Breathwork & Inner Fire: Chakra Awakening, Nirvana, Ego Death, and Spiritual Embodiment

Inner fire is not meant to escape the body.
It is meant to move through it, awaken it, and be lived through it.

In this episode of Bridger of Worlds, I continue my series on breathwork and inner fire, exploring how conscious breathing can raise life-force energy through the heart, throat, third eye, and crown chakras for healing, awakening, and spiritual embodiment.

I explain inner fire as life force and spirit, and how breathwork becomes the vehicle for moving this energy upward into higher awareness. We explore the throat chakra as the center of self-expression and communication, the third eye as spiritual sight and perception, and the crown chakra as higher knowing and expanded consciousness.

A central theme of this episode is ego death and Nirvana. I share my view that Nirvana is not the extinguishing of inner fire, but becoming one with it—a state of non-dual awareness where consciousness merges with life force and spirit. True awakening is not about escaping the body, but learning how to inhabit it more fully.

I also emphasize the importance of bringing energy back down into embodiment and manifestation, especially through the solar plexus and heart center, with the heart acting as the bridge between physical and spiritual experience. Without grounding, transcendence becomes imbalance. With grounding, inner fire becomes lived power.

This episode explores how breathwork can break through emotional and energetic blockages, regulate the nervous system, and support long-term healing and empowerment.

I also share ways to work with me one-on-one and announce my first men’s retreat in Ikaria, Greece, a five-day immersive experience limited to 16 men, featuring somatic practices, spiritual embodiment, primal energy expression, breathwork, meditation, and group circle & witnessing.

In this episode, I explore:

• Breathwork and inner fire activation
• Raising energy through the chakras
• Heart, throat, third eye, and crown centers
• Self-expression and spiritual communication
• Ego death and Nirvana
• Non-dual awareness and spiritual embodiment
• Balancing transcendence and grounding
• Solar plexus, manifestation, and empowerment
• Healing emotional and energetic blockages
• Nervous system regulation through breath
• Spiritual awakening through the body
• Men’s retreat in Ikaria, Greece

Awakening is not about rising above life. It is about learning how to live fully within it, with clarity, presence, and grounded power.

Transcript

 

Welcome Back + What’s Next for the Podcast (More Guests)

Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bridger of World's podcast. I'm your host Ioannis Kokkinos. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're on YouTube watching, thank you for tuning in and if you're on one of the podcast platforms, thank you for tuning in as well. So I hope you enjoyed last week's episode with my first guest collaboration with Aaron Labajo.

I really enjoyed also having a conversation on this podcast, and like I said, I will from now on be bringing on more guests just to keep it you know, uh, interesting. And there's always something to learn from each other, right? So. I will be bringing on more guests, more men to share their stories, to, you know, give any advice, any resources, any knowledge, any medicine that they have to offer because we all do in some way, shape, or form, have something to offer to each other, to the collective, uh, et cetera.

Recap: Breathwork, Inner Fire & Moving Up the Chakras

So I want to, in today's episode, bounce off of the episodes of the breath work and the breathing, and the fire and the body, the inner fire. There's more to say and we're basically climbing up the chakras if we touch base with the episode from two weeks ago and three weeks ago. If you have not already, please do so.

You will have a lot of context for today's episode.

So two weeks ago in the breath work episode. We more or less stopped at the heart area, right where I talked about the element of air and its connection to fire. So breathing techniques, the more charged breathing techniques around amping the body up and basically putting it in fight or flight mode. But through nervous system regulation, of course, because it is being done intentionally and consciously. So we basically ended at the area of the heart, right?

So when we are breathing, that's the air element. When we're, um, doing exercises like holotropic breathing or breath of fire, even the Wim Hof method, which is a very charged breathing technique, uh, that really stokes the inner fire, right? And with that breath, we're able to circulate the fire and move the fire up.

That is a whole point and nature of breath work is to circulate the energy because fire and energy slash life force are synonymous, right? So I've said it in quite a few episodes that esoterically speaking, fire equals breath and breath equals spirit. We know this from etymology. We know this from the Sanskrit word of prana, which means life force and also breath.

We know this from spiritus, which translates to breath, which of course speaks to spirit. And pneuma from Greek, which is pnoi, that means breath, and pneuma is also spirit and so on and so forth. So we can see many cultures across civilizations, timelines. Um, spiritual traditions are really talking about the same things when it comes to health and the human body, just through different allegories metaphors and symbols. So today I wanna start moving up the heart, uh, as far as like breathing is concerned and stoking the inner fire and to speak about something very symbolic as far as spirituality is concerned, right?

