The Innate Power of Breath: Remember and Restore Your Magic with Anthony Abagnano
Reese Brown (00:01.103)
Anthony, thank you so much for being here with me today and for sharing this beautiful work, Outer Chaos, Inner Calm. It was such a privilege to be able to read it and a privilege to be with you here today. Thank you for sharing your time and energy with me.
Anthony Abbagnano (00:09.998)
Thank you. It's not just a privilege, but it's an honor too. And thank you for meeting with me. It's a joy.
Reese Brown (00:26.851)
Absolutely. Well, my first question to hopefully just set the tone for the rest of our conversation is what is one thing you're grateful for right now?
Anthony Abbagnano (00:36.249)
my wife. She puts up with my craziness. I I like to call it genius, but sometimes I see her face falter and then she defaults into, love you unconditionally. So I think I'm grateful for my wife and then I think next is I'm grateful for all my students because they're my teachers.
Reese Brown (00:39.091)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (01:01.487)
Absolutely. That's so beautiful. Unconditional love is the easiest thing and the hardest thing in the world to achieve at the same time. But how beautiful. And the line between poet and madman certainly does get thin sometimes. I understand. My second question to hopefully just break this conversation wide open. And of course you talk about this throughout the book, but
Anthony Abbagnano (01:17.25)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (01:31.527)
What is your story? I know that that's a big question, but whatever you feel called to share and to really speak to in this moment, I would love to hear it.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:40.848)
Yeah, thank you. I was born in England, although I'm half Italian, so I sound English, but if I speak Italian I start doing this, you know, so I get more Italian. I was born in England and educated in England, and at the time, in the early 50s, being half Italian wasn't politically correct, so soon after the war.
Reese Brown (01:52.547)
Hahaha!
Anthony Abbagnano (02:07.222)
So my childhood was one of really being an outsider and marginalized. And my parents wanted the very best for me, so they struggled to put me through the very best schools of prime ministers and kings. so I did study with some very affluent and elitist people as a student, but I was incredibly lonely and I didn't fit in. I was an outcast. And, you know, it took a
a little while to be grateful for that because that's a rite of passage, understanding that what really is happening to you maybe is happening for you instead. And that took a couple or three decades for the penny to drop. But I am super grateful because I feel that having been an outsider, I really understand what it feels like for people who don't sense
a belonging, people have a yearning to belong. And I also appreciate the qualities of leadership that outsiders have, because if you grow up being used to not belonging, then there's really only one thing left to do, which is to carve your own path. And I think that that's such a profound act of autonomy and agency and leadership that that's really become my life work.
is now to help other people discover that for themselves. So it's not really a bio, but it's a little insight into perhaps the hope we can have about even the circumstances that seem the most oppressive can be transformed into something beautiful.
Reese Brown (03:56.025)
Absolutely. Yeah, no, I really love and appreciate that. You mentioned that it took time to feel this gratitude for these experiences. And in the book, you talk a lot about gratitude and the ways that changing our perspective does change our 3D life, right? What was it that allowed you to
build into gratitude for these hard experiences. And even though it takes time to get there and it's a routine practice, right? We have to continually go back to it. But yeah, talk to me about how you were able to come to gratitude for these things.
Anthony Abbagnano (04:43.01)
Gosh, what a profound question.
Anthony Abbagnano (04:52.584)
I think my experience was that I had to hit bottom and know that it was the bottom. So I was a single parent at the age of 18. I was the first person in, I lived in North America at the time and I was the first person, first male to ever have, be awarded custody of a child and...
So my son, was only 18 years, still is only 18 years younger than me.
His existence made me want to provide. I became a provider at a very young age and I had had a spiritual interest before then when I first met the breath as a powerful spiritual force and I kind of had to lay it aside in order to just get, just to nail the material aspects of life I had to provide for him and so I became
successful with good fortune but also a lot of determination and will. I, in a sense, forsook my spiritual mission, the one that I discovered later on in life, in order to provide. And in that success was a lot of material wealth and a lot of accolade, a lot of respect as an innovator and as a leader.
And still I had one foot in the spiritual world and one foot in the material world and a longing to unite these two things that really seemed so opposite. How can some of the messages that one receives at 4 a.m. when you wake up or those inspirational moments that you understand the depth and the power and the magnificence of life and then
Anthony Abbagnano (06:51.531)
Oh my God, I've got to put dinner on the table tonight. How am I going to do that? You know, how do you reconcile these two things? And for me, it felt like doing the splits. was like one foot in each camp. They just got wider and wider apart. How do these two belong in the same space? so I, in my inquiry and in the exhaustion of
Reese Brown (06:55.752)
Yeah.
Anthony Abbagnano (07:21.255)
material accomplishment because I had all the things that wealth could provide, but I was still feeling like I was doing the splits. These two truths for me were becoming more more separate. They weren't uniting. And so I actually stopped my life in my 40s and I had a series of midlife crises. I wish I could say I had one, but there were probably five or six that honestly involved deep
self-hatred and deep self-judgment because I had forsaken my spiritual opportunity in order to excel in this providing for my son. So I had him in private schools, I was able to provide all those things, but the essence of me was not being nourished. And I think those
those years and those in the 40s, those years of understanding that everything that I had constructed, not only did it fulfill me, not only was I not fulfilling my life purpose,
but I was actually living within the constraints that I had created in order to protect my heart. And so I really began to understand the depth of the issue that we have in our human condition that you mentioned unconditional love earlier and
the understanding that yes, sometimes it is easy if you have a baby or a puppy like the one I'm holding in my arms right now, but when we deal with humanity itself and we see the violence and the horror of what human beings are actually capable of and the suffering that lies underneath it that propels them into heinous acts, then we understand that really unconditional love
Anthony Abbagnano (09:32.518)
is very difficult because it means we have to love humanity in all its conditions. And some of them are pretty gritty, pretty shitty. And that's a big journey.
