Breathwork Magic
Welcome to Breathwork Magic, a podcast dedicated to exploring the life-changing power of Breathwork. Discover how conscious breathing can unlock inner peace, resilience, and clarity as we dive into inspiring stories and practical insights. Whether you’re new to Breathwork or looking to deepen your practice, each episode offers wisdom to help you connect more fully with yourself and the world around you.
Breathwork Magic
From Skepticism to Serenity Elijah's Breathwork Story
This episode of Breathwork Magic explores the transformative potential of breathwork with Elijah, a facilitator with over 35 years of experience. The conversation traverses various breathwork techniques, from expressive methods used in performing arts to structured practices like holotropic and rebirthing. The Effigy technique, a method created by Elijah, is introduced, highlighting its focus on the facilitator-breather relationship and the power of mouth breathing.
The discussion sheds light on how breathwork addresses vulnerabilities, offering a direct gateway to healing and transformation. Broader implications of breathwork are explored, including its revolutionary capacity to transcend societal norms and personal traumas, its integration with other healing practices, and the delicate balance of guiding individuals through unique challenges. Additional topics include parenting dynamics and a comparison of breathwork with plant medicine, providing a comprehensive exploration of breathwork’s potential for personal growth and empowerment.
Key Points:
- [1:22] – Elijah’s journey into breathwork and reflections on cross-generational wisdom.
- [2:40] – The origins of the Effigy technique and its emphasis on mouth breathing and the facilitator-breather relationship.
- [7:56] – Insights into how breathwork confronts resistance and promotes healing.
- [13:38] – The integration of breathwork with other healing practices and its role in addressing personal trauma.
- [19:51] – The revolutionary capacity of breathwork to break free from societal conditioning and norms.
- [45:21] – Parenting challenges and how breathwork can inform personal dynamics.
- [53:10] – A comparison between breathwork and plant medicine, emphasizing the importance of agency during healing practices.
To Connect with Manders:
~ linktree.com/thebreathinggoddess
~ Instagram: @thebreathinggoddess
To Connect with Elijah:
~ Website: Effigy Breathwork
Access free guided breathwork resources and learn more about upcoming workshops and trainings.
~ Book: The Trauma Code by Elijah – A concise exploration of the healing potential of Breathwork.
Welcome to Breathwork Magic, the podcast that explores the life-changing power of your breath. Breathwork isn't just a practice. It's a gateway to healing, transformation and shifting to a new mindset, by letting go of the past and embracing the possibilities of the present moment. And embracing the possibilities of the present moment. I'm Amanda Russo, your host, a certified breathwork facilitator, level two Reiki practitioner and creator of the Mander's Mindset Podcast. On my own journey, breathwork has been a powerful tool for releasing what no longer serves me and shifting my perspective to step into my fullest and greatest potential. Each week, I'm joined by inspiring guests blood work facilitators, healers and wellness enthusiasts who share how this practice has helped them and their clients heal, grow and embrace lasting change. So take a deep breath in and out, settle in and let's explore the magic of your breath together.
Speaker 1:The transformation starts now. Welcome back to Breathwork Magic. As always, I'm your host, amanda Busso, and I am here today with Elijah, and I am so excited to delve down his breathwork journey. He has been doing breathwork for longer than I've even been alive. He has been doing breathwork for longer than I've even been alive and I am so excited to chat all about that. Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 2:It's fun and it's good to talk across generations. It's more dynamic than just talking to old fucks like myself.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that's so funny.
Speaker 2:I agree, it gives you different perspectives from across generations you're 28 and I started, I guess I think I was 25 or 26. So I did start when I was around your age and of course my view of breathwork has not changed at all and completely changed. But I mean, it's still the same thing, it's still breathwork and still powerful. But you know, as you can imagine, it would change after a while. I can't even believe I'm still doing it. That's the funny thing. Like I didn't get into it, thinking I was going to make a life around breathwork.
Speaker 1:Really Okay. So how did you first discover breathwork?
Speaker 2:Well, so I was a musician in my 20s, really Okay. So how people back in the 80s? They just smoked all the time. So she just painted the ceiling every couple of months and it was this very rough gig, like playing all the time. And I saw this massage place next door and I was like, oh, maybe I'll try massage, whatever that is. And then so I started going and I made friends with this woman and then she and her husband were moving to California and she said will you help me put stuff in storage? I'll give you free massage. And I was like sure, a broke musician. And they said well, how about trying my husband's breathwork? And I said I heard the word work and I was like I don't think so.
Speaker 2:So I did breathwork with him, which is loosely in the style that I do mouth breathing work with him, which is loosely in the style that I'm doing mouth breathing, and it just absolutely blew me away. I was in the middle of, you know, starting to look at myself in a certain way. I was going to therapy, my father had had an affair and I was sort of figuring it out, and that next day, after the breath work, I quit therapy and then they moved to San Francisco Bay Area where I live now, and there was a training and I got a little letter in the mail this is early nineties, no email and I came to San Francisco, trained with him, fell in love with the Bay Area, moved here I had a one-year-old at the time who's now 30 something, 31, I think, and just moved across the country to San Francisco and then I sort of I ran a center in San Francisco and I was running my teacher's thing for about 10 years, yeah.
Speaker 1:So now I'm curious you weren't interested in trying it because it said work. But so what made you actually?
Speaker 2:interested in trying it because it said work. So what made you? Actually? I think everything in my life that I needed didn't come out of something I chose, but something else I chose that brought the thing that I needed. And so, whether I was conscious of that power of manifesting, that would happen on its own, it was active and I had the intuition to say yes to it. I mean, I didn't really know what it was. I wanted the massage, I liked getting body work, but this is also 1990. So there really wasn't anything. And I was a musician, but I wasn't really like other musicians because I wasn't like a hard partying kind of addict type. I mean, I have my issues, but not like musicians, certain archetype. But I felt like I was sort of exploring. I was a vegetarian and I would go to the health food store and read books on metaphysics. That was about all there was. It wasn't even yoga. So I heard breathwork. I just didn't know. So I just said yes.
