony Abbagnano: And after the 10 breaths were done and we started the meeting, the conversation was so different that she couldn't help but shift. And I think what happens is if you can stay true to [00:34:00] your center for long enough, people can begin to hear the echo of their own stories and they can begin to have an opportunity to see a reflection of where they're at because of what's happening around them.

[00:34:16] Anthony Abbagnano: But it does take an awful lot of strength not to go, not to fall into that troubled space that they're occupying and. To become compliant with that. And I think that's exactly the whole issue of outer chaos, inner calm, inner, a chaos, outer calm. Because we forget because we're, we still have our little children inside us.

[00:34:39] Anthony Abbagnano: We still have that part of us that wants to be loved and wants to be cared for, and wants to have value and wants to help and you know, it takes quite a bit to stay still in those circumstances. 

[00:34:51] Kathy Washburn: Permission to be human. 

[00:34:54] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:34:55] Inner Chaos to Outer Calm

[00:34:59] Anthony Abbagnano: I love that you said earlier on about, you know, your version of [00:35:00] in a chaos Out to Calm.

[00:35:02] Anthony Abbagnano: Because at first when you said that, I thought,

[00:35:04] Anthony Abbagnano: I thought that you meant something different. I thought you meant that your inner chaos created an outer chaos, but then when you expressed that it was your will to keep the peace and to be the peacemaker. 

[00:35:18] The Power of Feminine Energy

[00:35:20] Anthony Abbagnano: And I think that's also, you know, speaking as a male, one of the greatest gifts that the feminine can bring to a situation is there is the incredible ability to hold un discomfort and men don't, I don't think are able, they're not that well able to do that.

[00:35:37] Anthony Abbagnano: We tend to find a solution and find the exit and create, you know, instead of just being with the feeling. And yet I also fully understand how, if we're doing it from an inner chaotic state, that it's not helping you at all. We can't sustain that. That's not sustainable. I think I've lived that as well.

[00:35:56] Anthony Abbagnano: If we find value by solving other people's [00:36:00] problems, then we need to solve other people's problems to find value. And it's a self nourishing cycle. So thank you for pointing that out. It really felt like a value. I wanted to, I wanted not just to acknowledge it, but to highlight it because I think it's a program we all, as men, I think I certainly run that program as well, but I, what I appreciated receiving from the feminine, what you said was a teaching for me.

[00:36:25] Anthony Abbagnano: Thank you. 

[00:36:26] Kathy Washburn: Oh, you're most welcome. It reminds me of your, I think you talked about it as like an unconscious commitment and I've heard it also be described as as kind of a, I have a honoring. Of a familial way of doing things that keeps me beholden. 

[00:36:49] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:36:49] Kathy Washburn: To these ways of being, even though they're hurting me.

[00:36:53] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:36:53] Kathy Washburn: And that shift, that ability to to grow or evolve in [00:37:00] that it doesn't happen in these armchair adventures where I'm reading your book and I'm just taking notes. 

[00:37:07] Redirecting Energy with Intention

[00:37:07] Kathy Washburn: It actually happens in the moment where I am witnessing somebody that's so dysregulated and instead of focusing on that ability to create outer calm, I have to redirect that energy.

[00:37:28] Kathy Washburn: And I had a therapist say to me that one time, you have to redirect that energy with so. Intention that you burn calories. She had me at calories, but redirect it. And in the heat of that, in this moment of such unsettled energy, I am to ask myself what do I need in this moment? there were times when I could say, I need to step away.[00:38:00]

[00:38:00] Kathy Washburn: I need space. I'm gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna remove myself from this energy. 'cause I can't control it. And I'm so hyper aware of it. There's like a spidey sense that's just electrifying me from the inside out and to walk away and then to understand that this unconscious. Commitment that I just walked away from that, that in my old way, I was once told, you're really easy to stay with and you're really easy to leave because I don't really make a big deal out of it.

[00:38:39] Kathy Washburn: I'm like, okay, sure, you wanna, but inside my whole body's like, I'm rejected. They don't like me. I'm failing. So it's such a deep process and such a slow process, like one little moment at a time, that [00:39:00] choice of me looking inside in that hot second and saying, I need space, and then getting outside and beating the crap outta myself in my head, and again, trying to calm that.

[00:39:15] Kathy Washburn: Unconscious commitment. I mean, it's a show, man. It's a shit show. 

[00:39:21] Anthony Abbagnano: It really is. It's a, it's somewhere between circus and a crusade and, um, it's not, yeah. It's stuff of life. 

