Show Notes
BACKGROUND:
“No matter how your life is today, breathing makes life better. That’s a strong statement. But from what I have seen in my own practice, and in our trainings, when people learn conscious breathing, life improves.” – Anthony Abbagnano
Anthony, lives in Tuscany, Italy, where he and his wife Amy Rachelle, are co-founders of the Alchemy School of Healing Arts (ASHA), the foundation stone of a consciously created community in the Province of Grosseto, Italy (ashacommunity.com).
Anthony is considered by many who have participated in his Breathwork trainings to be a visionary thought leader. He uniquely combines philosophy and psychology with spirituality to guide others in loving ways using conscious breathwork as one of his many foundational tools.
Anthony has guided more than 100,000 people through different breath practices. Many report an experience of “oneness” during and after a breath session. This oneness could be interpreted as a connection with the Divine, the Superconscious, or the Quantum Field.
He is also the creator of Alchemy of Breath, Alchemy Meditation, and the Alchemy of Breath Academy, an accredited school that teaches Breathwork practitioners and facilitators all over the world for one-on-one sessions, group sessions, and online breathwork. He teaches annual workshops and seminars in several countries, and trains both facilitators and individual practitioners in a variety of class settings.
Anthony pioneered the use of online Bbreathwork in 2013, enabling the practice to reach hundreds of thousands; he now heads Breathe The World, a regular Sunday event to suit all time zones.
He has been featured as a keynote speaker on the Shift Network’s Breathwork Summit, The Breathe Festival, the Global Inspiration Conference, and The Integrative Health Conference in London, having also given talks at the Twitter headquarters in London.
He is also the founder of The Community of Healing—an international organization that promotes the union of Western medicine with all other modalities—as well as the Ark, a retreat center in Bali, Indonesia, dedicated to community health and emerging consciousness.
# # #
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHT NOTES:
GAIL/HOST: Before we begin and dig deep into your unique expertise, which includes your ability to see someone’s soul beyond their personality, Anthony please share with the listeners today a story or a few insights about claiming your own innate worthiness.
Anthony then shares an intimate "edgy" story of walking in his neighborhood as an adult that caused him to remember a wound he felt as a small child, offering this insight:
"THIS IS WHERE IT GETS REAL--to realize that the person who is hurting in this moment (of getting triggered) is actually the person who has been carrying the hurt for years, even decades. So in that journey to reclaiming worthiness, and reclaiming the innocence that we are, it does mean identifying the lack of worthiness first to be able to bridge that gap."~Anthony Abbagnano
BENEFITS OF BREATHWORK:
From Anthony's book:
“...so many Breathers have felt not just a deep healing, but also a spiritual awakening. The same applies to the several times I have heard expressions of amazement that one Breathwork session could equate to ten years of conventional psychotherapy.” ~Anthony Abbagnano.
--OTHER SNIPPETS FROM HIS BOOK IN DEVELOPMENT: "There are countless reasons to create a Breathwork practice: to reconnect with your body, reduce stress, develop resilience, increase calm and inner peace, release past traumas, deepen your meditation, repair relationships, connect to compassion, become more mindful, stimulate personal growth, increase self-awareness, develop your spiritual practice, or re-identify with your purpose in life.
--You also may use the breath to boost your creativity and memory, feel more vital and alert, increase your efficiency in the workplace, improve presence of mind, gain more clarity, expand consciousness, and transform the way you perceive life.
--Breathing can support very deep and powerful inner work, but it also can simply increase your enjoyment of life and enhance your experience of the hidden blessings that await you. As we progress through the book, I’ offer invitations to use the breath in therapeutic ways; should you feel resistance, I encourage you to try the practice anyway—feel and breathe.
Breathwork provides a plethora of physical benefits. It promotes a healthy immune system, activates your metabolism, increases energy, and is a great way to burn calories. Exhalation cleanses us, too, accounting for as much as 70% of our physical toxins.
The breath complements any therapy you might be involved with (physical or psychological). Maintaining a conscious breathing practice helps to ease chronic pain and supports a speedy return to health from physical illness. It also can promote recovery after an operation, and some studies have shown that it might even ward off certain types of cancer and other chronic diseases."
IN COMPARISON TO / or in CONJUNCTION WITH MEDITATION:
"For me, Breathwork multiplies it--almost quantum. Breathwork is turbo-charged; for me it is like rocket-fuel meditation because only 10 breaths can begin to change your point of view whereas meditation can take hours or even days."~Anthony Abbagnano.
GAIL/HOST: Anthony, many who have worked with you consider you a great healer, and like me as a coach, you also have a passion for guiding and witnessing others through “inner child” work. Please define for our listeners who may not be familiar, what “inner child” is and why it is so important or life-altering for our healing journeys.