Speaker 2:And you know he interesting story about him. His name is Tom Lodge and Tom's grandfather, sir Oliver Lodge, invented the radio. He had the patent two years before Marconi and Tesla and the British government. He had like a war with them and they wouldn't give him the patent. So his grandfather invented the telegraph as well, which, and so Tom had this connection to sound and music. In the early 1960s the BBC wouldn't play rock music like in 1963, four or five, and he was a DJ on this pirate radio station off the coast of Britain playing the Beatles and the who and Jimi Hendrix, all these groups. So he had this other connection to music. And then he came to Canada and he started the first recording arts program.
Speaker 2:When I met him he had gone off to the Osho Ashram in India. That's where he learned breathwork. When I met him, I had some intrinsic connection with him around music and he was such an out-of-the-box weirdo and I just went over to his house and he pulled this bed, a bed that just kind of came out of the wall, and he just made me lay down on the bed and just started like do this, breathing, and played like Pink Floyd and whatever. And I remember just like terrified, freaking out, sweating, crying, talk, please don't let me, I don't want to do this, please can we stop, please can we stop. And also I had piano teachers who used to hit my hands with the ruler, and so when I've you know when? So when you do breath work, you can get tetany, tetany yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but my tetany was like I thought he had covered my mouth with his hands and I opened my eyes and both my arms were pinned up against my face like that, like I was such a repressed human being. But I did get through it and after I was like, wow, this is the bomb, so no, so why you thought it was the bomb, even though you went through this challenging experience.
Speaker 2:Well, let me just check in with you, like for Brett. You know, do you explore? I saw a few of your podcasts but do you explore all kinds of breath work or just like every kind of, because I'm talking about the mouth breathing hyperventilating style, yeah, so I think you know, even if you don't do it well or you don't do it, something's going to happen. And even if you're terrified, that terror is was for me terrified. That terror was for me like it's data, and much as I was a scared, repressed human, I was smart enough to know that like this was about something he never even, as I trained with him and spent 10 years with him. He never used the word trauma and he wasn't really. He was a real.
Speaker 2:You know, his grandfather read the radio and he started. He invented all this stuff. He was not this kind of guy who explained much, he just sort of was in the invention. So all I really got from him was oh, he was also from a Zen background, so he just believed everything was the path to your enlightenment and everything that you're doing that isn't. That is your resistance. So all that resistance was in the breath, and so at least I knew that this was resistance and that, you know, began my journey of dealing with my resistance. That make sense.
Speaker 1:It does. Would you say that's what it helped you with the most, dealing with your resistance?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we're all part of the ocean of existence, but even as a drop coming off the wave, like we think I am, I'm separate, like we live in this separation and we suffer from not being connected to what, who and what we really are. I think that's what the resistance is and it comes from trauma, like it comes from things that happened to us, even if we needed those experiences for learning. So, because of trauma, we don't want to live and that's all in the breath. I mean, I breathe tens of thousands of people and ultimately, there's nothing else that's going on other than your resistance to being connected to the ocean of whatever the hell I said before.
Speaker 1:That's true. Now you mentioned other types of breathwork. Do you explore other types of breathwork as well?
Speaker 2:Well before I found the breathwork that my teacher had done with the mouth breathing, I was studying singing and studying breath breathing from that perspective and how the diaphragm works. And this guy was a voice training for actors, so it was about breathing for getting to the emotional impulse and all that kind of stuff. Over the years. In the 90s I had a center in San Francisco and I did experiment. I was in San Francisco, so whatever breath work there was, I was meeting people who were doing holotropic or rebirthing or other things. So I tried them all and I experimented quite a bit. And then the yogis had like pranayama and stuff like that, and I've been involved with the Sufis. They have practices with the Sufis they have practices.
Speaker 2:But to me the most powerful, standing in its own world, is the mouth breathing, the hyperventilating, because it's really the garbage collector, like it's not about you're not, it's not a hack to me in the way, like okay, if I do alternate nostril breathing, or like I can become more balanced or grounded. To me this is about facing your fears, like facing the vulnerability of the suffering that comes from trauma. And the only thing that I would say differentiates my technique I'm the founder of it. Effigy is what I call it E-F-I-G-I. What differentiates that from other hyperventilating mouth breathing techniques is well, one.
Speaker 2:I just tried to find the best way, the best amount of time, the best way to do it, the best body positions to get the maximum effect with the least amount of experience needed and the least amount of mind needed to do the practice. And then, lastly, I would just say, at least in my technique, the facilitator and the breather. That's such an essential part of the breath work, because some of the techniques, like holotropic, you know they'll just leave you or they'll pair you with somebody who and you'll breathe with for a really long time, and like that they're not trained either. But I feel like the relationship is the power for the breather to not have to be objective, to really just go into it and to like have somebody there on the journey with you. And I think that makes it so much more powerful because as humans, like our power is in is what we can do in relationship.
Speaker 1:So now it's interesting you mentioned holotropic and like people not being trained per se, because now, my first ever experience with any type of breathwork was holotropic and it wasn't the best experience. It wasn't bad, but it was very challenging for me and I don't think the person facilitating was really experienced, say, to be facilitating, you know, and I don't think just anybody should facilitate breathwork, and I learned that.
Speaker 2:Well, you got me excited. This is my lane and for one you know, for years I had people come into my center in San Francisco and they would have done other techniques and I would always hear the same thing over and over again. So what you just said is what I heard over and over again, I think. For one, they do have the training, of course, and we're not going to put down individual People have gifts, so I don't know what people's gifts are, but in general, the training doesn't encourage you to get involved. But I think that being able to explain to somebody and see how they're breathing and talking to them about it, not during the breath but after, so that they can be empowered to know how to work through that resistance, that's just really important. And they don't really do that. And I don't think you need three hours if you're guiding it, like I'm doing a facilitator training starting in February. This is the first time I've done it this way. I'm limiting it to 12 people. We have nine right now, but I want to be able to give an individual transmission to each person and ultimately, being a good facilitator to breathwork is dealing with your own resistance.
