From Chaos to Calm: How Breathwork Heals Trauma and Restores Self | Anthony Abbagnano

In this episode of Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, host James welcomes breathwork teacher and healer Anthony Abbagnano to explore how men can reclaim their wholeness without reliving painful trauma. Together, they discuss why true transformation often lies in rescuing the forgotten parts of ourselves—the inner child left behind in moments of hurt—and how tending to those parts creates safety, presence, and deeper connection.

Anthony shares his own extraordinary journey, from a challenging childhood in boarding school to a life-changing breathwork experience at age eight, and how that discovery became the cornerstone of his healing path. The conversation dives into the paradox of desire—why we long for what we don’t have when, in fact, we’ve often received exactly what we’ve asked for—and how choice, awareness, and breath can shift everything.

Listeners will discover how breathwork can be used as an accessible tool for calming anxiety, unlocking creativity, and moving beyond old patterns, as well as how inner child practices help us reclaim our vitality and resilience. This is a powerful dialogue on responsibility, wholeness, and the hope that comes when we create space to breathe, belong to ourselves, and redefine manhood.

About Anthony:

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 

Transcript

0:00

In this episode, we talk about how trauma doesn't need to be relived to be healed and using breath work as a tool for transformation. We talk about the riddle. Why do we want what we haven't got and how inner child work can be used as the core healing path. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in.

James: 0:58

If we are going to create change in the world, we're going to have to reclaim the parts of who we are that we left behind. Hello Anthony. How can you explain more about that?

Antony: 1:11

Yeah, I'd love to. What that means is that with each trauma that we've met in our past, we have usually tried to forget it or dissociate from it in order to get back to being okay. And in doing so, we throw the baby out with the bath water. We forget that there's actually a part of us that got traumatized that we also dissociate from. So when you consider how many times that happens, especially in those first few years of life. There are a lot of broken bits of who we are that are lying there alone and unintended. While we generally, as humans tend to blame the outside world for the way things are. So, um, there's something in there that can be adjusted. Is there something in there that can be adjusted? Would be my question. I, I obviously feel that there is.

James: 2:15

Yeah, that makes complete sense because I'm on this path at the moment and I've been on the path for probably, seven or eight years now. But it's almost like you go through this, helical core and you come up against shadows and insecurities in that moment. You go through them and then you think, oh, great, I've got rid of all them. And then you come back around and then you meet'em again, and I've just literally. Last couple of days I've met the next level and I'm like, Christ, I'm mighty. Do you what? Can, can't I have a break? Yeah. Can't I have a break? But in the hindsight, I feel so much more present. So much more like I've been, like I've changed massively over the last two and a half weeks because of all the shadows being brought out. And for me. Claiming all these parts and almost, yeah, loving and accepting and nurturing these parts is the key to growth.

Antony: 3:21

Yeah, I, I believe so, is I also believe it's the key to wholeness and the cost if we don't do it, is enormous. And I, and I think we can see that. When we look at adults in our world, even those in prime ministerial or presidential roles in many different countries. That when you hear them in debate with each other, behave like children. There's no real adulthood there. There's no real leadership there. There's a squabble going on like you would've seen in a playground a few years ago, and I think that's, that's the cost is because we leave so many parts of who we are behind that what's left isn't very much. Isn't the original shape we were intended to be. And then the, the, the dangerous thing about these parts we leave behind is if we get activated or triggered, all of a sudden they're pulling our puppet strings and we're behaving like an 8-year-old. I'm not saying anything bad about eight year olds. I love them, but I don't, I don't want to see a prime minister or president speaking like an 8-year-old and thinking that they're gonna win because that's not how we're gonna create some positive change around here.

James: 4:42

Hmm. So that's a big one because like it's, I think women do this so much better than men generally as a whole. But what I'm finding at the moment is, so what one of my things that I want to do is they'll, to bridge the gap between where men are and where women are. Mm-hmm. And that's a huge gap. Massive. Massive, huge gap. In order to do that, we've got to go into ourselves and ask ourselves which parts of ourselves wanna be seen in this that moment, and to sit with it, but also to sit with the uncomfort. Yeah.

Antony: 5:28

Well, I think that is key being in the discomfort is, you know, if we consider the very basics that the male. Tends to penetrate the world, and the feminine is more skilled in receiving the world. Uh, the, the male role is to sort of shoot first and ask questions afterwards in a certain way. There's not perhaps the skill or the softness, which is considered weakness or the sensitivity or vulnerability, which is all considered weakness. To want to actually understand what's going on. So this brings up a riddle for me. Why is it that we always want something that we haven't got, when actually we've got exactly what we ask for? Why is it everybody wants what they haven't got, when actually they've got exactly what they asked for? And the riddle to me is fascinating because it's about responsibility. It's about the fact that we do want to point the one finger out there and we don't pay attention to the three that are pointing back at me because in some way, we absolve ourselves from doing our work. We absolve ourselves because we can blame someone else for our condition, but the longer that we do that. Then the more we delay this incredible opportunity that life offers to us, which is to become whole human beings, and that means tending to our backlog. It means cleaning up those bits in our past that we've ignored because they were too painful, and it doesn't mean we have to revisit the trauma. That's the good news. I don't think we need to revisit the trauma. My gosh, we do need to help that poor kid who got traumatized. Otherwise he's gonna sit there waiting until he is awakened again, and then he'll come out and pull our puppet strings and make us say things we didn't wanna say and try win an argument that isn't, isn't winnable, and you know, create all kinds of problems in all of our relationships, especially the intimate ones.