[00:39:30] Kathy Washburn: So if we can make ourselves conscious enough, and this is what I love about the breath and your new description of the breath even takes this a higher level to me.

[00:39:43] Kathy Washburn: If we can allow ourselves to be intimate with the breath for just a hot second even in the way that you describe, to allow that inhale to be agency [00:40:00] and that exhale. To be practicing for death kind of halts you in this magical moment that you are right now. And while we're in there to wrestle with the resistance and you do a beautiful job of reframing resistance as information.

[00:40:23] Understanding Resistance

[00:40:23] Kathy Washburn: you talk about that a little? This reframe and how powerful that is? 

[00:40:28] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. Resistance really has a bad rap, huh? It's like negative block that is an outer power that we need to battle against. And I think it's not on its own. It's got cousins and other family members too. Anxiety and all of these energies, they're an energy force.

[00:40:47] Anthony Abbagnano: And so the question that I ask myself is, okay, this is here. So first I need to admit it, but admitting it, [00:41:00] and when I say admit it, I mean literally to give it admission in my awareness. But I don't mean that I have to buy everything that the salesman is selling me, buy the whole story. I need to give it admission so I can understand more of its texture and its nature and what it is protecting me from.

[00:41:20] Anthony Abbagnano: Is there something that I'm being protected from as a result of this resistance, or is it some inauthentic. Belief that I might be clinging to. And you mentioned this earlier on about unconscious commitment, how, you know, sometimes it's more comfortable to stay with the stickiness of a bad situation than it is to move into a different one, to take the risk to move into a different one.

[00:41:44] Anthony Abbagnano: And I think this is very much akin to that moment. We talked about birth experiences. It's very akin to the moment in the womb when have to leave. There's a time where we have to leave that safe space and it's threatening. And this happens a lot in our [00:42:00] lives. The, on the eve of the moment that we feel a sense of panic and tension and anxiety and resistance too.

[00:42:08] Anthony Abbagnano: So when we begin to look at resistance in a larger context of a part of a process. When we learn to understand that there is always something else waiting to happen, which we don't really see life that way. We think that the moment we're in is in some ways it can never change, and we abandon, we abdicate from the possibility of something better happening because we do want to stay in that discomfort or the sticky place.

[00:42:37] Anthony Abbagnano: So if we can look at resistance as an independent entity and see it for what it is, not just what we imagine it to be, for example.

[00:42:51] Anthony Abbagnano: If you are driving a car with a clutch, I know most of you folks in America drive automatics, but you could, we could take an automatic as well. If you drive a, if [00:43:00] you drive a car and you have your foot on your accelerator and you put your other foot on the brake at the same time you're creating resistance and then when you release your left foot off the brake, you are going to surge forwards.

[00:43:14] Anthony Abbagnano: Well, isn't it interesting that resistance, if we allow it to be there and allow it to pass by, that's usually what happens is there's usually a surge of forward movement afterwards as a result of not perhaps believing. The stories that we tell ourselves, and I've spoken of this before the rationale that we use the familial benefits of something that isn't strange to us.

[00:43:40] Anthony Abbagnano: If we do take that risk, then. Usually something wonderful can happen, always something worthy of passing through the resistance. So I don't wanna make resistance first. I think step one is not to make resistance, an enemy, it's an informant. And if it's an informant, then [00:44:00] we employ our sense of agency to choose what information is relevant and useful and what information is not.

[00:44:07] Anthony Abbagnano: So don't suspend your resistance if you want to cross the road with heavy traffic, with your eyes closed it's good resistance. Pay attention. On the other hand if it's, if there's anything to do with something different or new that might happen as a result of what we used to call overcoming resistance or meeting resistance with persistence.

[00:44:33] Anthony Abbagnano: Allow that to drop away and just allow resistance to be in the space with you and to examine it, to use your agency to ask questions of it. You can even have a conversation, Hey, Mr. Resistance, you know, why are you here? What do you need? You know, to, to export some of the conversation from your own head into, towards this entity.

[00:44:58] Anthony Abbagnano: And then see what it says [00:45:00] back and have at it when it wants to talk. Articulate all the reasons it's there for you and what it wants to stop you from danger and all of these things. And then say, Hey, thank you, and what else is there? Would you feel more comfortable if I told you the way this is gonna work?

[00:45:18] Anthony Abbagnano: And then have a chat. Have a chat with it, and then ping back and forth and see what comes out of it. And usually when we do things like that, we've already kind of distanced ourselves from. The repeat, the rewind, repeat things that we're always thinking of for beginning to look at it a different way.