Speaker 2:Always, even now, I'm breathing, people. I'm always still working on myself because there's a never end to what I can find out about myself through somebody else's breathwork experience, how it makes me feel, and so when you have big popular methods with big popular teachers or you just go into these big groups, it's pretty general and you're dealing with trauma. So for you, to me, the crime is you went away, think it wasn't the worst, it wasn't the best. Even for you to think is okay. That's a shame to me because it should be every time you do it like holy, fuck God, like every time, time, even if you hated it, to know to have that, because I'll say to people you don't have to like this, by the way, for it to work like hating. It's a part of the process too.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, favorite topic, because I really think now the beauty is there's wellness and facilitators of all millions of things all over the place, and during the pandemic it's just exponential. But finding things that really speak individually to you and help you specifically transform yourself, I don't think there's that much. It's not my experience. There's a lot out there, a lot of great sales in the world of this and a lot of great promises and a lot of charismatic teachers. But you know, it's really. This is the most rigorous work I think there is, because it's so it's all dealing with shadow, so the most rigorous work.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by?
Speaker 2:Well, laying down, to breathe like that for an hour, I mean, it's not as hard as your life. Right, there's the other 23 hours but as far as like just to lay down and to do it the way I'm suggesting, which is to be full the entire hour, every single breath, without fail. Really, it inherently brings up all the resistance that we have to opening, because the limitation we live on in that prison is safe, because the mind believes if you breathe like that, you're going to re-experience the pain of the past. So you live your life that way, by trying not to re-experience the pain of the past. So you live your life that way, by trying not to re-experience the pain of the past, but then you live a limited life. So when you breathe it's so rigorous to have to commit, just like it is in your life. And I don't really know another practice like that.
Speaker 2:And something I learned early on, like when I was doing more like classes and things, is that it wasn't like a yoga class. People routinely would cancel at the last minute, like you're thinking beforehand. Do I really want to do this? You know it's not for everybody or you. It takes a really special person to want to do a lot of it and not afraid to go into the fears and not complain about the money or the relationship, or they're getting to the class or whatever. I got a stomach ache or I ate too much before. I mean everyone has a million reasons why they don't want to do it. Me too. I mean I hear them. I don't really they don't rule me, but they're always there. The mind's always there, like no, you don't want to do this, do you?
Speaker 2:how about for you?
Speaker 1:yeah, no, I experienced that as well. I do, and it's interesting you say that more so than anything else. You have the last minute cancels because I have noticed that myself as well. I facilitate reiki as well and I don't have any last minute cancers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can just lay down and you'll do everything. Okay, sure, wait, I'm going to have to do work, can I just? I'm an American, can we just buy something and like isn't there a pill I can take instead?
Speaker 1:Why do you think resistance comes up for people who've never done it? Because I noticed so much resistance for people who've never even done like this type of mouth breathing and they're like even the last minute cancers with them. They've never done it so like they still feel like it's work, but they don't know per se. Why do you feel like they have the resistance?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. I have three answers For one. Those of us that are facilitators for real may not have. I don't have the kind of personality that resists things that are good for me. In general. I make mistakes, but I'm not so. You might not relate to your clients, but that's why you get to be the facilitator. So that's one.
Speaker 2:Two, I think the soul knows, like everybody knows everything. We're all sentient beings and you inherently know whether you want to be somewhere, and this isn't a simple thing like taking a yoga class or a Pilates class and so somewhere inside there's a kind of a compass around that. And I think the third thing is that it's more nuanced. I mean, the soul knows is probably nuanced too, but for one, hyperventilating as a word, like everything to do with health, even though society has changed quite a bit from the time when I was your age, like hyperventilating was considered this really bad thing and Western medicine ruled the world and like it's still I mean during the pandemic still kind of rules. And I think that there's a lot of conditioning around that is unconscious and societal around what real health is about. And I think also, like it's funny to me, if you go to a doctor, you don't negotiate the price and you don't treat them like a consultant. If the doctor says this is what it is and this is what you do, if you talk back, it's sort of disrespectful.
Speaker 2:But someone who comes to myself or yourself, they're a free agent and that's okay. But because we want that, you are your own doctor. But in some ways there's a little bit like they're only going to agree with you as long as it fits their belief system, their model. And yet the work of breathwork is to help people out of that belief system. So getting people into the room is hard and even then I've had people say that was the greatest experience of my whole life, I'll never do it again, and what. It's very confronting. And so if you're in this business, how do you make a living where you have to constantly talk about things that people A need an education on and B have inherent resistance to doing? So that's my answer. Do you agree? What's your opinion?
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense. You don't necessarily resist doing things that are good for you. Like you just do them. You know, even outside of like the breath work, like I'm very into movement and like moving my body and it's not something I really have to force myself to do. Even before I started facilitating breathwork, like, people used to always ask me well, how do you like, how do you just do it? And I never really understood like what do you mean? Like I just I walk a certain amount of steps.
Speaker 2:We're probably in the soul, the same soul family. If we want to do something, we're just going to do it. I have this, I've always had this inherent compass that's told me where to go and like I've never been resistant to the truth Never. I mean maybe in relationships, you know sometimes some denial, but in what you're talking about, and I think in some ways that's why we have a certain authority as being a teacher, because we can empathize with people having the problem of being afraid to do something, but we have a lot of certainty that we bring to people. That gives them the confidence that it's okay for them to do it.
Speaker 1:So how do you use that and encourage people to lean into that?
Speaker 2:I've breathed tens of thousands of people and I don't really do public classes in the same way I did before. I traveled a lot before the pandemic and then I stopped and I just started again. So I'll go to a city or go to a place and I'll meet new people, but I'm looking for people who want to do deeper work with me which is more involved than just the breath work and therefore you get maybe one or two opportunities to have an experience with me and then you have to decide whether you want to stick around. When I was first doing it certainly in the nineties, when I had a place I had classes twice a week and I was just there and paying rent on a place. And then I was a traveling teacher and then I was doing, even during the pandemic. We were doing monthly online virtual classes, and I stopped doing that because I don't feel like I'm really a good person to come around to. If you want to try something or do a class I'm too much like. Let's let somebody else do it.
Speaker 2:My daughter, who's a little older than you. She ended up in a training I was doing in 2018 with a bunch of millennials and she became a facilitator of the breathwork and she was so good at and such a cheerleader. She's a Leo Like. She, just like you can do it and she just people really loved working with her but she didn't have the kind of how do I say this? I think even when I train people, I want everybody to lean on the thing that they do best in life as the way they facilitate.
