The Amazing Benefits Of Breath Work with Josh Trent

Ari: There we go. This is a personal question, something that I experienced, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone who has spoken to this. I’m curious if you might have some thoughts on it, given that you’ve explored this area so deeply. I’ve been doing guided breathwork for probably over 20 years now. I got into meditation in my teens, and I’m 37 now. I’ve experimented with all kinds of esoteric yoga, and Qigong and pranayama practices, and paramedic breath-holding practices, all kinds of things.

Early on, in my early 20’s, I did so much intentional breathing practices, where you learn belly breathing, and you study these esoteric eastern traditions, and they say, “Oh, you have to learn to breathe through your belly.” I got into this pattern where I convinced myself that I was not breathing properly, and I became hyper-conscious of this, and I would say even neurotic about it, where I felt like I needed to control my breathing all the time and make sure that I was breathing into my belly.

I would try to make almost every breath throughout the entire day, almost every waking moment, to be conscious of it, and breathe into my belly. I think in the process, I don’t know exactly what it was, but my perception became that this autonomic process of breathing that should be happening subconsciously, I put so much conscious attention on it, that it felt like it wasn’t happening well unless I put conscious attention on it. I don’t know if that even makes sense to you.

Josh: It makes perfect sense.

Ari: Basically, there was a certain neuroticism and tension that developed and hyper-awareness and attentiveness around my breathing constantly. Well, I could go on, and it was actually resolved at some point in the context of a plant medicine journey, but this went on for years before that, and I’m curious if you have any thoughts on that. If that resonates at all, or you can make sense of that?

Josh: It’s a huge question. Allow me to just organically pontificate with you for a moment and also deliver some science. You actually just spoke in human language, what I talked about of people intellectualizing their healing, because there might be some kind of anchor that was created for you in early childhood, or adolescence, or whatever it is, and that is, as long as I’m doing what is right, or what I should be doing, then I will have peace. That is creating an external locus of control, instead of an internal locus of control.

Essentially, from what I’m sharing, and I don’t know you really, I’m just getting to know you right now, which is awesome, but what it brings up for me is the awareness of the potential of what might be existing is an intellectualization of relaxation or an intellectualization of healing, and we all fall into this trap. I drew tarot cards for a long time, and I worked with mediums and all these things, and they always told me the same thing, “Josh, you’re ruled by the king of the mind.” I was like, “Duh. Why do you think I have so much anxiety.” Because I’m constantly trying to prove that the present moment is safe.

As I try to prove that the present moment is safe, I actually am disconnecting from the fact that the present moment is safe, as long as I let go. It’s actually what Hawkins talks about his work and this is a valuable resource for all of us. If we can truly embody the process of letting go, seeing things for what they really are, and breathing into the truth of the current moment, not in a woo, woo, sit around the fireplace kind of away, but realistically if we can surrender to we’re all going to die, you and I get this special moment right now to share, we’re not going to be here forever. If we can relax into that then we can stop getting in our head, get out of our head and get into our heart.

Hawkins talks about the largest space between our head and our heart is universal. We all experience either an inch or a mile between our head and our heart. It’s a byproduct of what all of our teachers that we follow whether ancient or contemporary, if you look at Lao Tzu or if you look at Alan Watts, or if you look at anyone who talks about spirituality or metaphysics they’re all essentially saying the same thing with different words and that is your training is to be at peace in the current moment without judgment of yourself.

The breath allows us to do that, but only if we have the courage to see what mechanism is trying to intellectually control us in the first place because I’ll tell you what, the ego is a subtle foe, the ego will come in, it will sabotage, it will tell you things about people that aren’t true. It will tell you you’re not safe. It will do so many things and I’m not here to demonize the ego, our work is actually to be in harmony with the ego and that’s easier said than done because again, this can’t be intellectualized. We can’t intellectualize an issue that’s caused by either our lack of love for ourselves or our lack of connection with spirit. We can’t get around it.