Anthony Abbagnano (09:50.57)
And it starts with self, right? It starts with us. So that means looking at our own dark side and the times we've hurt other people and learning to forgive ourselves and to pick ourselves up. And there was that great quote that has lasted 2,025 years, was, or actually 2,025 minus 33 years, which was, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Reese Brown (09:51.378)
Yeah.
Anthony Abbagnano (10:20.007)
I think if we can achieve that with our own lives and our own being, then that really gives us a new platform to see life from and a new perspective with which to engage with the world.
Reese Brown (10:34.937)
Absolutely. think that this, the idea of forgiveness and unconditional love, I completely agree with what you're saying where it really starts within the self and a concept that was gifted to me by a past guest of the podcast. She left this beautiful quote that was dehumanization anywhere is a threat to humanity everywhere. And I've been thinking about how often we dehumanize ourselves.
We are the first ones to strip ourselves of our own humanity. And then that makes it easier and easier for us to dehumanize others because we've taken that humanity away from ourselves. And I think that, yeah.
Anthony Abbagnano (11:18.595)
I think that's so profound, that quote and what you just articulated. It begins here. It begins here at home. And that's the whole principle of the book, of course, is that no matter what the chaos might represent outside, our opportunity is to find the calm space in the middle. But also then, that creates the resilience and the robustness to have agency.
and the power to co-create with life rather than just be at the end of the tail of the dock and be whipped around. then so how does that sense of calm that we create inside influence the world outside us? And it begins with our family and our friends and sometimes it goes further than that. And I think that's really what the opportunity is for us is that
Reese Brown (11:57.885)
Right.
Reese Brown (12:14.205)
Mm-hmm.
Anthony Abbagnano (12:18.534)
We all have leadership abilities inside us. I, you know, when I'm teaching in groups sometimes up to several hundred or several thousand, and I ask that question, who thinks they're a leader or not a leader, or who thinks they're a leader? And it's remarkable the percentage of people that don't put up their hand. And yet, I think it's a truth that we're all leading all the time.
We even call them influences in today's world. We're being watched every minute of the day by somebody and we cast a spell wherever we walk. We don't endow ourselves with the awareness of how much power we have as we walk through the world. a random act of kindness or a grumpy exchange reverberates and doesn't just reverberate, it also replicates.
So we can look at every moment in our lives as an opportunity to be either a part of the problem or be a part of the solution. And that's a big responsibility. No matter what might have gone wrong in our lives, that opportunity never ever changes. And it's continually there for us.
Reese Brown (13:36.573)
Yes.
Reese Brown (13:40.175)
Absolutely. And I think that this almost impossible obligation is also the greatest calling that we all have. And you talk in the book a little bit about purpose. And I think that this speaks to what you were speaking a little bit about earlier in this balance that
Anthony Abbagnano (14:01.091)
Okay.
Reese Brown (14:01.649)
this impossible obligation calls us to strike and is it a balancing? Is it a combining? Is it a non-duality? Right? We can talk about this in so many different words, but in the book you talk about the liminal space between no longer and not yet. And a little bit ago you were talking about this liminal space between the necessity of physical reality of life, of having a child you need to provide for. And even if it's just one being, we need to
Anthony Abbagnano (14:08.008)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (14:30.931)
provide for. There's bills and food and shelter and like real life responsibilities. And you mentioned that you forsook this spiritual path. And I think so many of us do feel this tension being pulled between the two. How in looking back on this, why is there this tension? And is there a way that we can
Anthony Abbagnano (14:36.679)
Okay.
Reese Brown (14:58.919)
You talk about bridging the gap between several things in the book, and we'll get into some of that inner child stuff here in a moment, because I think it's so juicy and beautiful. But how do we bridge the gap between this work of being spiritual beings, having a human experience? And is that gap just an illusion and we can hold both at the same time? Or what's this work here?
Anthony Abbagnano (15:06.567)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reese Brown (15:25.809)
Yeah, I'm not sure if the question is clear, but hopefully there's something there.
Anthony Abbagnano (15:29.434)
Yeah, I love that. How do we bridge the gap between that spiritual perspective of, you know, all is good and eternal and there's no human constraint and yet live in this physical body and manage with this life? How do we not all do the splits? Well, I think there's so much to say about that. think part of it is the
the definition of the difference between relief and resolution. I think as humans, in our human experience, we're taught to settle for relief. And that's from our own personal experience as little children, when we get impacted or wounded, we have developed, for me, relatively ancient coping systems that...
I might, because they worked once when I was five years old, they then become, and they become a part of my subconscious database, they're going to get repeated automatically. And so each time that trauma that hurt me in the first place is touched upon or awakened, then I'm going to default to the same reaction that I used to have that might bring relief, but it's not actually resolving the issue.
And so the distinction between relief and resolution, I think, is very important and something to study and inquire into. And I think it also represents that moment you mentioned of the no longer but not yet, that if we are willing as human beings to
enter a state of not knowing, to become the detective of the experience of not knowing what to do, something very special can happen. And yet, the script that we're brought up with is that admitting that I'm confused about something is not just vulnerable, but it's showing a weakness and actually
Anthony Abbagnano (17:48.189)
where there's the most confusion, there's the most possibility. it's like we're looking, in many ways we look at life through the wrong end of the telescope and we really think we've got a very clear detail of what needs to happen, but unless we're willing to really wipe the slate clean and look at how we've become who we are, we're not gonna have a chance of rewriting the rest of our life the way we would like it to be. So we learn that.
there are ways we can achieve resolution without re-engaging with trauma. And that can be gentle and loving and caring. And that each little step we make in that direction actually represents a quantum leap in result of how we feel with life and our relationship with life. so, you know, that innocence that we had as children that we've had to kind of suppress and cast aside and...
the imagination that we had as children, which we might have been told was inopportune or undisciplined or we weren't paying attention or we were too much or be more reasonable and be more responsible and all of those things that we might have been told are actually stories that we learned to believe were true. So when I say looking through the wrong end of the telescope, I'm asking, well, what if they're not?