James: 7:51

Can you say that statement again please? The riddle.

Antony: 7:55

Yeah. Why is it we all want what we haven't got, when actually we've got exactly what we asked for.

James: 8:07

Yeah. To, to, to me, when you say that there's like a, there's a chill going through me because it's a sense that unconsciously. I think we're, there's the society. We are almost ingrained into this way of living, of wanting more and more and more. But underneath, when we take away these layers, these parts of ourselves start to reclaim them and they start to become, it's part of who we are. There's almost a sense that. We get that level of fastness, that ocean of fastness and that idea that within there there's everything but nothing. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Antony: 9:02

Yeah. I, I think that's why what I've heard say that the achievement of wisdom is the embrace of paradox. Is that it's always, it, it always ends up that way, right? I mean, we call our life, birth and death, but they're also, it is also death. When we're born, it's death of something that was, and the birth of the, of what is, and our death is the death of what is and the birth of something different. So, you know, we're, we're surrounded. We live in a paradox and. I think we struggle with that as humans. It's easier to form opinions, uh, ally yourself or align yourself with someone else who's got an opinion because it feels safe and we desperately need safety and the safety in numbers. Like we have cliches, like misery loves company. Oh my God. You know, you think of all the things that we actually affirm in our lives. They're, they're, they're quite disastrous and they're not very helpful. So that belonging that we seek as humans, to me, and this is the paradox again, is because we don't really belong to ourselves and once we can belong to ourselves and all of those. Bits that we spoke of, those parts of who I once, what once was, can become a part of me again, consciously then I can not, I don't have to feel alone. Actually. I feel abundant. I feel like, oh my God, I've got a whole orchestra of possibility inside me that I, I thought it was all one note, but now I've got all the instruments and notes in the, in the scale available to me. So, um. And of course we don't see that until we get it. Then when we get it, we look back and we go, oh gosh, duh. You know? Of course.

James: 10:58

Mm.

Antony: 10:59

I think of that

James: 11:02

what you said there with regards to safety and belonging to ourselves is basically what I'm currently exploring at the moment with what's happened with a, a death and a rebirth, is this idea that how as men. Do we create safety in ourselves so that people around us feel safe? And in doing so, how can we bring ourselves, there's a sense of being present with somebody if we wanna be present with somebody. I have this. Stop feeling that we need to be present with ourselves and bring ourself back to us. Then once we bring ourselves back to us, that's when I feel that we can have that physical, emotional, and spiritual presence with somebody else.

Antony: 11:53

Yeah. I couldn't agree with all that I think is presence. The more whole we become, the more present we can be.

James: 12:02

Okay.

Antony: 12:05

Because otherwise if got bits that I haven't resolved with yet in me that I've kind of hidden away'cause it's too painful to remember that time I was abused or I was abandoned or whatever it might have been. If I abandon him, I, I'm, hi, I'm, I'm me minus him sitting in front of you. And that him isn't just one hymn, there are thousands of them. You know, I mean millions of them for each time I felt shame or embarrassment or any kind of trauma. It's something that I didn't want to, none of us want to be in trauma, of course, but there's one thing that Mo Godat did. He was one of the top bigwigs in Google, and I, and I really thank him for this. He did a, he did a survey of 12,000 people and he asked them. Uh, if I could take away your trauma, would you want me to? And upon questioning, over 98% of them said, leave me my trauma. I'll keep it. Because without it, I would lose all my new friendships. All the learnings that I've had, all the growth that I've experienced, all the resilience I've developed, all of those things would vanish and I'd be incredibly susceptible again. So. A lot's been said about trauma in this last 10 years, especially since COVID and online has become so much more prevalent and there's been a lot of really healthy inquiry into what trauma is. I think we're understanding that we know we're at the dawn of our, of a new understanding when it comes to trauma. There's more to discover. For example, we used to think that the best way to deal with trauma was to put you in front of it and muscle up, you know? Now we know the opposite is true, that every time that your trauma gets activated, all those hormones and chemicals, the norepinephrine and the cortisol and the adrenaline are coursing through your body again, and you are going to move, you're going to embed and embody the trauma more each time you get activated, not less so. The things we're discovering are really very enlightening. And at the same time, on the other side of the coin, because you spoke of shadow and there is the shadow in everything, that trauma in a way, is becoming commodified. If you put trauma on in a title, you'll get more readers, more views, more likes, more attention, because it's a buzzword and we're trying to figure it out. So there is a middle way I think, and and to me the good news is that we don't actually have to swallow the trauma again. We have to sneak behind it and rescue that part of us that got wounded or damaged or abandon

James: 15:04

being a child, I assume.