'Cause I did mention that fire is spirit, because Fire is breath and breath is spirit, and spirit is fire, right? They all just kind of bounce off of each other. So when we're moving up the, let's say, um, chakras during breathing and breath work, and we're moving the fire up, right? 

Throat Chakra: Truth, Expression & Communication Blocks

We're ascending up the chakras, we pass the heart, and then we have the throat chakra, which is the fifth chakra, the fifth energy center associated with a thyroid gland.

Our, uh, communication center, how we express ourselves, right? If we have blockages in the throat chakra. We have a hard time expressing our truth. We have a hard time communicating. Um, usually the blockages of the throat chakra stem from swallowing our truth, being told not to say something.

Keeping secrets. Um. Too afraid to express something that like is a part of you, but you feel like you're gonna get judged or criticized. All these things, all these scenarios can block the throat chakra because it is the communication center, but also really self expression. Everything going on from the bottom down, even the heart, right?

If we love someone. Right heart. The heart, um, the heart is our love center. And if we love someone or something, we need to use our throat to express that love. Right? And this can also be through writing. It could even be through, um, movement, right? Like dancing is a form of communication. Any form of communication is throat chakra related.

So even though it's considered as one of our spiritual chakras, 'cause now we're above the heart and we're moving a higher up into the spiritual centers, um, dancing, which is a very primal, um, um, expression of our humanity, right? It's being in our body is a form of communicating. Even, let's say sign language, right? When, let's say a deaf person, um, cannot fully express words through the mouth, them using their hands to communicate through sign language is from the throat chakra. 

Ether & Quintessence: The Layer Between Physical and Spiritual

So it's considered one of our spiritual chakras, and it's also associated with the element of ether.

Now Ether is not like a, um, tangible compound like the rest of the chakras, uh, like the rest of the elements. But because those elements are also archetypal in nature, right? Fire is plasma, it's not an element. Earth is a compound. Water's a compound. Wind is a compound, right? So Ether can also be seen as an archetypal.

And Ether um, was first introduced into the world by Aristotle from ancient Greece. And actually modern day physics does have a name for it, and that's quintessence. And it's basically like a layer, um, between let's say the f physical world and the spiritual world. Not, it's not fully the spiritual, the way I see Ether is like the bridge to the spiritual, because we're still at the level of the throat.

We're still at, uh, chakra number five and chakra seven is actually like the ultimate destination as far as enlightenment is concerned. And this is where we're gonna go today, right? 

Third Eye & Crown: Spiritual Sight, Knowing, and Raising the Fire

So as we move through the throat chakra, we move the energy up, we reach the brow chakra, the third eye. We hear about opening the third eye, a lot in the spiritual communities and in the spiritual teachings.

This is how we are able to see beyond the physical. So let's say clairvoyants are able to see guides, spirits, maybe deceased relatives, right, like mediumship, they're able to see because of the O opened third eye chakra. The idea is to bring the energy up when we are practicing breath work, to open the third eye.

Because the third eye, yes, is associated with seeing beyond physical reality, but it's also about spiritual connection. It's our next spiritual center. And the third eye and the crown chakra, which is on top of the head, are very much intimately connected. When one is open and balanced,, usually the other one is too. Because in order to, let's say, see, we have to know which is the top of our head. That's our crown chakra. And in order to know. We don't necessarily have to see because this is the all knowing. So this would be like claircognizance, which is just knowing and receiving that higher knowledge, receiving those downloads and that information from the crown chakra.

And the third eye is what processes it all. So when we're working with the fire, when we're raising the fire. 

Nirvana Explained: Ego Death, Oneness, and Becoming One with the Fire

And we reached the seventh chakra, the crown chakra. This is how we experience Nirvana according to the Indian teachings. So Nirvana actually means like, it literally means for the fire to go out, right?

So we're raising the fire all the way up into the crown so that it can go out. Now, the way that I'm gonna explain Nirvana or the way that I've, you know, experienced it in my journey, probably won't resonate so much with the traditional teachings of Nirvana. Yes. This is the path of transcendence, right?

So when we're raising the energy up. This is the path of transcendence, and it really is to experience a complete and total ego death and to feel at one with oneness. It's, that's nirvana. Nirvana is pure existence. That is pure bliss. That is pure consciousness, and not many people reach this. Many people do not if they're not practicing some form of meditation or even breath work, you do have people that are more prone to, you know, psychic abilities, uh, are more, um, th upper chakra centric than the lower stuff.