Speaker 2:So I've created all my own music for breathwork. It's all on the streaming services. There's 25 volumes. So music a big part of how I do things and the things that I and my talking is very penetrative. But other people like if they're a body worker or they're a therapist, they should use that. My long answer to your very short question is at 61,. I realized I'm a difficult person to be around for lots of people. So I try to mitigate my exposure to people who wouldn't value or appreciate or get benefit from working with me even once. And if you're a manifester in human design, manifesters trigger people because they're not in the matrix, they're not looking for cues in society and they're not conditioned, so that bothers people.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:There's different kinds of manifestors, and I mean we could look it up right now, but that would change the trajectory of our podcast. But manifestors don't live in the matrix because the aura is closed, so everything that happens is produced from within and for most people it's about like tribal validation and so, in a way, breath works like the ultimate rebellion revolution. First of all, it's democratic. Anybody can do it. You can be rich, you can be poor, you can be healthy, you can be spiritually evolved. You're dumb as a doornail, it doesn't matter. If you're willing to do it, it will transform you. And so it's democratic that way. And it's revolutionary because there's no dogma Like, if you just breathe you're going to have a really powerful experience. So you can't really be conditioned, or I mean maybe people who lead breathwork in some ways might condition you. But the breathwork itself is very. It gives. It frees you from the matrix. It frees you from your own traumas, your own conditioning, your family, your tribe, your religion, everything. It gives you back your true uniqueness.
Speaker 1:I want to backtrack a tad. You've been doing breathwork for about 35 years and now you mentioned your daughter. I think you said she's 31, so you've been doing this longer than she's been alive as well yeah, a minute, she's 32, all right.
Speaker 2:Early Alzheimer's yeah, well, I did the breath work and then I did training. I didn't start facilitating till the year she was born. Yeah, so her mom breathed 10 times the month before she gave birth and she had a two hour labor, which she credits. And so my daughter, she I think I told you this before we got on the podcast but she and drama and chaos. She'll nap through it, like I used to put her on a car seat in the corner of the room, like as I had to. Whatever had a young child and I would teach a class and everyone would be crying and carrying on whatever and she would nap. So as she got older. She loves drama. It's calming to her, yeah.
Speaker 1:And now you said how mom had a two hour labor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, two hour labor, 45 minutes of pushing, so I think it was two hours and 45 minutes, but she was 36 at the time so that was considered a little bit older. But yeah, it was a very effortless birth, which she credited to doing all that breathwork before.
Speaker 1:Now some people have their conceptions about you shouldn't do breathwork while you're pregnant.
Speaker 2:Do you have a conception?
Speaker 1:No, but I've heard people say this yeah, well, I have.
Speaker 2:I had a woman. I breathed the moms at my daughter. When we moved to San Francisco. We were in a progressive San Francisco co op. I breathed all the moms, maybe dads too, at the school and one woman was six months pregnant but she was supposedly on bed rest because she was supposed to like not do anything, and she breathed and went into labor. Everything was fine. But there are certain points you can press on to induce labor and stuff like that. So I think, breathing when you're pregnant I've raised lots and lots of pregnant people. I've never had any problem. That was the only time something happened. But she just ended up giving birth early and all it was okay. But I think, well, if somebody's on any kind of medical condition, we want to know what it is right. So that's one and two. The babies love it, like all that extra oxygen and that sort of thing, and they can't necessarily lay on their back, you know that sort of thing. But yeah, I've never had any problem with it, and right up to the end.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, I breathed someone a week before they gave birth. That was probably the most the closest. So and I'm only realizing this right now my daughter was conceived what at the time, tom, my breathwork teacher, was doing a workshop at this place called Harbin Hot Springs, which is like this seminal new age nude retreat, northern California it's not so mystical anymore because they had hot and cold plunges and this sort of thing, but it was a real hippie kind of place and he was doing a workshop and she went there. I was feeling a little jealous. Maybe she had met someone, we were newly married or whatever. Anyway, I got on a plane and I flew to San Francisco and went to this hot springs and we conceived my daughter there. But my teacher, the breathwork and the person he learned breathwork from, spent a lot of time there doing breathwork. So my daughter was even sort of conceived in a place where they did a lot of breath work.
Speaker 1:Wow, oh my gosh, now did you wipe you a lot of breath work post having your daughter.
Speaker 2:I've now known her for 35 years. We're not married anymore, we haven't been married for 25 years, but we're friends. She lives next town up, so she's breathed plenty. She's facilitated some like didn't necessarily make a living. She's done lots and lots of breathwork over the years. And my daughter too. She ended up just found the business of running Breathwork. She didn't want to be an entrepreneur and have to invade people's private space and tell them why they should do stuff, even though at the time she was in her mid-20s and all of her friends were in various crises and stuff like that and on meds and this, that and the other thing. So she now she has a corporate job. So she now she has a corporate job so and has really just pushed that her dad's world out to the side.
Speaker 2:Do you have any other kiddos? You know two moms, two kids, and his mom did a lot of breathwork. That's how I met her. She came to my center. But when he was 10, I was in Miami and I said, look, he was not just to bribe children, but he was very bribeable. It was the only way I could get him to do anything Quite, the old man kind of negotiator. So I said look, I'll give you an iTunes gift card if you'll come and just do the breathwork in my class. So he joined my class when he was 10. And he said after I hated that, I'll never do it again. Can we get Chinese food?
Speaker 2:And then about three months later I was doing another breathwork in my house and this guy was like really afraid to do it and he was saying I said, what are you afraid of? And my son was like walking down the hallway and he, 10 years old, he has such a mouth on him and he'd go cause you feel like you're going to die if you do it. And then he ended up joining again and then a few years later he was having some problems and he breathed with me several times and he was 13, 14. So he's a strong breather, but it's not important to him. So, yeah, so two kids, their dad lives a weird life but in some weird way they're both kind of conventional, more conventional than I am, which is fine.