Antony: 15:07

Yeah. Inner child. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay,

James: 15:10

so before we carry on, can you tell us your story please?

Antony: 15:15

Born in England, half Italian. Um, went to boarding school when I was seven. Hated it, especially being half Italian.'cause I didn't like WPS is what we got called in those days. Um. Pretty grim school experience all the way through. Went to, went to a public school afterwards, another boarding school. Managed to get out at 16. Ran away. Got to its got to America, lived there seven years, Left England when I was 17. Uh, moved to America for seven years, came back to England for another five or so, and then started traveling, moved to Italy and then the Asia. Had a good 18 or 19 years experience in Asia, in India, and in Indonesia, and then came back to Europe about 10 years ago. And I'm a student of, um, breath work. Uh, have been since I was eight years old. I had my first, uh, ecstatic or enlightenment experience with breath work when I was a very young boy. Um, and I, I've always considered it too good to be true until about, uh, well, I still do. Honestly, I think I still do think it's too, too good to be true. It's a new true. And, um, I actually picked up breath work professionally, uh, only about 17 or 18 years ago now.

James: 16:39

That's quite a journey. So how, how does it feel to be doing breath work at eight years old? How did it feel? Shall I say?

Antony: 16:46

Uh, you know, especially when you, when you consider the context that I was in, I was absolutely miserable. Life was grim. I got teased a lot. I was outcast, marginalized, couldn't belong to anything. And uh, and then one kid came up and showed me this breath thing, and we did it together and it changed everything I saw. I saw infinity, I experienced the galaxies. I, you know, you could say I saw stars, it sounds a bit cartoony, but I saw stars. I saw what I would now call God. Uh, and I felt godness and oneness and understanding, complete understanding. So with all of the misery that I was living in, I used to cry myself to sleep every night. And you know, it was kind of rough for a little boy. I. All of a sudden I understood, oh my God, that's nothing in comparison to this. This is what's real. So it became a landmark for me and a reference point on my life map forever. I kept coming back to breathwork in different circumstances. I was a young father at 17, so during the pregnancy, I, I was actually coaching my wife, uh, but I didn't know that's what I was doing. That's just what we were told to do. So I did it. Um, and I did it for my first two children. And then, um, and then, and then I studied pranayama and all different kinds of Sufi breathing, all different kinds of charting and breath work.'cause I was just amazed at what happened and it's still today my favorite tool in the box. It's the one that changes things the most quickly for me. I have a lot of, I deal with a lot of addicts. I deal with a lot of, um, depression, suicidal ideation. Um, you know, all the problems that we face in life. I deal with a lot of the shadow space and I find that the breath is the, just the most instant way to. Create a different picture, to create a different map, to understand that there is a different map that we live on in life, but unless we pay the right kind of attention, we won't know it's there. So that's, that's the sadness, is that there are a lot of people who don't know that there is this, I call it the miracle matrix rather than the the matrix. That we've seen. There's another whole matrix that's available if we are able to resonate with it.

James: 19:23

Let's, let's start there actually, because I'll, I'll come back to the other bits that we talked about earlier. Just quickly with breathwork. So anybody who's new to breathwork, what can they expect and what kind of things would they need to do?

Antony: 19:41

Well, there are, there are two meanings of breath work. One is that you have to work to breathe consciously. It's, it's effortful. And the other one is that the breath does the work. So we, we were talking about paradoxes earlier on. Both of these things are true. Um, when you say expectations, it's best not to have any, actually, expectations are like putting two of the wrong ends of the magnet together where one pushes the other away. So it is best not to have expectations, but to use the experience as an opportunity to be very curious in a state of wonder like a child. And it doesn't matter what breath pattern you use, if that's the approach you'll take, that is how the most phenomenal results will be experienced.

James: 20:36

Okay? So

Antony: 20:37

expectation is almost rule number one.

James: 20:42

So I know from my own personal experience with uh, breath work that I find that when I go into a certain breath mode, I start to panic. And I start to almost hyperventilate.

Antony: 20:55

Yeah.

James: 20:57

How do you step over that kind of hurdle?