They just feel and see more naturally. That can also be, uh, the case. But when we're working intentionally with, let's say our breath, which is our fire, and then we like reach, uh, the crown chakra in order for the fire to go out, that for me, it doesn't necessarily mean that the fire goes out in order to experience oneness, bliss, pure consciousness and feeling connected to everything and everyone, it means that we've actually become one with the fire. We're no longer separate with the fire because, what did I say in the previous recordings? Fire, uh, as an element is a bit more special in in relationship to the other elements because fire is associated with spirituality.

Fire is what brings truth when it burns something. So like when we're experiencing ego death, that's all of the non true that is burning. That's all the programming and the conditioning that was not ours that is burning. But the truth never dies. The truth never burns away. And the truth essentially is our soul.

Soul, which is connected to the greater experience, to the great source, to the great universe. So when we say that the flame goes out, for me, it just means that we become one with the fire because we, we become one with the spirit. In the Christian terminology, we can say that's when we become one with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the holy fire. As part of the Christian teachings, as part of the tantric teachings, it's the Kundalini fire, which is what we're raising from the root chakra through breath and intention coming up to the crown chakra to meet Shiva. The divine masculine because Kundalini Shakti, the Kundalini fire is the divine feminine and the experience divine union.

And that is how Nirvana is experienced. That is how bliss is experienced up here in the crown chakra. When we, when we reach the state, there's no more duality. And that is the ultimate experience. That is the ultimate destination. Every single religion and every single spiritual teaching is talking about is the non dual experience.

Attachment, Desire, and the Root of Suffering (Why We Get Stuck)

Because at the root of all suffering, let's say according to Buddhism, is attachment. And attachment has to do with the physical world, has to do with our physical condition and attachment lives at the root chakra. Attachment lives all the way down at the bottom energy center because, what did I say?

When we come into this life, or even when we're in our mother's womb. And when we become newborns, when we're, when we are very much dependent on our caregivers to survive, that all has to do with attachment, right? We need to attach first and foremost before we can do so anything else, because that ensures our survival.

But then obviously with trauma, with wounding, with all kinds of different scenarios, attachment issues can develop. Um, and that can become repressed inside the unconscious. And then these attachment issues, um, manifest in our relationships and in the way we move through our world. But that does not mean that we can't let go of these attachments or even, let's say, cut these cords.

'cause that's what attachments are. They're cords, they're basically lifelines. But through breath work, through meditation, right. To go within and to really seek and connect to that oneness, to connect to that spiritual, um, every time, I want to say, every time I want to describe like God, or like, it, it's just, there's know, we say words like source God, um, creation, the Great Spirit, but, uh, like there's no word for it really.

Right? Like it's, it's unfathomable. To our human mind, right? So the closest word, let's say to that is nirvana, which, um, means the fire goes out. The flame goes out because Nirvana also, as part of the Eastern teachings, the fire also represents desire. And desire can get us into a lot of trouble, right? So when the, the, the fires of desire go out.

We can experience oneness, we can experience God, we can experience creation. I disagree here a little bit because desire is also needed as part of the human condition, right? 

Transcendence vs Embodiment: Bringing the Energy Back Down For Manifestation 

So I talked about like the path of transcendence, which is to come up here, but then we also have to bring the energy back down, which speaks to embodiment.

A lot of people are out in the mountains. A lot of monks. A lot of priests. They're out in like monasteries, just meditating all day. Right? Like isolated from the world. That's fine. Right? If that works for them. We all, um, have our prerogatives, right? We're all here on to experience different things and have different journeys, but that only symbolizes the transcendence path.

It's just from the bottom up. And more often than not, these people shame, demonize and reject embodiment, which is the path down. To become a fully embodied human being, vital, spiritual, connected, grounded is to do the circular motion in my opinion. And this is also valid in many teachings in, um, Taoism, in the microcosmic orbit of, um, the Taoist Creed, which I talked about one of the breath work techniques two weeks ago, which is testicular breathing.

But obviously women can do this too. It's basically the breathing that starts from the sex organs and we bringing it up our back channel, which is the path of transcendence, and then we want to bring it down, which is the path of embodiment, and that way it becomes a circular motion of energy. Then that's how we get to manifest.