Speaker 1:Why do you say their dad lives a weird life?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, if all I've done is live in the shadow, other people's shadows coming to light I mean, I'm not a therapist, but it's like taking acid with people a thousand times or something, so and so I'm really comfortable with that. And you know other parts of my work, like in my. The second part of my system is movement Taoist movement, which Tai Chi and other things come from, because the breathwork clears trauma, but it doesn't teach you how to live. So I use movement to train so people can manifest their life purpose. But I went to China 21 times between 2015, 2020, just to study. Every three months I I would get I mean, I get on planes like people get on the bus. So I've been that way my whole life, really. So my kids are always. You know I don't live conventionally. I've never had a job and that I never had a real job, not even once.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, once and when I was like 18 and stuff, I had a few jobs, but this is all I've done. I don't feel weird. I feel very conventional to myself. I have a very good discipline, schedule and just way of doing things, being myself. But when I talk to other people and I'm talking about it and then I find out that I'm not conventional would you say tapping into your breath, and the breathwork has helped you with parenting.
Speaker 2:Wow, what a great question, parenting so hard. Well, my son, you know I'm not. I wasn't a conventional parent because I never really saw myself like. I just see my kids as humans. So that alone is a little weird. But I wasn't.
Speaker 2:The breath work helped me to be open. But at the time where I was doing it, where I was a parent, I was still very. I wasn't particularly wise in my day-to-day life and I wasn't really a great parent and I didn't really like doing it and I didn't have great relationships with their mom. So I was definitely struggling with escaping. I had my son when I was almost 40. So I was better with him.
Speaker 2:But the circumstances surrounding it were a lot harder and my 40s were just a washout and I had done all this breathwork in my 30s. And then I came to my 40s and like my life was just a disastrous mess and part of it was acknowledging that all that work I'd done, like I missed something, like the breathwork was at that time a part of the way that I escaped from my life. So I was kind of up and out with the breath work and I wasn't this and parenting is down and in, like it's the grind and I was going to I don't know if I should say this, but I'm sure my son's not going to watch this podcast but he just got dumped last week and he called me. I mean, I have a beautiful relationship with him because he'll call me if he has stuff going on. And I got a call at eight in the morning, which is never a good sign when you have a 22 year old. They're not up at eight o'clock.
Speaker 2:And he got dumped because he was drinking and like his mom's side is just Sicilian and Irish, like there's just alcoholism everywhere and he really can't and he drink, and so he's just kind of a young man and doesn't have a lot of control, and like he wanted to talk about it. But I was sort of in the like okay, I'm a parent here, I care about this person, but I could see that he's not really ready to take responsibility for what's going on with him and like I don't know what my duty is. So in some way I still don't know how to be a good parent. I think being parenting for me where I feel the most unclear about myself and my kids. They're good people, they're good humans and they're okay. Otherwise it's not like they're super fucked up or in jail or anything like that. But interestingly they've kind of gone the opposite way of me. They're not as courageous or unconventional or ambitious as I am or ambitious as I am, I gotcha.
Speaker 1:I was kind of curious if it helped. You like, if you were calmer per se, you know after?
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely, definitely. Like I did not like abuse my kids much as you always want to, just kidding, I mean, you know my son could really push my buttons because he was a wild animal. One of my favorite stories I've told this before is my best friend who turned, who is my songwriting partner. We moved to California together. He became a marriage family therapist but I was not a trained anything really At some point. My son, he was like three and he was just he'd break everything. His exploratory mechanism was just wild animal. He, I had a little digital camera. He said can I use the digital camera? And I said okay, no, running in the house Like you have to go really slow. He said okay, and he comes back 10 minutes later. He said the camera's not working anymore. What happened? And I go in the room and it's in a bowl of water and I'm so angry and the phone rings and it's my friend and I said what do I say? And he said if you're going to say anything, just say Daddy made a stupid mistake.
Speaker 2:And I realized, like you know, kids, everybody triggers us, everybody. So the value of breath work, the value of personal development work, is to be able to disincline from the action that the trigger brings. I see trauma as train tracks and you do breath work. You maybe don't pull the train tracks off, but maybe you don't launch the trains.
Speaker 2:And I think that I understood that my own bullshit was in the picture, whether I was like knew the right thing to do. I was not bad at not doing the wrong thing. I could disincline from my impulses but probably some neglect, because I was on my own journey at the same time while raising kids. And you know, I said unconventional, if you're doing a healing business, I only was sharing breathwork because I loved it. I gave it to everybody I knew for free at the beginning. So one is like I'm interested in breathwork too. Now I'm running a business around healing and then you have to figure out how to work with people and exchange money and all this. And then I have children and now I got to run a household on top of that. Like impossible, it's so hard.
Speaker 1:Now, you mentioned everybody triggers us. Do you think like every human gets triggered by someone or by something?
Speaker 2:On the most positive way of saying it, instead of saying triggered. Like every you, I can see myself in anybody, including you, like this. I'm enjoying this in a certain way because of you, like I feel you and so you moving me and that's why my words are coming out the way they're coming today. So that's one kind of a trigger, if you will. But also, where you have resistance is going to be resonant with other people who bring that up if they have that same thing. And that's why training people for breathwork is complex, because it's mostly about dealing with what you're triggered by when somebody else is breathing. At least that's how I see it. So I say yeah, absolutely. But I would say also, at 61, I'm often helping people with things that I'm not going through myself anymore. And I mean, obviously, if I'm a man and you're a woman and you have sexual trauma, like, do I really know what that's like? Absolutely not, but there's always some resonance that's like absolutely not, but there's always some resonance like even if the resonance is just violation, or you know the feeling of losing your agency in some way. So I'd say you know what makes this work hard, working with people, is that there's never a moment where you're not feeling into somebody else's thing.
Speaker 2:And so when I was 28, I mean, how much experience, how many people had I breathed not or worked with? And then, over the years, many programs and year-long trainings. To me, my joy is to work with people over a long period of time. Like that's where things can really change, not just doing it one time so, but just after thousands of people. Like it takes a certain stamina to want to always be in the presence of other people when I'm not working. I'm a hermit, it's just that's what worked out best for me. It's easier than being in a relationship, because it's so much to be with other people for me anyway, because I feel all of it.