Antony: 21:00

Well, uh, hype hyperventilation is a type of breath work. But it's not the right medicine. If you're the right, if you're the sort of person that is gonna be inclined to high tension or anxiety, you would use an opposite breath. You would use a slow breath rather than a quick breath, um, you wouldn't pant. So here's the deal. Excuse me, here's the deal. We can hack our nervous system by breathing in certain ways. So if you are anxious, if you are getting tight and contracted, if you're moving towards panic, there are ways we can breathe to balance that back out, bring you back into equilibrium if you are tired, if you're depressed, if you're listless. If you're lethargic, there are ways we can breathe to activate you more and get you more energized. The way that you are going to find out about this for yourself, because anybody can tell you, but the way you are going to get the most out of it is by experiencing it. The what you need to do is make a little choice right now, and that is that I'm gonna start noticing how I breathe in different circumstances. And it's not very complicated. There aren't like 600 different things to remember. There are only five or six. When you're panicky, how are you breathing? When you're relaxed and feeling really good? How are you breathing when you're making love? How are you breathing? What happened? Was it enjoyable? Did it all happen too quick? Were there things you would've wanted to be different? How were you breathing? Um, when you wake up in the morning, how are you breathing? When you find it difficult to go to sleep? How are you breathing? When it's easy to go to sleep, how are you breathing? All of these bits of information become. The catalog or the manual that each of us has that we can use to recreate those circumstances when we want to. So if you're panicky, there's a, there's a, there's a breath that will take care of that, and it's a slow, purposeful breath. And actually it's a breath with those. And exhale as you can possibly have. So you could start by breathing in for four seconds and then breathing out for eight, and then you could continue extending that out. Breath up to 30 or 40 seconds. You can make a hum sound when you exhale, and that will also activate your vagus nerve. And that's really how you wanna breathe when you're getting stressed. And here's again another little paradox. The best time to do it is when you don't need it that way. I like to, I like to present it this way. If you practice these things when you don't actually need to lean on them, then. You'll find that tool in the toolbox.'cause you know, you know what shape it is. You know what it's like. You, you pick it up, you're familiar with it. It's, it's almost automatic. In fact, if you practice for more than two or three weeks, this becomes automatic where you participate in the regulation of your nervous system. So when you feel something is moving out of kilter. Ah, okay. I need my go-to five second in five, second out breath. It's called the coherence breath. That's the one I'm going to use. Or if I'm really in a bind or I want to have an extraordinary experience, if I'm stuck in relationship or with something. Creative block, uh, a deep depression, uh, whatever it might be of that nature. Then a conscious connected breath is a great way to breathe, and that is one that will slow down your motor mechanisms in your frontal lobe and, uh, allow you to start to consider things without those racing, without quite the same racing thoughts that we normally have. That's one that you need to be facilitated on. You need to have someone with you to make sure that you are safe because you can get a bit wobbly, you should be doing it lying down. Uh, and it's good to have someone who's experienced to, uh, take care of you facilitate the experience for you.

James: 25:24

You're saying that with breath, you have the idea that different circumstances will mean different breath, so like. Having anxiety or uh, uh, being a bit fearful. Obviously our heart rate's gonna go through the roof, so then taking a nice deep breath, you are gonna slow yourself down. And for shifting stuff, which might be quite traumatic or something big, it's more having that assistance with conscious.

Antony: 25:53

Yeah, and conscious connected. And that's what that means is that your, um. Always breathing in or out. You're never pausing in between breaths, and that connection is, it changes everything. So all of these other breath stars, like the coherence, breath, five seconds in, five seconds out the transformer breath, the one I told you about, anxiety or panic. They're all about breathing consciously. The conscious connected breath is also about breathing consciously, but there's a big plus in front of it, which is that actually what you're doing is you are stretching your consciousness. So just like you do yoga to stretch and reach further, or you go to the gym and exercise to develop muscles. What's happening with the conscious connected breath is that you're stretching your awareness. I call it like an inner workout, and it does take work because you're consciously. You know, you're consciously breathing in and out. I dunno if the sound might not be coming through properly when I do that, but you're consciously breathing in and out like a beautiful violin solo. Or think of the waves as they come on the beach and they come in and go out, is always connected. And what happens with this is really quite unforeseen. I, I just did two and I feel different. You can imagine doing it for an hour. And then some extra, what we would call extraordinary things can happen. Mm-hmm. Those extraordinary things are pivotal moments. Um, sometimes people realize like, oh my God, I keep banging my head on one side of the coin and I had a breath work, and all of a sudden I saw it from the opposite perspective. You know, now I've got a, a multidimensional perspective, not just my five or six senses, not even my telepathic sense, but something much bigger came in to the picture. So it's a great breath. Work as a practice. You can do it every every day, um, and at least do it once a week if you can. And uh, and also doing it in company with other people becomes something quite special as well. So what we, what we do at Alchemy, we breathe about 750 people every Sunday and we all collect on the internet and we breathe together. And it's quite remarkable to see what happens when we're in community and we breathe like that. What I, what I find is there are, you know, in the morning session, I think there are probably about 300, 350 in the evening session, about 400 and 400 to four 50. And it's like having 450 teachers in the room. You know, people put notes in the chat box afterwards and other people are going, oh my gosh, thank you for saying that. And that's exactly how you know. So people are really helping each other in community to grow, which is just a wonderful thing to witness.