What if there's another whole story and if you turn the telescope around you can see much further much in much more detail and and there's so much more richness and joy that can be
Reese Brown (19:34.043)
Yeah, absolutely. It's the in Plato's allegory of the cave, the cave dwellers stepping out and seeing the sunlight, right? You're no longer occluded by just the illusion of these stories that were told. And I love what you said about, you know, a lot of these stories are be realistic. You know, I think so often we're told,
Who are you to live your dreams and who are you to think that you're able to do these things, right? Like you think you're so special and there is this certain sense of like, well, I don't want to be narcissistic or selfish and I don't want to take up too much space. But actually what that does is this dehumanization of the self like we are talking about in.
Anthony Abbagnano (19:56.164)
Yeah.
Anthony Abbagnano (20:11.621)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (20:20.607)
I really love talking about this inner child work that you speak to. And I even love the language around the dragon because it does speak to this idea of the fairy tale and the stories that were told. And so often in my own experience with inner child work, it's really interesting because there is this tension there too, that is your inner child is the one that has come up with these coping mechanisms, just like you were talking about that.
no longer serve us anymore, right? We adopted them because they worked when we were younger and we needed them to protect ourselves. But now we don't just need that relief, we need that resolution. And so there is this reparenting, as you mentioned, of the inner child and re-educating it in a way. But also there's this other really vital piece of creating this safe space for exploration and for the inner child to really be able to
Anthony Abbagnano (21:07.716)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (21:19.827)
just be and exist fully. And it's like there's this other liminality there. Talk to me a little bit about why inner child work is so important in this rediscovery of self.
Anthony Abbagnano (21:37.795)
Well, I think I've got an impact statement to make about this. If you look at a presidential debate or a primary debate,
I think we get to see the cost of not.
Anthony Abbagnano (22:01.155)
paying attention to our inner child. And I think if we look at the news every day, everything that is conflict-ridden, everything that is escalatory, everything that is polarizing is the result of an inner brokenness, an inner separation. And in my work, as I use the breath so much, I've come to understand, I mean, I've worked with millions of people, and I've come to understand that
Reese Brown (22:06.685)
Yeah.
Anthony Abbagnano (22:30.496)
this brokenness is a part of our human condition. you could even say its source is the whole dualistic dichotomy. so I don't want to be too intellectual. I also want to stay very practical about this. in very, very straightforward terms, what happens is every time as a child that we were
wounded or traumatized or shocked.
We wanted to forget about it. We don't want to remember those times. We want to make life joyful and fun. We're always reaching for the best. And as we do that, as we archive these incidents that have occurred, we're not aware that we also archive a part of who we once were. So it's not just that we
I heard someone once say we cover our trauma with layers of forgetting. And we get very good at this. We're taught by society to forget. We're taught to dissociate. We're taught to take a solution from outside in the form of whatever stimulation or habit or addiction or pill or coping system it might be. It's reinforced to us in every possible way.
in the commodified world as well with commercials and everything. It's like, find ease this way. And then of course, especially in North America, the small print of like, you here are the side effects, you know. But then this is the coping. This is the relief that we've learned to seek as a solution.
Reese Brown (24:16.944)
Right.
Anthony Abbagnano (24:23.924)
And somehow we dramatize this to the point that I can't reconcile with parts of who I am because I have to remember the trauma itself and I can't afford that. I cannot afford to go back to the time that I was sexually abused or that I saw my mother or my father hurt or wounded or I was in an accident or I can't face that. But what we don't realize is the cost and that's
when we almost literally throw out the baby with the bathwater. The bathwater is the trauma, but the baby still exists. And so a lot of my work is dedicated to creating a bridge between who I am today in my conscious being and with all the wisdom I've managed to accumulate in my life. And how can I become the healing agent for
the wounds that I've suffered. Dan Siegel said something very valuable, I think, which was that we cannot put ourselves back together until we understand that we're separate from ourselves. And so each of these incidents, these traumatic incidents that we suffer, creates more and more fragments of who we are. And, you know, I do this in a lot of my classes. We examine all the different personalities we've had to invent in order to cope.
with life. So, you know, I'm the teacher and maybe I'm the guru and I'm the one who's ashamed. I'm the odd one out. I'm the winner. I'm the loser. I'm the victim. I'm the hero. All the different characters we invent to be able to navigate through a very, very tough human journey. when you think about all those inventions, those constructs, and you also think about all the fragments of
that I've had to leave behind, you begin to ask, well, who's meeting who? And you take it to the extreme, like I said earlier, of a presidential debate or someone who's about to press a button that's going to launch a missile. Bless them, because they know not what they do. If they could just look inside, I think one of the most powerful instruments we can use for our own growth is a mirror.
Anthony Abbagnano (26:49.067)
that if we can learn to look in that metaphorical or that literal mirror and learn to look at ourselves and understand there's a journey involved into loving who we are, then we're on the right track. So this bridge is really about creating an avenue that these lost parts of ourselves can understand that, okay, my uncle abused me, my uncle may be in prison.
He's not going to be the solution. And neither is a pill or an addiction. Who's left? It's me. It's me in my adult being that needs to become the rescuer of the parts that I've left behind. once we accept that as our responsibility, it's a pivotal moment and our entire life changes. We then become an actor rather than
Reese Brown (27:47.705)
Absolutely.