Speaker 1:I gotcha, Okay, no, that makes sense. Now I want to backtrack a tad to something you mentioned, but you vaguely mentioned that you were using and I might be butchering exactly what you said, but that you were using breathwork to escape.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that everybody wants to get out of pain, so they want something to solve the problem, the problem, and there's no shortage of stuff out there life hacks being offered to you to help you to solve whatever you think your problem is, whatever your mind thinks your problem is. For me, as a person who had suffering and pain, breathwork was this incredible escape from that. Even though it was hard to do, it definitely made me feel better and all I really wanted was to feel better and I had to do it for years and years. Any spiritual practice, spiritual junkie people can get addicted to spiritual practices. You know now I got to go and meditate to deal with this or whatever, retreating and stepping back and going into a practice, whatever it is, including breathwork, highly recommended.
Speaker 2:But I was just going up and out, like away from it. And it was interesting because I started doing internal martial arts in 1999 when I met my teacher, my first teacher, george Hsu, and he was like a man about power, using energy as power. So I was doing both things. I was kind of going up and out with the breathwork but also practicing martial arts to get into my body. But I was more going up and out and when the problems of my life were bigger than my practices, including breathwork, could help me with I had a reckoning me with. I had to. I. I had a reckoning and it was a really painful reckoning that took me a long time to work through which is did I really do the work or not?
Speaker 2:But I'm not to anybody who's watching or listening to this. Um, I'm not talking about a common thing Like. I'm talking about a person who spent their whole adult life on the spiritual path and spent a good 15 years doing that work maybe 20 years and then realizing I was full of shit Like it was a hard kind of reconciling of the bank account and because I had a certain arrogance that I didn't know I had, that I thought I had done the work or I had whatever. I couldn't accept that the problems and the pain that I felt were because I hadn't done the work. That alone took some time and then I had to begin to do work on myself to correct this.
Speaker 2:The breathwork was part of it, because I started to do the breathwork differently. Keep in mind I left my teacher in 2000. So I haven't had any teacher of breathwork since. I've had people like students who would facilitate for me if I wanted, but mostly I've had to do it on my own. Very manifest thing. Part of what I try to provide as a guide to other people is for them not to have to do it that way. I probably grieved like 500 times in my 30s, like a lot.
Speaker 1:Now, where did you come up with the name for your type of breathwork?
Speaker 2:well, it just came to me and it was that an effigy, spelled e-f-f-i-g-y, is like a mask that represents something else you burn an effigy mask represents represents something else. And J-I in India, like it's in Hindu, is a term of endearment or respect to a teacher or a parent or loved one, like Papaji or Guruji. You put G at the end of it, so I called it effigy as the loving way we dissolve the masks we wear. So that was sort of that's.
Speaker 1:The masks we wear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the masks I mean. Now I would just say, well, we're spending a lot of time being not who we are because of trauma and our resistance. So it's like letting go of all these things that are not who we are Even letting go is not the right word, but just whatever your energy gets stuck because of trauma and when you breathe, I mean the one thing you probably would agree with me. I mean, by the way, forgive me if I haven't asked you a million questions. Every time I say something I'm thinking. I wonder what her answer to this is, but I know I get to be the star of the show today. I'm enjoying the attention I think you'd agree with me. Like when you breathe right, like energy is stuck and like it opens the identity that we have before we breathe. It's like it's not formed. All the pieces are there, the potential is there, but the configuration is wrong. So when we breathe, we release that so we can.
Speaker 1:I like that name.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think at the time, like I don't know why, but that was important to me. Now I would say, well, I said the word potential is a big in my. There's a Mandarin word, a Chinese word, daoist word, shir S-H-R would be opinion, and it means potential. It's a physics term that is like the trend of a wave, meaning what the wave is going to do is based on physics. It's not. You can't make it do something different, because that's physics. But as a Taoist term, you have a potential and you want to figure out what is the natural trend of the wave, of who you are. And so I think that when people have trauma and conditioning, where they're trained to be something that they're not, that potential stops following its natural path. It's because it's locked up inside you.
Speaker 2:And to me, step one, and the most powerful step, is when someone does breathwork. You are opening things back up to what they're meant to be so that wave can happen. But I said earlier it's just my own philosophy that breathwork doesn't train anything, because you can't really train yourself, because there's so many habit patterns in the body and the mind. Once people do the breathwork this is my experience and then they go back to their life and they go back to doing what they were doing before. It doesn't mean you're going to necessarily know how to do it right. That's why in my sharing and I get to say this at 60, it's like, yeah, I did a lot of breathwork. It doesn't make me mean I was a great parent or that I didn't also suffer later on and also go back to the breathwork and reintroduce myself to the medicine. But the second part of my work is about how to retrain the different functions inside that are still in habitual patterns even after you've done breathwork and you've cleared trauma. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:I want to transition a tad upon breathwork and the comparison between plant medicine, dmt and how like similar effects of that I'd love. I actually my first experience with breathwork the holotropic was at an ayahuasca ceremony, so I was yep, you're on ayahuasca.
Speaker 2:Well, groff himself he would. He started esalen institute. Yeah, they would give you lsd and put headphones on and get you to breathe, like and I've done breathwork with acupuncturists and stuff like that it's like it's kind of overkill, like people I mean, and we're gonna add ayahuasca to this. Well, I laugh because I did a podcast about three months ago and the guy has been putting out little small clips of everything that I said about weed and plant medicine and I just watched one yesterday and just you know, and I watched it and I thought, am I an arrogant asshole or is this just truth to power what I'm saying? I mean, I've had in Boston, yeah, I did this breath work in. How explicit should I get for locations? I think it was Watertown, in this yoga studio and like half the people were ayahuascans. You know, had done all this stuff.