James: 29:09

One thing I've noticed with myself and probably others is that quite often we do the chest breathing. So obviously with having doing shallow breaths in the chest, yeah. How can we switch from chest breathing to breathing into our, uh, stomach, into our abdomen?

Antony: 29:26

Well consciously by choosing it, and again, having a facilitator is really helpful because they will be reminding you. But one thing you can do is, for example, put something on your chest. If you're lying down, put, sorry, put something on your belly like, uh, something you can see, like an upside down glass or a, a roll of toilet paper or something that is stable, that you can then see it rising and falling as you breathe. There's also something about commitment here that I think we always underestimate. We've got this awfully negative connotation about commitment, that it means that I'm not gonna have as many choices after I do it. And um, I like to think of commitment as kind of the opposite. It's like. It's a choice. Oh my gosh, this is what I'm gonna do. You know, it can be a really exciting thing and making that commitment. You know, sometimes I say to people, before I give a breathwork a group breathwork, I, I say to them, are you willing? How willing are you to breathe on a scale of one to 10? Uh, and people say 10. I say, okay. Are you, are you willing to up it to 20 and Yeah. Are you willing to up it to 50? Yeah. Are you willing to up it to a hundred out of 10? Yes. And then the way they breathe completely changes. So I think that we say in the breathwork world that you breathe how you live, and it's a very good metaphor. It is easy to forget to breathe. It's easy to forget we're alive. The time we really understand how alive we are is when we've only got a few days left, or we're given a a sentence, we're told we have a terminal illness. Then all of a sudden the value of life has a very different flavor.

James: 31:17

Hmm.

Antony: 31:18

So what I'd like to say is a bit of a shocking statement, but what I like to say is that. Think of that first breath of your life as happening every time you breathe in. It's a rebirth. It's a, it's an opportunity to rebirth something inside you. Every single inhale. Think what that first breath was like. It was like just complete, unconditional embrace of. Life force, everything. No judgment, no negativity, no positive, just total embrace. Now consider what that last breath will be like. It's a pre-death if one's a rebirth. The other's a pre-death, and we do this 25,000 times a day. But how often do we remember that there's a first time we do this, and there'll be a last time. Do this and do we ever consider that the breath isn't ours? I always talk about my breath. You talk about your breath or her breath, or his breath. We have to give it back. Every single one, that last breath that we take will be our final payback in this planetary existence, but it is gonna happen.

James: 32:42

Mm-hmm. That's uh. Super powerful. It makes you, it makes you think that perhaps if we can slow down and almost allow ourselves to witness every breath, that there will be amazement and enlightenment and that sense of freedom.'cause we get to, we get the freedom to choose whether we breathe. You can, if you want, you can hold your breath, but we get to choose that breath.

Antony: 33:12

Yeah. Yeah. I think that, yeah. That choice is the pivotal opportunity. And when I said earlier on, why is it that we all want what we haven't got, when we've actually got exactly what we asked for, that's what that awareness leads to. If I choose this breadth, I am restoring choice to my life. So. It's a bit, it's a bit of a big pill to swallow. I've got exactly what I asked for in life. I mean, did I really ask for a back ache? Did I really ask for a, a, a, a, you know, a, a relationship that someone betrayed me on? Did I really ask to be a, did I really ask? That's actually the wrong question. The right question is. Is there something I could have changed in the chain of choices that I made that could have brought me a different outcome than the one I faced today? If I'm not happy with what I've got, what's the choice? Just one choice. I mean, there were millions of them along the way. I mean, trillions of choices maybe that led me to be 70 years old and then making some dumb, dumb mistake. But what if I just changed one choice along the way? I, I like to think of it as like you're, you are shooting a rocket to the moon and you might be one or two degrees off, but you're gonna miss the moon by a hundred thousand kilometers. So, you know. We've gotta do is change it just one little bit and we'll we'll hit the moon, we'll have a result. So what is the choice that we could have changed and choosing the breath. Every time we choose to breathe, we remind ourselves that I'm choosing to do this. We are strengthening, we're restoring a sense of choice to a mind that has learned to suffer without choice.

James: 35:13

You talk about, uh, that one choice, but what, what stops people from making these choices in the first place? What stops'em from really stepping into changing these things?