So I made a whole episode of basically from the Christian, um, lens as far as, um, liberation and manifestation are concerned. So when we're bringing energy up, we're liberating. And that's also, um, according to the Kundalini awakening and the, uh, qi raising in Taoism. And then when we're bringing energy down, that's the, the current of manifestation.

So we all want to manifest, right? We all talk about manifesting. Um, most of the time we're reading about how we just need to think positively and already feel like we have what we're asking for. But we can actually go through embodiment practices and really work with our breath, really work with our energy.

Learn how to bring energy down because that is how we manifest. Manifestation happens from the solar plexus chakra because the solar plexus chakra, which is the chakra of fire element and the chakra of will, is how we get shit done here in the physical and bottom line. As human beings, I think that's what we all want.

Of course, we want to feel spiritual. We want to feel connected to something that is higher than us and more above us. But if we just, let's say, stop there because that is how we quote unquote find God, then we will need to park symbolically speaking in some isolated space, meditating and praying all day.

A lot of people are doing that worldwide, across many cultures and many countries, fine. But that's only half of the story of our humanity because once we reach enlightenment, once we reach and connect to God's source, um, the Great Spirit oneness, the creator, we have a responsibility to be channels for that.

We are all here to manifest. We're all here to create, but we're also here to be in service to that great creator, to that great source of oneness and that needs fire, right? So we go up, as I said before, we extinguish the fire. At the Nirvana chakra. The Crown chakra, we extinguish the fire, but then if we bring the energy back down, we bring it into the solar plexus, which is the energy center of the chakra of fire.

This is how we get to manifest on behalf of spirit. This is how we get to bring creation into the world on behalf of our connection to oneness. Here, we've experienced ego death here. We've let go of attachments here. We've let go of who we thought we had to be and who we thought we had to do and what we thought we had to do, not because it was wrong or, you know, something was wrong with us, or even those that, you know, raised us and wanted the best for us and told us like, this is the path, this is, the plan, was wrong. It's just that each and every one of us has to individuate in order to find our personal truth and to bring that truth forth. 

Breathwork as a Blockage Breaker: Catharsis, Knots, and Nervous System Release

And one very potent way we can do this is through breath work. Because the breath will dissolve blockages will pierce through all kinds of barriers, right? Like that's what the life force does within us. And if we have blocked energy centers and we're actively breathing. I'd say like the holotropic breath work technique, which is very intense, that energy will be carried up and the breath will break through.

This is why we have very cathartic emotional breakdowns during breath work because the breath literally breaks through the blockages. The emotional, the emotional blockages. Right. So like these energetic knots that exist in our body, that can also manifest as muscle knots, right? Like muscle knots happen because we have energy knots, right?

A lot of us want to go for massages. We have like sore necks, this, that our shoulders, right? Maybe our low back. But these are energetic blockages that then manifest into physical blockages, which can, one expression can be knots. So breath work can take care of all of this, right? And when we reach that crown chakra and we quote unquote, the fire goes out, we experience oneness.

We experience total and complete ego death. We bring the energy down because we are here to be human. We are here to be fully embodied and we ground the spirituality and that is manifestation. And that happens through the solar plexus. Because let's say even the heart, right? Like we all talk about love, most spiritual teachings talk about love.

Um, the central point of Christianity is love, right? Love. 

Heart as the True Bridge: Love, Non-Duality, and ‘Bridger of Worlds’

The, the heart is not, The heart is the ultimate destination, but we have to go through the heart chakra. Right. We don't stop at the fifth chakra when let's say we're doing breath work or when we're moving energy. Love is the ultimate destination.

But once the energy comes down, so we do that loop the. Let's say the destination is the crown chakra, right? The path of transcendence, but the ultimate destination is the heart, but not by stopping there. After the solar plexus, it's by getting to the crown and bringing the energy down because the heart is the bridge.

The heart is the bridge between the physical and the spiritual planes of existence, the polarity of matter and the polarity of spirit is bridged through the heart. Because what is the heart? The heart is love. And what is love? Union. Love brings together love bridges. This is why my podcast is called Bridger of Worlds.

It's because of the heart. The heart is the original bridger of worlds because as I keep saying, we have to love our bottom centers, which are our animal chakras, and by loving these parts of ourselves, right, we build that foundation that can hold us up. And then we can like take care of the rest of the structure.

We can build the rest of the structure, and this is how we start to experience God spirit source through energy ascension, the path of transcendence through love and ultimately, we experience nirvana. We experience bliss, we experience oneness. The non-dual, because the heart is conscious of the dual, the heart says that right there exists, and that right there exists. Let's bring them together through love, right? The heart is conscious of duality. The Crown doesn't know duality.