[00:45:36] Kathy Washburn: Yeah. 

[00:45:36] The Two Chair Exercise

[00:45:41] Kathy Washburn: I think this is the chapter where you introduced the two chair exercise, and I've worked with David Drake is a narrative coach, narrative coaching. And I've gone through his program and he uses the three chair exercise as you have a witness. And I love the idea of that. And whenever I work with a client, they kind of roll their eyes at me like, [00:46:00] you want me to now sit in that chair?

[00:46:02] Kathy Washburn: Okay. That's no different. But the power in being able to actually see yourself and hear yourself. 

[00:46:12] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:46:12] Kathy Washburn: Ellen Langer, I think she's been kind of dubbed the mother of mindfulness. She works at Harvard. I saw her speak once and she said, you know, she was about ai, which you and I were talking about when we first, before we, we hit record.

[00:46:31] Kathy Washburn: And she said, you know, robots they don't have happiness. They don't, they're not capable of happiness. But we all walk around like, we're a robot because we believe that we know. So we don't tune in. And by not tuning in, we tune out to the world around us. And this idea of embracing [00:47:00] resistance, giving it a name, having a conversation with it, is this admittance that we don't know.

[00:47:11] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:47:12] Kathy Washburn: And this curiosity all of a sudden. Is allowed to bubble forth, which is mindfulness, right? 

[00:47:21] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:47:22] Kathy Washburn: It's that curiosity that's available only when we admit we don't know.

[00:47:29] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. So there's something about surrender in there too. Surrender, but it's not surrendered to the resistance. It's is surrendered to something else.

[00:47:37] Anthony Abbagnano: It's interesting, I because Fr Fritz Pearls made a great quote. Mm-hmm. The founder of, he works with gestalt therapy. He developed Gestalt therapy and he did a lot of other things too. But what he said about the two chair exercise was that the more resistance someone feels, the bigger the breakthrough that will happen.

[00:47:59] Anthony Abbagnano: So when I work [00:48:00] with people with two chairs, or when I do inner child work with people and I can feel this resistance, at first I'd think, oh, okay. Where's my toolbox? What do I need to do? But of course, none of those things work. The best thing to do is it doesn't. So I just sit with it and watch this experience that people go through.

[00:48:17] Anthony Abbagnano: It's kind of from a troubled face to, okay, I'm gonna knuckle down and be in this process and coming out the other side. It is enormous, the shifts that occur 

[00:48:28] Kathy Washburn: with the introduction of awareness. 

[00:48:31] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:48:33] Kathy Washburn: With that and the invitation, which we don't all get or give ourselves to just be still and quiet enough to listen.

[00:48:42] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:48:43] Anthony Abbagnano: And to allow, because we've moved so far away from what's natural. And we think that what's normal is natural, but the gap is becoming more and more wide. And now we're being fooled into thinking AI is normal. You know?

[00:48:57] Anthony Abbagnano: And I love ai. I'm not putting it down. It has [00:49:00] great benefits and it's a wonderful tool and it's also very scary, like everybody's saying. But but I think if we're so used to needing to control life, to live with the illusion that we can control life, that we're out completely out disempowered, as opposed to if we can learn how to develop our empowerment, then we can co-create with life, we can dance with the movement of life, we can perceive things that we don't notice.

[00:49:29] Anthony Abbagnano: We can know when to move the left foot or the right foot, and. There are times when allowing is much more powerful than controlling or pushing. It's just that we've lost the balance in the type of lives that we lead now. That's why the stillness becomes so important, like you mentioned earlier on, just like they sung about in the Psalms so many years ago.

[00:49:54] Kathy Washburn: Yeah. And I can't help but think, and I'm not gonna bring any politics into this, but being a [00:50:00] United States citizen and I can't help but think that the push for us to be in that state of fear and it's so disempowering for a reason. 'cause God forbid if we all should rise up and feel empowered and that we are at choice.

[00:50:21] Kathy Washburn: That we can choose what a magical place that would be. 

[00:50:26] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. What a magical place. It, yeah. What a magical place it is. I want to say. Yeah. 

[00:50:32] Kathy Washburn: Yes. 'cause it, because it exists. And one person at a time I can't help but feel, and I see this when I look at you, when you first came on the screen, sometimes I have this weird feeling like, wow, I can see the thousands of lives this person touches.