Antony: 35:30

Uh, I think the drama. The trauma in the first place.'cause the trauma was, the choiceless moment was the first time we had no choice. That was the moment that we lost our breath too. Right? So, uh, and we, we were then reduced. Well, we are reduced to three choices from the amygdala, from the survival part of the brain, which are fight, flight, or freeze. That's the trauma response. Fight, fight, fight, flight, or freeze. How do we get a bigger range of choice? By creating space. That's why one breath is as significant as 25,000 a day or a lifetimes of breaths. One breath. If we make a choice to make it to take that breath becomes a reversal of a lifetime of habit. And what happens when I mention trauma? Just to give some kind of gradation there. Imagine you are on. Escalator and it's, you are on the upbound escalator, but there's a ceiling there, and the higher you go up, the less space there is. That's kind of what anxiety or panic is like. It's like it's, there's an inevitability of this crunch and lack of space that's going to happen. What also happens as you go up the escalator, as your tension rises, you lose your sense of choice. One by one, you lose them until you reach the panic stage. And then it's like, I'm gonna die. I can't escape. I can't even flee anymore. This is, this is, you know, the inevitable ultimate surrender is, is all that happens on our screen when we're in a panic state like that. So when you think of that escalator going up, and the more we allow the tension to rise, the less choice we have by the time we come. To this point, we don't realize we could turn around and run down the steps quicker than it's going up. We don't think about it that way. There's an interesting story. Um, it's called the Chinchilla story, and it was in 1976 in California where a school bus driver had about 26 kids on board and. They got hijacked and they took this bus and they buried it in a quarry and there was no exit. I think actually they put them in a truck container and then they buried it in a quarry. They covered it up with gravel and stuff, and um, it was like 110 degrees Fahrenheit, which is what about 38 40 degrees centigrade. And, um. And they couldn't find an exit, and there was one teacher with them, the bus driver, the teacher, and the 24 kids. There was one kid that actually found a way out and they were in there in, in total, I think they were in there for like three and a half days. His name was Jack Barkley. He found a way out, but at first he couldn't persuade anyone else to follow him. Because they were in such a traumatized state. They were in such a choiceless state that even when someone offered them a choice on a plate, they couldn't recognize it as a viable way to go. Now, eventually they all did get out. They were rescued, and Jack Barkley was the one that did it. They immediately took them to hospital and they gave them a half day psychiatric evaluation, which is really a statement on how much we knew about trauma at the time. And they then let them all go in the afternoon. They sent them all home. The the verdict was that the only one that they were concerned about was Jack Barkley, that he might have difficulty adjusting. Fast forward 10 years, 20 years, studies have been done on those children that were stuck in that school bus. Everybody, apart from Jack Barkley has been facing disaster in their lives because that choice Listlessness was impossible to break out of. He's the one that broke out of it, and he is the one that thrived. I have another story, and this happened to a friend of mine who's a psychotherapist, and she went to Lampadusa, which is an island on the south coast of Italy to. Bring in refugees from the boats from Syria, and what she used to do when a dinghy would come in and there'd be a couple of dead people and a couple of very ill people, and all very cold and weary, and I mean all kinds of conditions, she would welcome them on land and say, you are a hero. Congratulations. You made the right choice and you survived. And what they found was the people that she welcomed to land are the people that integrated the quickest. So what does this tell us? It tells us that this choiceless state can last a lifetime unless we do something to change it. And what's hidden in that is that acknowledging someone is a tremendous way for them to understand that. There's something different than the way I'm thinking. Have you ever noticed in your life, you go up to someone and you acknowledge them and they go, oh, no, no, no, not really. No, no, no. It wasn't me. Have you ever I felt that myself, when some people say that to me. We're not used to acknowledging ourselves. In indeed, in England, it is almost impolite to acknowledge yourself. We kind of hide behind this false image of, oh, no, no, no. Modest, no, no, no, no. Please, no, no, you rather than me, you first kind of thing. So without that acknowledgement, we're not gonna get traction. We're gonna be like a newborn. Bambi on a, on, on an, on a icy lake, we're, we're not gonna be able to get movement or traction. We need acknowledgement and we need celebration in order to be able to move forwards in life. And I think this is great news'cause it doesn't mean that we just have to dig in our shadow and smell all the nasty stuff and, you know, bury ourselves in the, in the mucky mud. It means that there is room for celebration and there is room for acknowledgement. Um, so we don't, we don't have to lose hope, but the story of. These, both of these stories show the value of making a choice. And that's why I say choosing that one breath becomes the thin end of the wedge. That means you can choose another 10 if you need them, another 20 to do it three times a day. And the more that you choose it, the stronger you will become.

James: 42:33

Mm-hmm. Making the choice. That's super. I think that's super key to anything but um. You were talking earlier about, we're talking about trauma and we're talking about a lot of our trauma is created as when we're a child. How can we go back and help out inner child to heal the, to not necessarily Yeah, to overcome the traumas.

Antony: 42:58

Yeah.

James: 42:58

Obviously you have to make a choice to do the inner child healing.