That’s the first part to your question is I would layer a lens on there of what happened to me and what kind of emotional intelligence or emotional inventory process can I do from the observation standpoint, way outside the subjective and go, “All right. Let me take an inventory of what were my biggest triggers in my life, let me list those out, and let me be curious about how they’re playing out in my current life. How are my deepest triggers playing out in my current life, and which one of those triggers takes away my breath completely? Which one of those triggers when I think about it or when I feel into it it makes me go [breaths], it makes me hold my breath.”

That’s a great starting point for all of us and the courage to walk that path is honestly not for everyone because when you go into the cave, and you know this from plant medicine, you are going to find things that scare the crap out of you. They are going to bring you to your knees in so many ways and that is where real warriors are built.

Not from just doing plant medicine, I have my own thoughts on plant medicine which is a unique conversation, but the long answer to your short question of why do I do that is it stems from how we were raised, it stems from how we integrated or did not integrate the T, t trauma. Stems to how our biology operates in the current moment based on all the imprinting that we had done for us in the past.

Ari: Very very interesting. I’d be interested to go into the plant medicine discussion and I’ll mention actually how this issue of breathing translated to an experience. I was going to label it a problem, but I’ll label it an experience with my first plant medicine journey which was extraordinarily intense. It was what’s considered to be the most powerful or intense of the psychedelics, which is 5-MeO-DMT. That was my very first journey. I don’t recommend that anybody do that as their first journey.

Josh: I don’t either.

[laughter]

Ari: I recommend something much gentler as the first one. The experience of that actually, and I’m quite certain that it’s connected to that hyper attentiveness that I had around my breathing. When I did that 5-MeO experience, what happened was a process of literally the experience of feeling my body go paralyzed and feeling my diaphragm go paralyze and feeling like I could not breathe. Not hallucinating this, I was perfectly lucid and I was aware of everything going on.

I was having the experience of feeling my diaphragm was becoming paralyzed, my breath was getting shorter and shorter and shorter, and as much as I was trying to generate that attentiveness to my breath to breathe properly, I couldn’t. I was literally calling over the facilitator, the shaman of this journey to tell him to call an ambulance because I could see the people next to me were moving and they could breathe and they could talk and they were making noise and I was sitting there becoming paralyzed and losing the ability to breathe. I thought I was having actually some kind of allergic reaction to it.

I was telling the guy to call an ambulance because I’m literally about to suffocate to death. To make a long story short, basically, I had the very very terrifying experience of literally watching myself suffocate to death and having to process the fact that I was suffocating and I was dying at that moment. Then after accepting that I was dying in that process, I was transported to a really beautiful incredible ecstatic experience that was extraordinary revelatory and probably one of the most intense and profound experiences of my life that had enormous benefits but it was also prior to that, the most terrifying experience I’ve had in my life.

Josh: They usually are.

Ari: I still have this feeling all that intentional breathwork I did, that hyper attentiveness that neuroticism played some role in contributing to that experience. I bring this up just in case you have any commentary on it.

Josh: I love it. Thank you for being so courageous and sharing all this. I can sense, and I’m not a psychic, I’m what I call a practical Whoo. I understand that there’s an etheric realm in a foreign 5D. I don’t spend a lot of time there. The only times I go there is to gain knowledge and bring it back here. I don’t like to play in those realms like a lot of my colleagues. I’m not going to name anyone in person, but I’ve watched myself have judgment for people that go from ceremony to ceremony to ceremony and don’t ever pause to breathe and integrate.

If you look at any of the great masters, whether it’s Terence McKenna or Paul Stamets or even Paul Chuck if you don’t have time to clear the ceremony and to actually integrate what has occurred– By the way, I’m still integrating a ceremony from two years ago. I don’t feel called any other ceremonies or medicines. I have my breath as my ally.