[00:50:55] Kathy Washburn: Like it's almost like this it's like a radiance. And [00:51:00] I realize when you are healed, the circle of the people that you get to influence are also healed in some way. And the circle and. Where their influence are healed. And that's how it happens. It's just one human at a time. Being able to find the breath long enough to become regulated and be able to look at the world with possibility instead of all the uncertainty, all resistance, all the other things that happen.

[00:51:37] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah, that's so true. 

[00:51:38] The Breath as a Tool for Mindfulness

[00:51:38] Anthony Abbagnano: And I think in any situation, if you, I've never known a situation in which, if you bring in the breath that the situation will get better from no matter how disastrous the situation is or how wonderful it's, if you bring in the breath, it will get better because that is mindfulness, that is presence.

[00:51:58] Anthony Abbagnano: You can't give your [00:52:00] attention to your breath without things changing. Things change when you give your attention to your breath. And in quantum science, they've physics, they've shown this, that electrons shift their path if they're being witnessed. Reality shifts if we give it our attention. So that's why they say, where you put your intention, the energy flows, or where you put your attention, the energy goes.

[00:52:25] Anthony Abbagnano: It's true. And so just giving our attention to our breath and bringing it into a situation will then create a different outcome than if we don't. I mean, imagine that. It's like, goodness, that's a miracle. That's a miracle. We can do that. I mean, it perhaps only seems like it's a miracle because we've, we're so far deviated from what normal is that we think this is ex extraordinary, but we're doing it 25,000 times a day.

[00:52:57] Anthony Abbagnano: It's like, hello, you know, what does it take [00:53:00] for me to wake up and I still feel like I'm waking up to this. I'm not I'm not a preacher. I'm definitely an evangelist, but I, uh, I'm just a devotee. I'm a devoted student. 

[00:53:11] Kathy Washburn: I love your book in that same way. I feel like I really got to know you.

[00:53:15] Kathy Washburn: I'm just finishing my own book, and I only hope that it reads in a way that, that I felt like when I was reading yours where, yes, you're seven years old and you are very aware of the breath at a young age, but you lived a whole life between then and now. Getting back to this sense of awareness. And would it be presumptuous for me to say that path was your path back to your breath?

[00:53:44] Anthony Abbagnano: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I was fortunate enough to have a moment where I understood that every choice, every path I'd ever taken, and every experience I'd ever had, that sometimes seemed so disparate and [00:54:00] conflicted and disorganized and irrelevant and distracted was actually all in a process of convergence.

[00:54:08] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. It was like the full orchestra of each experience that I'd had played. The perfect piece of music for me to understand this is, I am, this is, and it's. It explained everything. And then I think from that point, my life changed completely. I became, I think the in, in Sanskrit, they call it, aligned with my dharma.

[00:54:31] Anthony Abbagnano: You know, just totally understanding my purpose, but also understanding it in a way that

[00:54:35] Anthony Abbagnano: I also knew that fulfilling my purpose is not what would make me worthy. It's just my service. That's all it is. It's not that it makes me a master of anything. And I think in the book I mentioned the illusion of mastery and at some point in our lives we need to climb down from that. [00:55:00] And I certainly had to do that too, to deconstruct all the egoic, architecture that I'd created either to protect myself as a child or or to both to myself and to stick my chest out and s squarer my shoulders and impress the outer world. , you know, that all gets to be dismantled, doesn't it? As we get older, we forget as children that we might just be changing the diapers of our parents, and we forget that as young parents, that we might just need our children to change our diapers, you know?

[00:55:31] Anthony Abbagnano: So, there's a, I think to pass through this death canal or the new birth canal, whichever way you want to look at it, there's some preparation that we can do. And I think it's like an eye of a needle that the less baggage we have and the less claim. We lay upon either external goods and merch or inner [00:56:00] acquisition of becoming and mastery, then the easier that passage will be.

[00:56:05] Kathy Washburn: I think that speaks to your anchor of the breath. So clearly it's just that simple. There's no I mean, there's a lot of things that are out there in the market that we can all do to shapeshift and change, but there is no quicker pill than the breath. 

[00:56:24] Anthony Abbagnano: There really isn't. Oh, there you go.

[00:56:26] Anthony Abbagnano: Who'd have thunk it? You know, like, 

[00:56:27] Kathy Washburn: who've thunk it? 

[00:56:29] Anthony Abbagnano: yeah. I, it still amazes me that I didn't think of it earlier on. 

[00:56:33] Kathy Washburn: Well, you had it at seven. 

[00:56:35] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah, I had it as a youngster. 