There's nothing. Everything came from nothing. Right? And not as the experience of reaching transcendence and reaching the crown chakra to know that everything is from nothing. That's how creation happened, right? Like that's how everything came into being. Nothing. It was nothing. Nothing and nothing is everything.

Nothing is everything and everything is nothing. That's nirvana. And to feel pure bliss and freedom and love and um, uh, unity. And through that to say that, and to feel that is to reach nirvana is to reach the crown chakra. And once you know that, you can make all kinds of, like magic happen in the physical. You can feel all kinds of confidence. You can feel all kinds of empowerment. You can feel all kinds of safety in the physical, right? So many of us struggle with safety because we need to survive. We're, we're human. We have, um, a body that's very vulnerable.

We have our health we need to take care of. We need to be sleeping. We need to be drinking water. We need to be eating right. We need to feel safe and we need, we need to do things to ensure our safety. But that can also feel very stagnant and scary because we're constantly on survival mode.

When we've not accessed the higher energy centers. We've not accessed nirvana. So to bring this back to the fire, the fire within our body, the fire that is the spirit, the fire, that is the life force. We have fire that we bring all the way up into the crown and then we quote unquote, become one with the fire. That, for me is what nirvana means. It doesn't mean that the fire goes out, it's just that we're not, we're no longer separate from the fire, right?

Because it's the non-dual experience. We're one with everything and everyone. So we become one with the fire. 

Solar Plexus Fire Without Spiritual Enlightement

We become one with the spirit, and then we bring the fire back down to act on behalf of the Great Spirit because as I said in many episodes ago, we can stay stuck at the solar plexus, right? We can stay stuck at the level of the fire chakra without even going up to the heart, without even coming up here to the spiritual chakras. And this is pure ego. This as part of the Christian teachings, would be considered Luciferian fire. Fire that is only conscious of the physical experience has no connection or even conscious knowing of the spiritual. So you have a lot of people that are very solar plexus centric, that have a lot of money, that are very successful, that are very driven, that are very impulsive, that are hustlers.

Right? And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with these people, it's just that that's not the full potential of the inner fire. That fire is to have full access to the spiritual, but we have to experience ego death, and that's why a lot of people get stuck at the level of the solar plexus. So when I say that we experience ego death in the solar plexus chakra, it actually means that we experience ego death when we come up to the crown.

Because yes, there's seven chakras, right? But it's seven different links on the same chain.

So it's simultaneous when we experience ego death because to experience ego death is to realize non-separation within separation, and that is how we become one with the fire. And that is how we experience Nirvana. That's, that is how the quote unquote fire goes out.

Closing Thoughts + How to Work With Me (Men’s Retreat, Socials, Subscribe)

So I think that's enough food for thought. I'm gonna leave it here. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're on YouTube watching, please hit that like subscribe notification bell. If you're on one of the podcast platforms, you can send me a message. Please share the episode if you still feel called, if this resonated. If you feel like somebody could benefit from this information. You can work with me one-on-one.

Uh, if you want to, um, you know, get into masculine embodiment, we can do all kinds of exercises together. Um, everything that I bring to the space is up for grabs as far as how we can work together. I'm also very stoked to announce that I'm hosting my first men's retreat this June in Ikaria, Greece. It's a five day immersion in the Greek island wilderness. Ikaria is a very special island in Greece. It's also one of the blue zones in all the world. It's a beautiful island. The space is incredible. Um, the link for this is on the description for YouTube. It's on the podcast footers. If you're listening there. Um, there's a website.

All the information is there, but it's going to be incredible. Uh, I'm limiting it to 16 men max, just to preserve the depth and integrity of the container. Uh, we're gonna have days filled with all kinds of exercises, somatic grounding, breath work, meditation group circle, group witnessing. So I'd love to see you over there as well.

You can email me if you have any questions about this. I'd love to hear from you. I am on socials right now. I'm back on Instagram. I'm on threads going full force over there, so I'd love to see you over there as well. I'm also on Substack if you enjoy writing. I do daily notes. I do weekly posts, um, around masculine embodiment, conscious sexuality, porn, addiction recovery, and all that. So I'd love to see you over there as well. As always, I will be back next week with a brand new episode here every Thursday on Bridger of Worlds masculine embodiment, spiritual awakening podcast. And in closing, please remember that you are the medicine, and now I'm just the messenger. Thank you very much.