What happens is if we’re not careful, and this might be what you’re talking about so tell me if I’m on the right path, when we experience some type of a key stressor that floods our system into essentially a panic mode, like you dying in a 5-MeO ceremony, that takes time to heal. It takes time to reintegrate back into society much like a war veteran would have PTSD from a bomb going off. We have to give our nervous system, our heart, our soul, and our mind most importantly time to recover from something like that because really what all of those elements of us are asking for is love and tenderness and softness and presence.

If we don’t give those parts of ourselves, those attributes that I talked about what happens is that we start operating even more from the mind and we can honestly have a neurosis come from it, a mild mental illness or an OCD with looping thoughts, things like that. That’s what happened to me, by the way, two years ago as I went to the wrong center down in Costa Rica. I’m not going to name the name, but you all know if you follow me who it is. I went to the wrong place and I took the wrong medicine at the wrong time, and it was beautiful because it healed me of something that I’ve been fighting for so long and it actually taught me how not to fight anymore.

Like you had said, before I was able to see the light of love within myself and able to connect with God, I had to go through the darkness within myself and that darkness, whoo. Oh, my God. [chuckles] Just like how you almost died and you’re like, “I had to watch myself basically choke and asphyxiate myself.” That was what I had to do, but it was on a way more mental level with different kinds of loops that weren’t so physiological. What I’m saying in a really long answer here is that if we go 30,000 foot above our subject which is our self, the subjective truth that we’re experiencing is not always the objective truth that either God or Spirit or even your higher self can recognize that’s occurring for you.

When you were going through what you’re going through, you must believe the only path towards enlightenment, the only path towards consciousness, the only path towards growth of any kind is that you will choose to believe that that happened for you and the trauma that you experienced will be something that you choose to love yourself to integrate through. That is a fraction of the population that either has the tools, the skills, or even the self-love to love and nurturing be tender to themselves after they’ve been through honestly a life-altering event.

This is why it’s it’s so powerful. If you look at Jordan Peterson’s work or– Tim Ferriss just put out a huge blog on this. He basically said, “Look, if you’re doing these medicines and there’s not the right integration set and setting you are actually going to cause yourself way more trauma than if you just didn’t do the medicine at all.” People are running to medicine– I’m not saying you and I are doing this, but people are running to the medicine, to the plants of any kind because they’re seeking the plant’s wisdom but the greatest thing that I can wrap up my answer with is this, be careful of unearned wisdom, be cautious and be careful of unearned wisdom.

If you have not created the breathing patterns within yourself, if you’ve not done the emotional intelligence work of taking the inventory of capital T and lowercase t trauma, and you run to a plant medicine ceremony, look the hell out. That’s a direct quote from Peterson himself, look the hell out because you’re opening yourself up to so many dimensions, so many entities. I actually took on an entity from that place in Costa Rica. It took me two years to heal, had to go see Paul Check himself at his house so that he could clear the entity from me.

Then I have Hamilton Southern on the podcast, and he’s telling me anytime someone has an entity, it is not their fault, it is 100% the shaman’s fault. When anything happens to a participant in a ceremony, it is not anyone’s fault, but the person that is holding that space. It’s not to demonize practitioners but we’re talking about a power of which we cannot even begin to understand and we are playing with this power as if we can earn this early wisdom when we haven’t done the deep integration work to hold it.

Ari: Yes, it’s a fascinating answer. In my case, there wasn’t any trauma for me, it was extremely terrifying in that moment and then it immediately after the surrender into suffocating, it immediately turned into an extraordinarily regulatory and blissful experience. That as soon as I came out of that, several hours later, there was multiple rounds of it. So it was about three hours in total. I was already in a beautiful place and just amazed.