Anthony Abbagnano (27:48.104)
than someone who's being acted through. A puppet, in other words.
Reese Brown (27:54.245)
Yes. Right. It's very, like heavy is the head that wears the crown and the sense that when you step into your own agency and autonomy and authority there, you must confront these things almost in order to step into that autonomy as well. But also when we consider these concepts like freedom, liberation, to be free of something,
Anthony Abbagnano (28:19.603)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (28:23.207)
If you can't look at something, it does have that control and power over you and it calls you to really, really look at the self. I love your example as well of looking at common figures that we see in our world where we can really see in real time these concepts playing out. And I completely agree with your statement about the mirror, right? There is something so powerful about
Anthony Abbagnano (28:40.447)
Yeah.
Anthony Abbagnano (28:48.223)
Okay.
Reese Brown (28:53.243)
Mirror gazing is one of my favorite forms of meditation. And I recommend it to anyone who hasn't meditated or they're like, meditation isn't for me. I'm like, it actually gives you something to focus on in a really interesting way. And beginning to see the world around you as a mirror to the self, I think is a really powerful step to kind of this bridging of the gap like you're speaking to. In wanting to...
help other people, whether that be in our immediate circles of our friends, chosen family, inner circles, to broader ripple effects that we may want to have in our national society, international global culture and society. How can we use this knowledge of the self and of this state of mirroring that everything I'm seeing is a reflection of me and also
Anthony Abbagnano (29:43.679)
Thank you. I just love your questions, Reese, first of all. They're very, very...
Reese Brown (29:51.697)
you know, be the change you wish to see in the world. It's trite and overstated for a reason. How can we start taking steps towards that?
Anthony Abbagnano (30:12.051)
Delicate and gentle and beautiful.
Reese Brown (30:13.512)
Thank you.
Anthony Abbagnano (30:19.834)
How can we?
reclaim our agency unless we're willing to act as if we are 100 % responsible for the outcomes that we're experiencing right now. And that's a big question. How can we hope to have agency unless we're willing to accept or act as if we're 100 % responsible?
for the outcomes that we're experiencing right now. And so I'm using the words as if purposely, because am I responsible if a rocket came through my window right now and popped my head off? Probably not. But there's a moment afterwards that I can be. And maybe I was foolish and I walked in the road and the bus hit me. Maybe I didn't look
three ways three times. just looked once and I assumed so maybe that's true too but especially for those amongst us who are true victims who may have been raped or wounded or abused or hurt in some way there is a moment of victimhood that is absolutely and utterly legitimate and there is also an opportunity as soon as that happens
to regain our balance. You know that poem, Humpty Dumpty, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. And that's the culture we look at, we live in, that we expect, you know, if we're wealthy enough, we can have the king's horses and all the king's men come and work on us, but it's not about us ourselves. And I think...
Anthony Abbagnano (32:18.056)
There's something fundamental that happens when we're disempowered is that we lose our choice. We lose our sense of choice. And we know that if you had a little gauge for your stress or your anxiety level, you know the more anxious you are, the less choice you have until you peek out into the red and off-scale where the trauma itself
you're really reduced to the three F's, the fight, flight, or freeze. And so how do we actually reclaim that agency? How can we reintroduce choice to a moment that was past that was choiceless? And that's really our work to me in order to reclaim the agency that really is our birthright.
belongs to us. And I think there are many ways, I think the most and many, many of them are arduous and long-term and lifetime of study. And, but what I would like to suggest as a takeaway is that the ability to take a breath when you don't want to is not just a clear choice that you're making. You're actually reversing a lifetime of tendency and momentum.
and accumulation. It's the greatest act of emotional intelligence that I think we can do. Now I'm saying that as someone who's worked with breath consciously since I was eight years old, and I will admit that I'm a breath evangelist. To me, the breath is the highest form of spiritual experience we can have. For me, there's a reason it's mentioned 43 times in the Bible and seven times in the
and three times in the Kabbalah and always spoken of as a supernatural force. And so for me, the moment I make the choice to take that breath, then anything can happen. It's a pivotal moment. It might just be that I choose another 10 breaths because I need more time to kind of like find some balance in a very imbalanced situation.
Anthony Abbagnano (34:39.759)
And even if I don't believe in the breath as a higher power, and for those that don't, that don't regard it in the way that I do, just the fact that one is taking the time creates the opportunity to take more time. And perhaps one could entertain the notion that for all the times that I lost my breath unconsciously,
I've got a good few to catch up on taking my breath consciously instead. So what if each time I choose a conscious breath, I'm actually taking it back through the calendar of my life to the time that I once lost it unconsciously. And there's a very, very deep reunion that's happening of that separation we feel as human beings.
So, and this is someone who studied the breath for close to 60 years and or more than 60 years. And I still feel today that the hugeness of one single breath is worthy of more than a lifetime of study. What actually happens in that one cycle of breath is not just massive, it's magnificent.
Reese Brown (35:37.788)
Hmm.
Anthony Abbagnano (36:05.988)
I feel this small in my journey to understanding it. Maybe I'm just slow, I don't know. But the more people that I teach breath to and the more people that I talk to, the more we seem to come into agreement about this, that it has the mystery in it that lies beyond the mastery we seek as human beings. We want to get to be the top of the power.
Reese Brown (36:15.118)
Hahaha!
Reese Brown (36:33.347)
Absolutely. I love...
Anthony Abbagnano (36:34.694)
be the top of our game, but there's something else waiting to happen.