Speaker 2:So it's very religious and like everybody who's not in the religion of ayahuasca or plant medicine will say this is just like plant medicine without the plant medicine, right? You heard the same thing. Everybody, all my facilitators, say the same thing. So there's that. And if you can do this without external stimulation, why bother taking external stimulation? And now you have to throw up and you have to process this stuff in your body and the drug is taking you on the journey. They call it the spiritual teacher, right? So I feel like there's nothing wrong with the discovery and the value of plant medicine, wherever it takes you to and whatever it's for. It's not my subject. I don't do plant medicine and I've done psychedelics and I feel like I want to be in charge of my experience because I see trauma as something my soul chose to unlock my lessons. My book is called the Trauma Code. The Trauma Code is that the very thing that you were injured by is the answer to fulfilling your life purpose. The trauma has a purpose because your soul chose it for those lessons. So if I take plant medicine and the plant medicine takes me on the journey, it's not like breathwork, where it's only going to transform if I breathe. I have to do it. So that's that. You keep taking notes. I love it. It's funny. I'll take it as a compliment. There's that part of it.
Speaker 2:Another part of the plant medicine is that I think you do it and it greets you wherever your personal development lies. So if you haven't done the work, you don't have a good, solid process or spiritual practice. It will get stuck in your body and for me, as a facilitator, I can smell it. I can feel it coming out of the cells of people when they're breathing and that one experience it's so aggravating Like when I was in Boston. They want to, they're just very. Breathwork is here to destroy your beliefs and your conditioning. But if people want to tell me all about the religion of their plant medicine journey before they do breathwork, I feel like there's inherently already a problem right there, and that happened in that class and I always find these people don't want to breathe full. So what does that say? So I feel like nothing wrong with plant medicine, nothing wrong with ceremonies, people who guide them.
Speaker 2:But I haven't had the best experiences with communities, teachers or practices related to plant medicine and don't feel like it's really necessary to do all the time. I had this one woman in Miami. She used to every once a week she would go to her teacher's house, drop her two kids off at school, do ayahuasca and pick them up in the afternoon after school. And I was in Idaho in the fall. It did not go well and I didn't realize the woman who had brought me there, who had studied other breathwork and liked my technique better. Yeah, I shouldn't have gone, I knew there wasn't, but she was part of a plant medicine community and it just it ended really badly. She ended up getting up and walking out of her own workshop that she had created for me and had said, well, my plant medicine teacher is all love and light compared to you, and it was. But there was this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think religion if something becomes even breathwork, like if it doesn't work, don't do it. Like I'm not religious about breathwork, I don't make my kids do it, you know. I think that when things become religious, it's just really problematic. So it's not plant medicine, it's the whole culture around it. And I also think there's a lot of diminishing returns when you take a lot of external substances to alter your consciousness. We want to be free. We want to be free of needing things. We want to be free of needing things. We don't want to be dependent, and it's hard to create a dependency with breathwork because it's so hard to do that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's interesting. You mentioned about them not breathing as full. That is very interesting to me, and you had a term for them the ayahuascans.
Speaker 2:I've never oh yeah, I make up words accidentally all the time.
Speaker 1:That was just funny to me. But, there almost is. There's almost like this sort of like community around the plant medicine people. Jose.
Speaker 2:You know, people could say I have a community of people who center around me and my philosophy. So, who knows, maybe I'm just a cult leader. I love Bob Dylan. He wrote his autobiography and he plagiarized parts of the autobiography, instead of telling his own story. He took a page out of this book called the 48 Laws of Power, and there's this page called how to Start your Own Cult, and he literally took a page and wrote it as if it was a story about his own life.
Speaker 2:And I thought now that's art when people get religious about things and I have to watch out for that too Like I sound, like I'm certain, but I don't know anything. So I feel like when people are really like this, is it even with breathwork? I'm immediately like there's something wrong here. Too much mind. If you're not in the mind, you're going to be like there's something wrong here. Too much mind. If you're not in the mind, you're going to be like I don't know anything. You live in a mystery.
Speaker 2:Well, in my system with movements, I say there are four levels of the mind. The second level is the linear level. That's the one that we know of the inner dialogue, how we were trained from school like that mind. But I say there's other minds that are higher processing mechanisms and if you can train yourself to live in those and train yourself to live in the spirit and soul, then who needs thinking? I mean, I'm not thinking right now, I'm just talking, it's coming. It's not like I'm trying to figure something out in this conversation, but I think when people live in that linear level, they have beliefs and they have very strong opinions that are like about the way things are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. You know, because since they know you hear I've done ayahuasca and I facilitate breathwork, I always I get the question about the comparison. But you mentioned something about being in charge in terms of breathwork and you know that's one thing.
Speaker 2:I did, being in what.
Speaker 1:Being in charge or in control. Okay in control. Okay, you know in that, regardless of how you feel about plant medicine, whether you're a big fan or you would never do it. That was one thing that I had my skepticisms on, because once you're in it, you're in it, you know like there's not really a turning back, like you and I walk a roller coaster when you're up at the top.
Speaker 2:And once you're going up, they're not going to stop and you can't get off the ride. But it's a ride. Breathwork's not a ride because it's generated by your own consciousness doing and you as a human doing the work.
Speaker 1:If you stop doing, it stops I like that analogy breath, the breathwork, is in a ride. I had somebody compare ayahuasca to a roller coaster. To me, like somebody, I did ayahuasca with it because, like it's, you've got the highs and the lows and there's times when you think you're off the roller coaster and you're not fully off the yeah you know, and I didn't love, that more resistance came up, obviously because of the less control I think there's two, two things here.
Speaker 2:One is we don't have to love the journey as long as it's helping us with the goal. So anybody listening, deciding to do breathwork or ayahuasca, whatever what's your goal? If the goal is to free you in some way and you don't like the journey, that's okay, you can do parts of it. That you don't like journey, that's okay. You can do parts of it that you don't like, so I. But if that ride that you're going on isn't well this is the second part is that. This is why I think the guide, the facilitator, that relationship is the most important thing, because if you're not taken through the process in a way that helps you to gain your autonomy from the matrix, then it's used. You know, we've been interviewing with people who want to be in our program and this guy he breathed. I have a partner, sarah, she'd been with me for 12 years, a business partner, and so we're doing this year long training, and she breathed a bunch of men's groups and breathed this guy a couple times and then he came to a virtual class and he wanted to be in the program and then, right at the beginning of our conversation, like I just said, he said I facilitated. He was talking about something and how he facilitated these men in breathwork.