It completely blew my mind that it’s possible for human consciousness to even experience something like that. It was a thousand orders of magnitude beyond what I thought was possible to even have an experience. There’s no way I could have even imagined in my wildest dreams what actually happened. It was a life-changing, really beautiful experience that actually took me out of years-long depression prior to that. Anyway, thank you for acknowledging me in this little [inaudible 00:32:36]

Josh: Can I say one more thing on that? It’s so beautiful what you’re describing, not everyone can have what you have learned. There was obviously some type of work that you’ve done, whether it’s around energy systems or cultivation from chi or even learning from the chakras behind me like how energy flows through the body, there was some training that you had done that prepared you to be able to receive the healing that you got. Not everyone’s prepared, I want to be very conscious about that.

Ari: [inaudible 00:33:05] meditation and breathwork prior to.

Josh: Yes. That’s something I wanted to share with your audience is be careful and be kind to yourself. Don’t run to the golden ticket without doing your integration work first.

Ari: I would almost have the general warning of almost no one should do that unless you were physically experienced and have done a lot of many years of work.

Josh: You know what else came up for me? I was interviewing Dave Asprey once and he talked about the umbilical cord being wrapped around his neck when he was a baby. He went to a therapist, a past life therapist, or some kind of an intelligent therapist. I’m not exactly sure what kind, but that was what came up for him and I want to point people towards Mark Wolynn’s work.

He’s been on the podcast a couple of times, he wrote, It Didn’t Start with You, Healing Generational Trauma. For your key attribute, it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, I feel like I need to focus on my breath.” For me, it’s like, “I’m not safe in the present moment.” We all have our stuff and so looking at not only the current moment for clues with emotional inventory but also looking at birth and birth trauma and looking at past life trauma. In other words, epigenetic expression of unhealed trauma from your grandfather, father, and et cetera. It’s complex, healing is complex because we as human beings are complex.

Ari: Yes. That’s interesting that you brought up the umbilical cord. It was the same thing for me that I had it wrapped around and I almost died in my birth process and they had to break my clavicle when I was– I’m not sure if it broke on its own or if they intentionally broke it, but I know that I guess I was born with a broken clavicle.

Josh: It may be a connection to exactly what you’re describing that because– I’m not a therapist in this way, so I’m not classified to give this guidance or information. I’m just thinking here with you, it may be connected to that where you felt you couldn’t breathe or you had to focus so much in your breathing. Think of a flower, you know in a flower first buds, it’s so sensitive. So if you come along and do anything to that rosebud, it alters its life forever.

This is why the year, zero through seven is where we learn all of our habits. It actually goes to the breath too, Ari. If you ever plug a baby’s nose, they’ll start choking. Why is that? If you plug a baby’s nose, why do they start choking? It’s because we all come into this world knowing how to breathe through our nose, we learn through capital T and lowercase t trauma to start breathing through our mouth, then we start becoming as Belisa Vranich calls vertical breathers, we start breathing through our shoulders and our scalenus and we lose the connection to our diaphragm.

You’ll notice that as I listen to you speak, I’ll close my mouth because I’ll remind myself to push my tongue to the roof and to breathe through my nose because it’s relaxing for me to do that but if I’m stressed, you might catch me with my mouth open, you might catch me breathing through my mouth. It’s a key indicator of a lot of different things that are connecting in our conversation.

Ari: Yes, Josh, let me ask you real quick. Are you doing okay on time? Do you have a hard time at all?

Josh: We’re good.

Ari: Okay. One other quick thing I’ll just mention to wrap up this digression and plant nonsense, and I’m super open to you saying anything more you want to say, but I want to wrap up my personal story. After that experience, my mind was so blown with what had happened to me and I benefited enormously from it. There was still a piece of me that drove me a little bit crazy that the experience caused so much intense fear for me.

My heart was beating out of my chest. I slept for I think 16 hours after that experience because I had the most crazy adrenaline dump ever to actually feel like you’re dying. It’s as stressful as it gets but it drove me crazy for months after that, that I was so scared by it and scared to do it again because I didn’t want to have to go through that. Because I was scared of it, I sought it out again because it just drove me crazy to be scared of something.