Reese Brown (36:43.751)
Yes. Well, in that something else waiting to happen is always the next inhale or the next exhale that is always right there, right? That is always going to be after the next one. I think that's so unbelievably powerful. And I love the way you framed this. It's really this beautiful coming together of mental health work, deep spiritual work, and the somatic embodied work, all of which you speak to in the book because
Anthony Abbagnano (37:10.223)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (37:13.243)
It is this kind of nervous system regulation of, you know, when you feel that parasympathetic nervous system turning on and you're in fight, flight or freeze and needing to come back into the present moment requires so much of this emotional intelligence, this choice and the breath is the greatest gift and power that we all have. If you have nothing else, you have your breath. When you are a human being to be able to make that choice
Anthony Abbagnano (37:33.531)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (37:43.003)
And one thing I've been really contemplating is because I was gonna ask you this question, but I think there's something even deeper here that I'd love to know your thoughts on because I wanted to ask how do we step into consciousness in these moments where we need to take this breath, right? When we feel that, you know, trigger for lack of a better term happen or these things arise and we need to take that breath and come back into presence.
Anthony Abbagnano (38:03.163)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (38:12.659)
how do we recall that presence? But there is something about, well, as you breathe, you are already recalling the presence. And there's something as though you must remember, as you were saying, we have these layers of forgetting, you must remember in order to take the breath. And Descartes, great gift to us, I think therefore I am.
in the original French, I like a better translation that is, think therefore I am existing or I am thinking therefore I am existing. And there's something about this kind of instantaneous moment of realization of remembering that is, now I am conscious, now I am here. And it kind of is this instantaneous thing that feels similar to the experience of calling
Anthony Abbagnano (38:47.092)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Reese Brown (39:09.969)
the breath back to mind. How do you conceptualize of this moment that is this like,
I was out of conscious awareness or I was thrust into the past or into the future or into an anxiety state or anything else. What is it that calls us back, that remembers who we are and how can we practice that return?
Anthony Abbagnano (39:40.248)
Yeah, thank you. Again, a wonderful question. I think to me the answer is both simple and complex. I think the
Breath is one of the most complex instruments that we have. And if you imagine...
that you buy a tool or a software program or anything that requires instructions in order to be able to use it and you don't read those instructions and all of a sudden you need to use it, it's as if it's not a tool at all. It has no value because you've got to sit down and read the instructions. You might have, you know,
be under pressure, I only have five minutes, but you can't read the instruction manual in five minutes, so you're left there kind of like prodding at things and hoping. And I think the same thing is with breath. The best time to actually
make it useful is when you don't need it. And so the importance of creating intimacy with your breath is paramount and the best time to do it is when you're not under pressure. Now at the end of this journey or when you as you advance your way along this journey
Anthony Abbagnano (41:21.814)
of intimacy with your breath. What does that mean? mean, who's this cook who's calling it intimacy with your breath? But actually this has become so significant to me that the intimacy I have with my breath is more important than the intimacy I have with any human being because it means that I'm in touch with myself and it means that I'm in touch with the vastness of life and beyond. And from that, and it means I'm present.
Reese Brown (41:28.467)
You
Anthony Abbagnano (41:51.433)
And from that place, I am a gift to whoever I meet and I'm going to be able to appreciate who they are to the fullest. I'm going to be able to receive what it is they want to communicate without becoming activated or argumentative or defensive or, you know, I'm going to be in equanimity. I'm going to learn that that outer world, the outer chaos that is there is actually
the fodder which I can compost into something that's really quite beautiful no matter how horrific it might seem. So the power of the message that I'm trying to convey is the time to practice it is now not when you actually need to rely on it and if you do that and there are so many hundreds of ways of doing it but if you say yes, if you get a yes around that especially a whole body yes
then you're on your way. You've done half the work. And I'm not saying the other half is as easy, but that first half is a huge leap. because you're creating agency, you're creating choice. And remember, that's the key to transforming ourselves from the victim of circumstance into the playful co-creator of life and beauty and joy. So what does that mean? Here are some simple, simple.
things you can do. Notice how you're breathing right now.
Good question. You can ask it to yourselves as many times as you like, to yourself as many times as you like. How are you breathing right now? And then notice what's happening in your outer world as you're breathing this way. Are you stressed? Are you calm and meditative? Are you watching a beautiful, emotional, romantic movie? Are you watching a horror story? Are you making love? Are you excited about eating your dinner? Are you...
Anthony Abbagnano (43:55.744)
in a queue at the bank and you're late. Are you frustrated by what's going on and you're clicking around on the internet and it's not happening the way you want it to? Have you just had some good news? Have you had some bad news? you... You know, all of these... All of these things that we experience as human beings, we have a breath response to. And the more aware you can become as to what those responses are...
the more you can recreate those conditions by using that breath again. So let me say that again. You can reverse engineer your nervous system by examining the symptoms that occur as a result of your nervous system being in any condition. So here's a simple example. I'm agitated.
I'm jerky, I'm panicky, I'm not in the flow. I'm in the flow, I'm like, God, this is a breeze. Life is a breeze. So if I breathe like life is a breeze when I'm agitated, life's gonna become more of a breeze. If I'm sleepy and droopy and I've gotta go on stage and play music or speak in public or I've got an important meeting or I'm...
going to meet a new girlfriend that I've never spoken to before and I'm shy. If I take some long, deep, calming breaths, I'm going to create a state of presence and that's going to work. No matter what unfolds, that's going to work. So there's your brake and your accelerator. But know that there's also a dashboard with loads of dials that you can twiddle and gauges that you can read. And the more that you do that, the more intimate you become with your breath.
And that's really that first 50%. If you can make that choice, then you're on your way. And you could create breath patterns that work for you. Now, I teach people breath patterns. Anybody who's involved with breath can teach people breath patterns. Some people even name the breath pattern after their own name, as if we can actually brand the breath. But I like to be reminded that the breath doesn't belong to any of us.