Speaker 2:The day after he did it with Sarah and I said, well, what breathwork were you doing? And he said oh, and he started laughing uncomfortably. He said yours, and I thought how dangerous could like. Here's this person who's tried something once. He didn't join. He ended up going off with a more like a kind of a popular teacher, more popular than I, and to me it's such an offense Like you don't know what you're doing. There's no way you could know what you're doing and I love the spirit of like oh, I'll just share this, but you're dealing with people's traumas. To me, the relationship that you have with the guide is the most important trust and safety you have with whatever you're doing, and in that sense it doesn't really matter if it's ayahuasca or breathwork.
Speaker 2:But if you were going to ask me about like, the thing about ayahuasca is that there is this element that is like separate from you and whoever's leading it, which is to me it would not be empowering, because I don't want something taking away my agency, even if it's going to show me something that I need to see.
Speaker 2:I want to choose it so that if I choose it and I don't like it, I'm still responsible. But if you're a student on a spiritual path and you take ayahuasca and then you go off with the teacher and you don't really like the experience and that's not explained to you exactly what it means and what it's for you're going to. One, you can create new trauma. But two, you're going to make yourself more stuck. You're going to be reinforcing your resistance to opening, and that is maybe without realizing it. Maybe that is really what I'm thinking. What I was trying to say before about the plant medicine communities is that there seems to be a lot of reinforcing of patterns and programs under the idea that it's the opposite, which is what you basically see in every religion.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? The idea that it's the opposite.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, when the right you think you are like people start wars over religion, they say, because they say other people are wrong Like, the more certain you are that somebody else is wrong and you're right, the more blind you are. The more right you are. The more right you think you are, the more blind you are. So oftentimes, when people are in this incredible certainty that they're doing this transformational work, that they are the ones, they are the people doing that work, it's often the opposite it you know that we the drug we haven't talked about is weed, but we like. The more you smoke it, the clearer you think you are, the less clear you're becoming. You know you become, and I mean weed gives you this feeling like you've got it all together, but oftentimes to other people you seem more deluded and less clear.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:This podcast is going to get me cancelled.
Speaker 1:It's not going to get you cancelled.
Speaker 2:Cancelled from what I'm not popular enough to be canceled. That's the good news. Nobody cares what I have to say, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Is there anybody you don't think should try breathwork?
Speaker 2:No, just my opinion. I mean children, and oftentimes parents will say ask about their kids doing it. If a kid wants to do it, then yes, but a parent making a kid do breath work, the youngest I think I ever breathed, someone for like an hour would be eight or nine or 10. I mean 10, for sure my son and other, some other other people, but maybe eight. My daughter used to like come along and like when she was like four or five and like I'd be laying down, she'd lay on top of me and she'd breathe with me for five minutes and then just start laughing and then leave. But so I think kids, because they, unless they're going to choose it, and I think that even people who are really old, do you have an opinion about that?
Speaker 1:I don't think there's anybody that shouldn't do breathwork.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you want to do it, you should. I mean, we have waivers, but it's like in the waiver, it's like you're agreeing to do this, Like I'm not responsible for I'm responsible for myself. But the fact that you're going to do this and you're going to breathe, it's definitely your choice. So I want to make that abundantly clear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like how you mentioned modifying it like depending whether there's certain medical conditions. If you can't do it as fast as full, you're still going to get a benefit out of it, you know.
Speaker 2:Or even as long, uh, like in Vermont timelines. I mean, I used to be a little more dogmatic myself about it and but I have a philosophy that, like after five minutes you have to keep going. So I have these five minute tracks. I mean, actually, if you go and look me up on Spotify or whatever Apple Music, the last year I did, I say there are six stages of breath work and I wrote about it in my book. But the second stage, rhythm I created like 200 four minute breathing, four or five minute breathing tracks minute breathing, four or five minute breathing tracks. And so if somebody wants to go and take one of those tracks, the album's called rhythm and they just breathe to it. They're great tracks, super stabilizing, you get super high. It's a lot of fun. But if somebody needs modifying because they're, for whatever reason, sure, why not?
Speaker 1:yeah, I agree. Well, this was awesome, thank you so much for speaking with me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:I enjoyed it a lot. You're delightful.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Do you have any final words for the listeners?
Speaker 2:I would say for anybody who's listening, I assume that they're interested in breathwork. But, like one I would say you don't have to like it for it to work. Two, you don't have to you. If you don't trust your facilitator, then that's not a good fit. You should breathe with somebody who you know has your back when you're on the journey, and then I would say you know I spent. It took me a year and a half after writing this to write a book only a hundred pages long. I think this book I wrote this year, the Trauma Code, is a great book. People should read it. It's so simple and it really I say everything that I think is important about breathwork in there.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome, and I will link that in the show notes. And where can the listeners connect with you? Are you active on social media?
Speaker 2:Don't find social media really works well for what we do. But yes, we're on Facebook and Instagram not particularly active, but if you go to our website, fgbreathcom all wonderful links and things there. If we're going to do classes where I'm traveling somewhere, that will be there and we also. Yeah, we have. There's a three-minute tutorial where you can breathe for free, with guidance, with a track.
Speaker 1:It's on the front page of our website awesome and I will link that in the show notes for everybody to click. And thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, lots of fun.
Speaker 1:I agree and thank you, guys for tuning in to another episode of Breathwork Magic. Thank you for tuning in to Breathwork Magic. I hope today's episode inspired you to connect more deeply with your breath and embrace the transformation that it can bring. Remember, as long as you have your breath, you have options. You're not stuck. You can make a change, you can make a shift. You can make a shift. Each inhale is a new beginning and every exhale is a chance to let go of what no longer serves you.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed the episode, it would mean the world to me. If you shared this with a friend, left a rating or review. Your support helps more people discover the magic of Blackwork and the incredible transformations it offers. If you're ready to take the next step, I encourage you and I invite you to join me every Monday evening, virtually, for a Mindful Mindset Monday, a virtual pay what you can workbook session where you can reset, recharge and refocus. All of the information is in the show notes. Until next time, keep breathing, keep shifting and keep embracing the magic with inside of you. I'm proud of you, I'm rooting for you and you got this.