[00:56:39] A Life-Altering Realization

[00:56:39] Kathy Washburn: Can I ask one question before you wrap up, because I'm, and you don't have to answer it, but I'm curious, what was that catalyst moment, what, was it a, a weak moment or was it a exciting moment?

[00:56:55] Anthony Abbagnano: It was incredibly exciting and it came at the end of an extended period [00:57:00] of debilitation. Because as much as I, in my life, as much as I had success and accolade and wealth, there was something I was spending that I was not aware of, and I was bankrupt in another sense. So, that, that eventually showed up in, even though I'd made the conscious decision to shift my life and and even to be to study this breath in a more serious way I then got seriously ill, and it was an extended period of time, several months that ended in the last several weeks of, which was really like about visiting the edge of death.

[00:57:40] Anthony Abbagnano: And and then when the awareness came, it came with the breath. It came because I was so ill that I, and I was in such pain that breathing would cause pain. I couldn't flinch a muscle. I could move my eyelids, I could open and close my eyes without pain, but I, and I could move my eyes really slowly, but I couldn't turn my head or move my [00:58:00] arms or anything like that.

[00:58:01] Anthony Abbagnano: And, so I found stillness and I found as close as we can get to the stillness of death, I guess, because I had to breathe without my body moving. So I was like, go sipping on just like the surviving on the tiniest amount of breath. And and I was in that state for about several weeks, some, somewhere between eight and 12 weeks.

[00:58:23] Anthony Abbagnano: and then I think I mentioned in the book, I heard this conversation outside my terrace of my brother talking to a friend of ours. And they were saying, my brother was saying, I think he's only got four or five days left. And I was so incensed with anger when I heard this. I thought, I'm not dying.

[00:58:39] Anthony Abbagnano: I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back. And that was really, I think the moment that. In order to come back. I needed some kind of permission to do that. I needed to revote my life to something. And then that's when the penny dropped. Like, oh my God, this is all happening. So I get the message. This has always happened so I can just get this message.

[00:59:00] Kathy Washburn: And one last question for you, Anthony. If I were to crush your essence up and put it in a pill form, what effect would you have on someone taking that pill?

[00:59:12] Anthony Abbagnano: Oh, I would pass sigh.

[00:59:17] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. 

[00:59:18] Kathy Washburn: Yes. I've been taking that pill all week long while I've been reading your book. Oh. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom yourself. This is just extraordinary. And you actually invite people at the beginning of the book to like highlight this is when I didn't have a pen.

[00:59:40] Kathy Washburn: I was at the doctor's office. I'm like, dang it. Where's my pen? So I folded back pages. The whole thing has highlights and notes to myself. 

[00:59:50] Anthony Abbagnano: That's great. 

[00:59:52] Kathy Washburn: I wish it was a little smaller so I could just put it in my pocket. Yeah. 

[00:59:56] Breathwork and Community

[00:59:56] Kathy Washburn: It's a beautiful guide, but I know that you also have [01:00:00] group work that you do.

[01:00:02] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah, we do breath work sessions every Sunday and they're on that. I'm gonna give UK time just so I don't get messed up with time zones and times of year. But it's 9:30 AM UK time and 5:00 PM UK time. So we do cover the US all the way to the West Coast and it's called Breathe the World, and you can find out about that on alchemy of breath.com.

[01:00:28] Kathy Washburn: I am gonna go there and I am gonna join you. 

[01:00:32] Anthony Abbagnano: Please do. You'll 

[01:00:34] Kathy Washburn: find alchemy of breath. 

[01:00:35] Anthony Abbagnano: Yeah. And also we have we have a community and retreat center in Italy in Tuscany. And we run retreats there all season, all year long from May through October. So that's where people get to breathe twice a day.

[01:00:48] Anthony Abbagnano: And we do actual formal connected breath sessions and, wow. Talk about transformation. It's a very deep moving experience, but it's also a total reset. If there's something you wanna change about [01:01:00] your life and you don't know what it is, or you do know what it is, this is a way to do it with other people who are doing the same thing.

[01:01:06] Anthony Abbagnano: The power of community doing this work together is just enormous. So, 

[01:01:11] Kathy Washburn: ooh. This is the third little whisper I've heard in my ear to go to Italy and I think Tuscany in particular. Okay. Well you might be seeing me again, Anthony.

[01:01:25] Anthony Abbagnano: I hope so. And I hope we get to talk more. 

[01:01:26] Kathy Washburn: Yes, that would be a joy. Thank you so much. It's been so extraordinary. 

[01:01:32] Anthony Abbagnano: Thank you, Kathy. It's been a joy. 

[01:01:34]

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