Reese Brown (45:49.436)
Hmm
Reese Brown (46:00.179)
you
Anthony Abbagnano (46:16.181)
The best we'll ever get is a loan and we will always give it back. So there's a level of humility that we can bring to this experience. We're not owners of this thing. We don't own the breath. And that's why I call my company Alchemy at Breath. It's not my name or anything. It's about the study of the alchemy that exists in the breath. And that's really what the book is about. If we can...
learn to use the breath in those kinds of ways we can open up to all kinds of discoveries that make a far more exciting than a movie or the drama in the outer chaos that we see.
Reese Brown (47:03.537)
Hmm. Absolutely. I love this use of the word alchemy. feel like, modern spiritual alchemy has been, talked about more and more in these spiritual spaces. And it just makes me so excited because even hearing you use the word like compost, it's like, how is composting a type of alchemy and healing generational trauma is a certain type of alchemy and, and all of this transformative work. think that's so powerful.
Anthony Abbagnano (47:22.068)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (47:32.133)
One thing that I want to ask about continuing on this theme of the breath, you mentioned that you consider it this higher power, this connection to source, and not everyone may feel that way. And I think that in conversations like this, I'm always struck by the way that this truth feels deeply spiritual to me. But also, there is so much wisdom here.
Anthony Abbagnano (47:53.175)
Thank
Reese Brown (48:00.423)
for those that may consider themselves atheist, who may not want to think of this in a spiritual sense, or even those that have belief systems that are a little bit more strict or dogmatic, that you can still layer this into that experience as well. This fits beautifully in any sort of faith system too. How do you describe this
connection to your higher power and I suppose bridge the gap between this spectrum of faith because I think everyone has faith even atheists it's a faith in something that you cannot see you have faith that there is nothing right so in this spectrum of faith where you consider breath to be a higher power how do you describe this in these different contexts
Anthony Abbagnano (48:31.347)
I'm
Well, first of all, I love how you describe faith, even for the atheist, there's faith. I think that's so true. And to me, it feels like almost like it's the answer to the question. If we're willing that we have faith, even if it's only that there will be another day tomorrow, then
we know we have faith. And then it becomes a question of, well, how do I get acquainted with that faith? And how can I enjoy it? How can I utilize it? How can I apply it? Where does it work that I might not be aware that it's possible? That's a pretty deep inquiry, I think.
I, you know, my own life has been one of...
some serious disasters. I've been through a lot of self-hatred. I don't know if all of us have been able to reconcile with the inner critic that we have, but I've had an inner critic that was absolutely ruthless and...
Anthony Abbagnano (50:20.295)
And with sometimes very good reason. I've really made some mistakes in my life. I've hurt people because I was hurt and I didn't resolve my own hurt. And that's what I see that terrifies me in the world today is this keeps on getting played out. I don't believe we're meant to live that way. I don't believe that we're meant to be a part of this shit show that...
is going on out there, but I think the sad truth is that a lot of us are, unconsciously, unwillingly perhaps, but also unconsciously. think that something happens when we become activated and we enter into argument with some of the horrors that occur and we don't realize that we're actually
consciously encouraging the conversation to take more form, to get more volume, and more breadth, and more outreach. so, what does this, as the Buddhist might say, what does the third way look like? If there was an alternative, what might that be? Because in the earthly realm, it's not very apparent, it's not very clear.
So that makes me wonder, well, what else might be there? And a question might be, how many times have you seen a potentially escalating situation be soothed in your own being? That someone says something and you...
actually, maybe I don't need to perpetuate this approach, maybe there is another way. And I think that the times that, of course, it's much more often that we know we're gonna say the wrong thing, right? But we feel self-righteous and we've got to it anyway, and it doesn't matter how much damage it does, and I know it's gonna screw things up. And oops, I said it, and my God, now it didn't work at all, things have just got worse. I mean, how many times in our life do we do that?
Anthony Abbagnano (52:38.034)
I think that in itself has a momentum and a habitual quality to it as well, an addictive quality to it. We justify our existence by our opinion. But actually if we look at the world, opinions have become so enabled and so amplified in their importance that when you look at things like the stock market, we're trading
money on people's opinions as to what will happen with the price of salt in 10 years time. So an opinion all of a sudden has generated into something materially very significant. People are going bankrupt and making billions based on that opinion. And that's just one opinion. And then we think that our opinion, we get confused that the strength of our opinion is the strength of our purpose.
all of a sudden we're in the wrong conversation. We're not actually helping. We are the problem. So what is it that will take, what is it that's going to be the cold water in our face that is, as humanity, is going to make us, us into understanding that there's else available to us? And if...
I don't believe in a higher power. If I cast aside a higher power, how can I expect it to help me? So, isn't it worth the risk to explore what a higher power might be? And I don't mean by a belief system. I don't mean by becoming adherent to someone else's belief system. I've been called a guru by many people, but I don't want that. I don't want to...
make any claim on someone's needs to believe in something to feel better about themselves. I don't believe that's appropriate. I want people to believe in themselves and to feel better about themselves that way. And so to me, the power of the breath, and especially this is where the conscious connected breath becomes important. I've seen atheists breathe a conscious connected breath. I've seen people who are not just non-believers, but antagonistic.
Anthony Abbagnano (55:02.658)
the practice. I've seen people that are addictive. I've seen people that are emotionally closed. I've seen control freaks. I've seen anything from anarchists to narcissists who've used the conscious connected breath and I've seen them transformed in half an hour. I've seen people who are in the cage of a relationship and haven't made love in years become lovers again and become in renewed
relationship in 30 minutes. I've seen what people would call miracles. I've seen people who could not physically see become sighted in an hour and a half. I've seen people with chronic pains and illnesses, including stage four cancer, that disappears in minutes. This we relegate to the miraculous. But I've discovered that the miraculous is actually happening all the time. It's not some remote
strike of lightning that chose me and changed my life, the miraculous is. And therefore it's up to us to pay attention to it. And once we cultivate the appropriate quality of attention, then that something else that's waiting to happen can happen. And this has been now proven with quantum science. There are some quantum physics. There are some things that will not occur unless you are present.