·
(Other snippet from his book--"Another part of 'inner child' work. Often people consciously seek to change their habits, perhaps to stop smoking, lose weight or exercise more. Think of how many times you or someone you know has made a New Year’s resolution, only to see it broken with a few days or weeks. We might set goals or resolutions with maximum determination, but most often they fail because the unconscious mind has already decided how things will play out. Its stored programs and enormous processing power override even the best of intentions. This means that our Inner Child—the person who stored those programs in early life—might be in control. Even though the adult is seeking to make changes, the old life script is the one that wins."
ANTHONY:
"In my work, I consider the relationship with the Inner Child as a key to the healing process. However, in my experience, before we can become successful allies with our Inner Child, we must first distinguish it from our adult self. Then, we are able to speak to its deepest wound. The lack of distinction from the inner child—or over-identification with it—creates confusion. The adult becomes consumed by a yearning for relief. And as the inner child suffers, the adult self looks outside for the solution. This is a costly error."
"As long as we invest in the hope that someone else can solve our difficulty, we keep giving our power away and ignoring the weeping wound inside. We might try any solution offered from the sublime to the ridiculous, but unless we own the wound, and make the effort to tend to it with our perfectly competent adult mind and heart, it will fester, control us, undermine our progress, and deny us the rights and opportunities of maturity."
Other inner child insights from Anthony:
"Inner child work is really about how do we reclaim that part of us who got stuck behind the damage."
"I believe this (inner child) work is more important than the relationship with my wife or my children--the restoration of these parts of myself that have been abandoned or left behind."
SHIFTING THE FOCUS FROM WORLD CONDITIONS TO MIRACLES:
"Miracles are not remote. They are happening all the time. They are happening right now. The problem is that they don't get our attention, the right kind of attention...WE HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO BE HERE."
ON THE WORLD CONDITIONS TODAY:
"We have learned to externalize both our problems and our solutions. And, in order to reclaim responsibility, we need to take the power back and look at what is happening inside our beings that can change our lives."
* * *
"We've had to distinguish between what gives us temporary relief and what can actually really create resolution, and I believe resolution is born from inside us, not outside of us."
* * *
"Just giving your breath your awareness changes something something so significant, that you're taking the time to become aware of something that you've taken for granted your whole life, just that is half the task. So as we feel stress and we feel pressure from the these times, all the more important it is that we create space in which we can foster our own consciousness in this human mess."
* * *
"If we can bring our consciousness to our breath, we can take a first step to creating an oasis in the chaos."
* * *
"There's a tremendous resource here that we don't use." (80 percent of our messages come from the body to the brain.)
* * *
"If you can take three breaths, you've opened the door to your own emotional leadership..it's buying you time."
THE HERO'S JOURNEY:
"Each Breathwork session is a Hero’s Journey into uncharted territory—whether our lives are littered with trauma or peaceful sanctuaries. Whatever emotions encountered or understandings achieved, our challenge is to bring them back intact to an imperfect world.”
ON ACCESSING FEELINGS:
"Breathwork is about reclaiming our ability to feel. And that means feeling the good stuff, the ecstatic stuff, and that also means feeling the challenges, too. If we cannot allow ourselves to feel sadness and loss, we lose the muscle with which we can feel abundance and joy."
ON HEALING ADDICTION:
"Breathwork is all about connection--connection to your own body, connection to your own awareness, connection with your soul and your own loving being, and addiction is all about disconnection."
GAIL/HOST: As I mentioned when introducing you, you offer Sunday breathwork sessions through AlchemyofBreath.com. Can you elaborate on the POWER OF COMMUNITY, particularly during these isolating and sometimes divisive times?
"I believe that community starts within, and that commitment to keep looking inside means that I can keep coming to you and being real. I might be vulnerable. I might be hurting. I might be happy. I might be joyful but at least that I am able to be present to you. My mind isn't to try think of a way to try to answer you while you're talking to me. I can actually listen to you and receive what you're feeling. And that will help you feel like you are seen and that you are heard, and that you are valuable. So what happens when we come together this way is that we create this chalice of care, empathy, love and support. " ~ Anthony Abbagnano
FROM ANTHONY'S BOOK:
"Unless we are able to witness, hold, and love our darker self, true healing and a return to wholeness cannot occur. The Shadow realms might not be easy or pleasant to navigate, but with our newfound will to feel the feeling, along with our awareness that all will pass, we can recognize that it is a risk worth taking if we wish to become all of who we can be." ~ Anthony Abbagano
IN CLOSING:
"If you're feeling stressed, please address your anxiety with your breath. Anxiety is just energy; it's not personal. Imagine the power of anxiety if you could transform it into enthusiasm." ~ Anthony Abbagnano.
Many blessings to you. Again to learn more Anthony and his work, or to attend a free Sunday Breathwork session, check out,
www.Alchemyofbreath.com.