Antony: 43:02

Yeah. Well, uh, to me, inner child work is my favorite work of all because that's where I, I see the greatest and quickest transitions occur. Um, so here's the good news. We don't have to get the child to beat the trauma. We, what we need to do is we need to let that part of us, that inner child in each of us, know that we are choosing to show up, to provide the protection and the support that it didn't get in the moment that the drama or the trauma occurred. That's what needs to be received by the child. What's that going to take? Um, I mean I, I've devised away over the last 15 years or so that I use almost exclusively now, which is called the bridge, which is a six step process that I would sit with someone, I would have them use their breath in different ways as we go through it, but conscious use of breath. And we would go inside and find, and when I say inside, we choose a body sensation. That can be associated with the, uh, dilemma or the issue at hand. So the issue at hand might be, gosh, when my girlfriend goes to work, she, um, she, she, sometimes she doesn't come till three in the morning and I get jealous. I think, I think I've been left. I think she might not have, she might have met someone. She might not come back. That very likely occurred because as a youngster, when I encouraged them to trace this back to when was, when did that become normal for you to feel that way? How far back do you remember it being normal? Oh, well my dad, you know, my dad left when my mom was pregnant, so I never had a dad or, or my mom left or she died when I was one, or she died in childbirth, whatever. So, so then I know what age we're dealing with and then what, as we work together, I say, well, look, when you, when you have this feeling that your girlfriend hasn't come back from work and it's two in the morning, just I want you to take a couple of breaths and feel that now. Just, just, just feel that feeling. And when you do that, where is it in your body? What do you notice in your body? And for example, as I'm speaking, I'm noticing. In my upper belly attention because I had aban abandonment as a child. And that's, that's kind of where it comes up for me physically. So I'm, I'm rubbing it now as I talk, just letting my inner child know that I'm, I'm present with it. But here's the deal, and this is quite serious. This is where my body learned to feel that feeling in the physical realm and. What happens is if we don't listen to that feeling that the body's giving us after a lifetime, that's where chronic illnesses come. That discomfort in the body is the body trying to express itself to my mind. But we don't think that the body's got a lot to say to our mind. We don't think. We think the brain is in command of everything, but actually 80% of the data is. Flowing from the body to the brain. 20% is going the other way, and that's why it's important to use the body in an exercise like this is because the body. Has been holding onto this feeling in my case for 65 years or so, and, and, um, and it's not happy. So as I connect with it or as my client would connect with it, I would say okay. Put your hand there and just, just allow this for once. Give permission for this physical sensation to be here because it's always been uncomfortable in the past and you wanna shove it aside and have a drink or, or, or watch TV or do something different. Forget about it, to move away from it. But right now we want to really give it permission. To be present for us. And so as they do that, and I see either a rising dis, usually a rising discomfort and an emo emotional increased emotional presence, I would say, well, as you do this and you consider that you are two years old when you're mum left or whatever. Can you notice yourself then as you were then as a little 2-year-old? Do you have some notion of yourself? Would it be a visual thing or a memory, or a smell or a touch? Maybe you were spanked. Maybe you were squeezed too tight, maybe you were cold, you were left outside, you know, can you remember anything? Can you associate with that? And once they do, then. We begin to focus on. Okay. Now, using your mind now as an adult, you are 43 years old. What would you want this little one to know from the position that you are in now? What would you want this little one to know? Of course, usually it's like, oh my God, I didn't realize, I didn't realize that I could do anything about this at all. I'm like, I'm so sorry. I wish I'd known. I, I've gotta protect this little fella because my mom's not gonna come back. She died, so, you know, she's not gonna sort it out. So how am I, how am I going to take care of them? And so then a dialogue begins, there's, then there's a focused. Either monologue or conversation that can occur where assurance is provided to this little one that it's going to change, things are gonna change, and the exercise then has. I'm giving you very simple terms, but it can be read about in my book. The exercise then concludes, it goes through a stage of embracing this little, this little being into your heart, and then it finishes with some kind of exercise that you can do. Repeatedly that will give reassurance to this little child inside that you really do mean what you say, because oftentimes that little one doesn't trust. Why should it trust? It's been abandoned since it was two. Why should it? Why should it? Why should it believe you? Just when you say a few words, indeed, maybe people did say words and then didn't fulfill the promise, which would've just made it worse, so. It's going to take repetition. Even if it's a willing kid, that's like jumping in your arms and going, whoopee is still going to take repetition and this is why repetition is one of four ways that we can reinform the subconscious archive. It's one of four ways that we can reinform the subconscious archive. Breath is repetitious. So I get people to do something with their breath. Take the first three minutes of every day and breathe in and out, and know that you're taking the breath to this part of your body. Put your hand there and know that in this part of your body lives, this little part of you that's been forgotten and connect. Spend three minutes connecting together and then it's done and it takes 40 minutes. And people's lives change forever, and I get asked that when I'm teaching this, I get asked the question. Well, what happens to all the other inner children? You know what happens? I mean, it's happened to me like 150 million times that I've got little broken parts of me. Now you've pointed them out. I'm looking at'em all, you know, shards on the floor. How can I, how can I do this so many times? And I say, well, the good news is that you've now built a bridge, and they'll all come clambering over. If they know the bridge is safe, you will be okay. And now, from now on, a large part of your awareness will be about taking care of your little you because she, you know, so that's a little overview as to how it, how it works.