So what does that mean? There's a lot of material we can work with, but it's not about knowledge. It's not about intellect. It's not even about emotion, even though emotion can be the doorway through which we can discover the other, something that we don't know we don't know. It's a quality of attention that we can give. And that's what I call spirituality because it's a challenge.
Attention for someone who's been to Florence like you have and you've studied the language it comes from the word attendele and that means to wait it means to wait an active forceful engaged powerful waiting and unless I wait in that way unconditionally without expectation or need that something won't happen or it'll happen a different way
Anthony Abbagnano (57:33.125)
And I think that's really a doorway for people who are atheist or who don't.
Anthony Abbagnano (57:55.429)
Hi, Rhys. I think we've got an edit there.
Reese Brown (57:56.647)
Hello.
Yes, but no worries at all. You are back. I can see you. We are good to just hop right back into it. Are you good to just hop back into it? Okay, so you were talking about a Tinder day and this active waiting, which I love. I'll toss it back over to you there.
Anthony Abbagnano (58:09.179)
Yeah, absolutely.
Anthony Abbagnano (58:18.51)
Okay, yeah, the power of waiting is, you know, for us in our human experience, waiting means I'd better be patient, right? In our human language, that's what it means. But there is an active waiting, a forceful, almost a fierce waiting that we can do. And I've got to give an example. If you're ever overwhelmed in life,
Wouldn't it be reassuring to consider that there's waiting to happen? There's going to be something next, no matter how miserable or grim or depressed we might feel. But part of the problem of being depressed is we become habitually depressed and we lose that ability to notice. We just chronically expect the same thing to repeat. But intellectually, we must be able to appreciate that
something next is going to happen. What if we can be co-creative in that experience? And my teaching that I've received through my life is that if we are willing to wait and give a pure quality of attention that's not conditioned by expectation or need or entitlement, but just an open waiting that we will notice
what that something is and then we can select it as an option and then we're engaged in choosing again. We've regained our agency, we're moving out of our victim role.
Reese Brown (59:56.147)
you
Yes.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:00:04.866)
You know, it's a bit like if you're looking into the fog and you know that there's somebody walking towards you and you're looking in the fog but you can't see anything but fog but what your mind is doing is it's looking for the form. was that it? no, maybe no, it wasn't. No, was that? my God, there it is. And there's that moment that it comes into awareness that is magical, right? I mean, it's like.
When you think about it, that's such a wonderful moment like recognition, connection, everything falls into place. But when you talked about earlier on about, what was it? Something's over, but it hasn't yet begun. When you use that phrase from the book that I now can't remember, but that's a very important moment to be in and to really inhabit because that's where difference and change and quantum possibility exists.
that waiting that we have if we can let that feeling of like I want this to happen come but also let it pass don't be attached to it and come back to that kind of fierce focus then we've got our microscope you know tuned we've got it we've got it focused and we will notice something minute that we might not have noticed before and that can change everything
Reese Brown (01:01:14.547)
Mm.
Reese Brown (01:01:35.345)
Yes, I absolutely love that. And I love this. One thing that's been coming up a lot for me in my personal work lately is the balance of the divine feminine and the divine masculine. And in a lot of spiritual circles, you'll hear, step into your divine feminine and nurture and wait and receive. You're in your receptive era. And then step into your divine masculine. You need to push and take action and move forward. I think
Yes, there's time and space for both of these things, but the learning that's really been coming up for me is we have both of these things within us and there actually isn't a tension between moving forward and receiving. We actually must be doing both. And I think that that is encapsulated in what you're talking about here. There is this very active attention and choosing that happens amidst the waiting.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:02:15.364)
you
Anthony Abbagnano (01:02:25.572)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (01:02:34.289)
Right? That when we wait for something to appear, we then have the choice to integrate it. But also we're choosing attention while we wait. There is this exchange that allows this playful co-creation to arise that I think is so on point with just what I've been experiencing. One final thing that I wanted to ask you about before we go into our closing.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:02:54.404)
Okay.
Reese Brown (01:03:01.479)
is you mentioned this feeling of being at home and how we are cultivating this sense of home within ourselves. And as someone who has moved around quite a bit and is really stepping into this knowledge that I am always at home because I am at home within myself. I even saw a snail yesterday and I was contemplating on the
Anthony Abbagnano (01:03:23.812)
Thank you.
Reese Brown (01:03:29.763)
message that the snail had for me and it was, well the snail carries its home with it wherever it goes, right? It's always in its home. Talk to me about this notion of home and being our own home and maybe a bit how the breath is a piece of this home too.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:03:59.671)
I think we've lost our sense of home. We've learnt to believe that our home is somewhere we have to get to. And we need to step away from what is here right now in order to return.
and
Anthony Abbagnano (01:04:29.283)
At the same time, I feel like home is not really about doing anything.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:04:40.428)
to discover myself.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:04:45.091)
I've traveled a lot, you're a traveler too. But there's this great cliche now that no matter where you go, you'll find yourself, right? But actually, I think a lot of us have traveled in order to find ourselves. So it's rich with paradox, this whole situation. what I'm calling is I'm calling home myself. Calling home the deepest, truest being that I am. so to me, the breath is
all about remembering. It's also about remembering. It's about renewing my membership with myself. And so as I breathe consciously, and especially when I use something as powerful as the conscious connected breath, I'm really opening the veils down this divine corridor. Sometimes it doesn't feel divine. Sometimes it feels very challenging. But
I am opening the veils with something as gentle as the breath. mean, all it is is
Anthony Abbagnano (01:05:53.43)
And yet...