I did a second time, I think three or four months later. This time, I thought, “Oh, I’ve already dealt with the whole fear of death thing, I won’t go through that again.” Sure enough, I had to go through the whole thing again a second time and watch myself suffocate to death, it was not any easier. I thought for sure it would be easier, it was the same level of difficulty to watch the body and ego die. I was still driven, also a beautiful experience, but still driven a little crazy that I was fearful and I just felt feeling like I need to get to a point where I can do this experience without needing to die and be able to relax into this process.

On my third 5-MeO experience, that’s when I had this really incredible experience of this teaching around my breathing where it was like, why are you so restricted? Why are you so tense around your breathing? Why are you trying to force your breathing all the time? Breathing happens naturally, it happens autonomically, subconsciously and you don’t need to control it.

The message that was communicated to me was, you don’t need to force the breathing, let me breathe and which speaks to something that you said at the beginning of this podcast around Inspiritus and inspiration. That was the lesson that allowed me to let go of those years of struggling with tension around my breathing and just to let it happen naturally and to bring my neuroticism and attention and OCD out of it and just let the breath happen. Anyway, I just wanted to wrap up that–

Josh: What voice was telling you that it’s okay?

Ari: That’s a matter I guess of speculation we’re getting into, classic spiritual territory but the experience of 5-MeO feels like having a conversation with God and feel as having a conversation with some kind of higher intelligence where it certainly does not feel like this is your own brain talking to itself. It feels like communication with a higher intelligence and a direct tapping into some bigger truth than the normal thoughts that go on in the brain. When you’re in that state, it feels like okay, this is true, this is wisdom communicating to me.

Josh: Regardless of how anyone identifies whether you’re Christian or atheist or whatever it is, whenever you take a point

of reference in the universe or within our current experience, you are deciding that that is true and I think this is what people get wrong about spirituality. Honestly, I’ll even tie it back to the breath and we can tie it back to energy as well. Because when you’re going through your life, and you’re deciding things every day, Brendon Burchard, says, we make like 150 quality decisions every day, right? Well, who’s deciding those? You are, and you’re deciding them based on your lens of reference, which is an amalgam of all the experiences that have happened for you up to that point.

Now, all the decisions you make after your MEO ceremonies, they’re going to be different, they’re going to be fundamentally different for you because you’ve gained knowledge, you’ve gained awareness, you’ve gained understanding. What I’m saying here is we all go through the path of discernment of what’s true, and what’s not true, what thoughts to fixate on, or what thoughts to be at peace with and let go, the key thing is for us to not attach to what has occurred, because– I fall into this camp from my own learning as well, I’m self aware enough to know that on the path to mastery, I’m still somewhat in the middle.

I really am and I think most of us are that even help others to be totally enlightened. When Osho was on his deathbed, he said, “Yes, nobody can ever be totally enlightened. It’s all–” He said something like this, “There’s no such thing as total enlightenment because the ego is always present.”

What I’m getting at here is like, when we learn about ourselves, either how to breathe from a loving, trustworthy place or when we learn how to let go and let something else breathe us, we start tapping into an endless river of truth and awareness and energy that we can guide in our relationships, in our jobs, in our professions, in our careers, because the very thing that we’re looking for it straight up is the thing that’s looking for us, like St. Francis of Assisi.

I got this from the three hour segment we did with Paul Chek, which is the all his God series we did on wellness force, and the thing that just ripped my hair back as he was like, one of the earliest practitioners in religion said, “What’s looking for you is what’s looking.” Sorry, “What you’re looking for, is what’s looking back at you.” We are all a byproduct of this energetic source that creates all things and if it sounds woo-woo, or esoteric, to you, just ask yourself, who’s breathing you? Who’s digesting your food? Who’s beating your heart? Who’s doing all these things? Because you’re not.

Whether you believe in a higher power or not, you have to believe that you don’t understand why certain things are and there’s a current surrender to that, which really is kind of what we’re talking about.