James: 51:33

That was gonna be my next question was because we do, we have so many different traumatic events that happen to us, and obviously we have all these little in inner children coming towards us, but my idea around that is that if you create that bridge and they start coming over, you can have, rather than having just one inner child to hug, you can visualize the more hugging each other. Yeah. So it's like a collective hug.

Antony: 52:01

Yeah. Absolutely. It's, it's absolutely right. It's, it is like, it's like, it is like an army of self support. Mm-hmm.

James: 52:12

I'm gonna take that practice at home. I'm gonna try it every day.

Antony: 52:15

Oh, bless you. Well, uh, yeah, I, I, um, it's, it is in the book. It's articulate. All the stages are articulated in the book. So, you know, if, I think you probably got sent one, I don't know, but if you didn't, we'll get you one. Okay. Thank you. Um. You can, you can use it for guidance. There it is.

James: 52:34

Perfect. Thank you. I haven't received one yet, so Yeah, it's good. Um, so it's going, it's going back quickly to what we're talking about earlier, about qui back to ourselves and safety. I suppose the key thing is to have that inner child interaction, that connection with the inner child, because I suppose when you come back to your, your, your little one. You clear back to your whole self.

Antony: 53:04

Yes.

James: 53:06

Yeah. That's because, and I suppose, and I suppose as well, when you start to, when it's starting to this click in now, when you start to come back to yourselves and and the child, it creates that safety Exactly. That safety between you both.

Antony: 53:22

Yeah, because you, you've got more resource. You are, you are offering the safety as a cul, as a, as a as. Um. As a conscious adult and the child is receiving it, joining into the whole, and then you, you change as a result. You are more resourceful. Um, great if you've got creative aspirations and you've never really allowed yourself to, to, to play with them. And, and that doesn't mean that artist, musician, uh, poet, writer. It's, it's any kind creating life. I mean, I think. If we leave so much of ourselves behind, how can we co-create with life?

James: 54:09

Hmm, that's right. There's bits and bits and bobs, the things that go running around my head. It's kind of obviously my, with what's been going on with safety, with coming back to your sales, obviously now with the inner child stuff, there's the ideas that's coming through because I notice how. Bridge that gap between men, where men are currently and where women are. Yeah. We've gotta create that safety in the men, so we've gotta kind of start to allow ourselves, well, to really allow inner child healing to become part of the school curriculum.

Antony: 54:49

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. This is fundamental stuff and we all need to do it. You know, here's a, here's a a, a little puzzle. I was, I was talking about self-development work the other day, and someone said, what's all that about all this self-development woo woo business? And I, and I said, well, would you rather develop yourself or have someone else develop you for you? Because if you don't self develop. You'll be developed by hostile forces that you really don't want to be developed by. So, you know, this is an opportunity, think of it as an opportunity.

James: 55:32

Hmm. Yeah. Thank you for that. That's, uh, quite, that's super, super powerful. So for anybody who wants to get in contact with you, what are your details and what do you offer?

Antony: 55:46

Um, okay. In the shortest way possible, the book is Outer Chaos in a Calm, uh, it's a book about the miracle Matrix about understanding the map that you're living on, and it's available on, uh, Amazon. It's already, thankfully it's only come out, uh, in July and it's already a bestseller, which is great news that it's helping a lot of people. You can join us for our Sunday breathes on, uh, alchemy of breath.com, alchemy of breath.com, and, uh, it's free every Sunday. You're very welcome. It's a, it's a great time to be together to meet new people. Keep seeing people getting. Getting into relationships and married and having babies that have met in the community, it's made us think that we should be starting up alchem eight.com or something like that to help people make this happen more often. Um, and uh, then we also have our community center in Italy and Tuscany, which is called Asha Alchemy School of Healing Arts. And you can find out about Asha on, um. On Asha Global, a SHA global, and we run from May through October. All kinds of gatherings. A lot of them are about breath. My wife is, uh, an incredible teacher of intuition and, uh, she teaches things about intuition and detox as well. So we have a lot of courses that we run, uh, and also we have other things that, other people that come in and run events there. So. If you fancy a trip to Tuscany, um, look us up and book yourself in.

James: 57:25

Is there any final words or wisdom that you would like to tell people out there?

Antony: 57:32

Um, there's always room for hope if you create the breathing space. So think about that one breath. When you have got a quiet mind, reflect on that first breath and that last breath. And maybe some of you have seen a last breath and you understand it, significance. Play with those and imagine them in every breath that you can, because I think what it will do is it will enliven you and make you more awake to the present moment, which will make you present.

James: 58:05

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you very much, Anthony.

Antony: 58:10

It's been a pleasure. Thank you, James. Um, it's great to hang out with you. Thank you.