it can change the whole world. And so for me, the breath is that tool which can also be found in other ways with meditation, for example. I just met today, we're in a retreat down at Asher at our community center here in Tuscany. And I met a young man that I was on a podcast with just
three weeks ago and I was speaking about the book and he popped up today he said I wanted to come and breathe with you so we we breathe and this man's been meditating for many years like 25 or 30 years he teaches meditation he has big outreach and and he said my gosh I never realized that you know even being a meditator and a meditation teacher I never realized that even that breath I'm focusing on when I'm meditating I just never realized that in half an hour that could happen
And that's after 30 years. I think so many people I've met that are, for example, psychotherapists or psychiatrists who come to the breath and go, I've been in therapy for 30 years and I finally feel like I've come home. So.
Fortunately, I think we're at a stage in this world with AI that has its sharp edges and its brutalities and its kindnesses too, but I believe that we're coming to the end of an information age and a technological age. Information has no value anymore. And I believe in this next decade and...
Anthony Abbagnano (01:07:44.095)
I know other people are in agreement with this, that we're now entering the spiritual age because the value of this information that we've accumulated, we're now being told that in three seconds we can exceed it by pressing a couple of buttons and reading a screen. So what else is there?
I think we're being called into presence. I love that if you've got a teacher class you can go to, and this is quite a controversial statement probably, but I love that if I'm going to teach a class I can go to AI and get the structure because I don't have to waste my time with that stuff. It's not about the content, it's about the presence. And if I'm speaking from my home then I'm inviting you to your home.
And if you're speaking from your home, you're inviting me to your home. imagine what can happen to humanity when we put down these instruments that we thought would give us advantage over other people and that advantage and winning meant that someone else had to lose. Imagine if we could trade in that whole culture for a culture where the more present we become, the closer we become.
instead of living the paradox of I'm going to scroll so I can reach people I haven't spoken to and my god why am I so lonely we can actually bring these opposites together and this dualistic challenge that we've had to suffer under for so long, so many millennia we can now look at healing because we're really here to help each other and we're really here to love each other and that's what we want deepest down in our being we want to be loved
abundantly and we want to be safe and we want to be able to safe loving each other and I feel that time is now, is nigh, is now with the destruction and this awful horror that we see outside it's our opportunity to compost that. That's our opportunity as alchemists to transform that into a full and rich sense of belonging and a purpose that ignites and is infectious.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:10:02.344)
Instead of the nasty things being viral, what about the beauty and the joy being viral instead?
Reese Brown (01:10:14.363)
Yes, absolutely. I absolutely love that. And there's so much here. mean, my work centering around purpose, hearing you talk about this ember glowing at your core and wanting to fan it into a flame. I often talk about it as the spark that we want to fan into the flame and this idea of home. And I love how you speak about it. And, you know, we've all hosted people in our homes, right? And what does it look like when we are
Using this idea of home and hosting people there as you're speaking about these courses and classes There's there's so much more to get into but I want to ensure that I'm respectful of your time and generosity here To take us into closing Firstly, if anyone is interested in working with Anthony in Reading Outer Chaos Inner Peace all of those links will be down below
Anthony Abbagnano (01:10:59.392)
I know.
Reese Brown (01:11:08.595)
to access all of this beautiful work. But is there anything that in light of our conversation, Anthony, that you would like to speak to, clarify, return to, anything we missed? I know that we missed a ton, but yes, this is space and time that if there's anything you would like to add, this is time for you.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:11:29.28)
I'm excited for the day that podcasts last a weekend. Then we can just sit and talk for hours and hours. Yeah, first of all, out of chaos, inner calm, not peace. I just want to correct that for the record. But please consider how valuable your breath is.
Reese Brown (01:11:48.79)
yes, yes, apologies.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:11:56.838)
You can come closer to the breath. We do breath work sessions every Sunday. They're all themed. They're based on UK time, but they're both ends of the clock in the morning and the evening. So no matter where you are in the world, you can breathe in community with other people and also in the privacy of your own home. And they're run by excellent world-class facilitators, our top facilitators. And my wife Amy and I come and do one once in a while. So it's a great way to explore the breath.
but also to meet new friends. And I often wonder why we don't just have a marriage agency or something, because so many couples have been born out of doing this work. And if you're in a couple and things are feeling a little rusty, couples that breathe together stay together. And they discover whole new parts of each other that make it exciting and romantic and wonderful again. So consider that as an invitation.
If I have a request, it would be, please make an act of kindness, a random act of kindness to somebody today and see if you can do it again tomorrow. And if there are thousands of people that are receiving this message, imagine what a difference that will make in the world. So would you be willing to make that a daily practice to find a random act of kindness that you can make?
Reese Brown (01:13:24.443)
Absolutely, I love that. What a beautiful message to leave our listeners with. Final question, just to hopefully put some sort of button on this beautifully expansive conversation. Anthony, what is one word to describe how you're feeling right now?
Anthony Abbagnano (01:13:41.886)
Inspired.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:13:48.402)
Did you get the word? I said inspired. Yeah.
Reese Brown (01:13:49.651)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (01:13:54.351)
Yes, yes, I know we have a bit of a glitch, but yes I did. Me as well, me too. I think that is the perfect place to end. Anthony, thank you so much again for your time and energy for this beautiful book. Again, for all the listeners, it will be linked down below. Please go give it a read and check out all of Anthony's other work as well. Anthony, thank you so much.
Anthony Abbagnano (01:14:22.137)
Thank you.