February 12, 2024 • 56 mins
Christopher August is a spiritual seeker, breath work practitioner, transformational Coach, Gene Keys Reader & Host of the Masculine Mastery Podcast. This was a great conversation on breathwork, the Gene Keys & Christopher's hero's journey in life.
Christopher's Links:
https://solo.to/christopheraugust
Christopher's Links:
https://solo.to/christopheraugust
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Welcome to Ascension of the Chessmen,diving into the esoteric, occult, spiritual,
and conspiratorial aspects of life, focusedon solutions to the problems we face
in our everyday lives. Let usascend above all differences. Let us be
the light in darkness, a breadthof fresh air to those who can hardly
(00:23):
breathe, and together awaken into greatness. This is Ascension of the Chessmen,
with your host, Andre Mitty.Welcome to the Ascension of the Chessman podcast.
I'm your host, Andre Middy.Today's guest is a spiritual seeker,
(00:44):
breathwork practitioner, transformational coach, genekeys, reader and host of the Masculine
Mastery podcast. Ladies and Gentlemen,Hobbits and Fairies give a warm welcome to
Christopher August. Well what's up,brother, Good have you or good to
see you here and good to beon this show with you. Man.
I appreciate you. It's an honorand a pleasure brother. Thanks, thanks
(01:07):
for coming on and I know thishas been in the works for a little
bit. Here shout out to RyanSprague for introducing us. Love that guy,
RAN's amazing, Yes, sir,but yeah Christopher, it's a pleasure
and honor to meet you. LikeI said, I usually kicked my show
off with this first question, foreverguest. So for those who aren't familiar,
(01:30):
can you explain what it is thatyou do? And I guess what
woke you up to realize? Andmaybe there's more to this life than you
were originally taught or thought. Ilove that question. That's great, so
I'll start with the ladder there.So back in two thousand and eight,
I was given a book you probablyor may have read and maybe people listening
(01:53):
to this pretty popular called Many Lives, Many Masters by her doctor Brian Weiss,
and that was sort of my hada list in a way. Like
you know, as a child,I was always very intuitive and sensitive and
knew that there was much more thanthe reality I perceived. But of course,
living in a society that tells youthe opposite, you know, you
come away with your own conditioning andprogramming. So ironically, somebody in my
(02:17):
life who I didn't really particularly likeat that time give to me this book,
and it was the best gift thatI was given because it was able
to really bring me into a spacewithin myself where I can begin to ask
those deeper questions and so from therethat's kind of when my journey really started,
and more so in twenty twelve twentythirteen, when I left my corporate
(02:42):
job. I was at a techfirm, a really intense way of life,
of partying on the weekends, makingsome good money in my mid twenties,
but just not feeling fully fulfilled andfeeling like something was missing and won't
go into the whole story now,but we could talk later if need be.
But long story short, I finishedmy master's degree and I said fuck
(03:05):
this, and I decided to leavethat corporate job after a series of synchronistic
events that led me to the PeaceCorps, where I served as a volunteer
for two years of my life inTanzania, Africa, with nothing, no
modern amenities, no running water,living in the middle of this rural village,
the only English speaker. So thatreally all of that together created this
(03:29):
sort of catalyst for me to jumpinto now what I do, which of
course is multifaceted and multi dimensional asI wear many hats, but overall just
being a guidance facilitator for people ontheir journey of healing and awakening and allowing
people to really start to peel backthe layers of themselves to understand who they
(03:52):
are, why they're here, andhow they're meant to serve, and how
they're meant to step into their corehigher purpose in life. Oh. Brother,
I couldn't agree more with where you'retaking things and where your journeys led
you. So you said, yousaid you you went into the Peace Corps
and before that you were living upon the East Coast of New York.
(04:15):
Is that right? Yeah, Iwas in Buffalo. That's where I was
born and raised in Buffalo, NewYork. And yeah, so very interesting
to go from Buffalo then eight thousandmiles away to Tanzany, Africa is quite
the quite the shock and system,I would say, Yeah, well,
what was that like? Can youtalk about like what the culture shock was
like and you know, how thatprocess of adjusting was and just I guess
(04:42):
a new sense of empathy or perceptionof the world might have shifted for you
and maybe a paradigm shift as well. Yeah, just kind of explain what
that was like. Yeah, itwas a pretty big paradigm shift as you
can imagine, you know, reallyliving in you know, my modern day
culture where you have internet, youhave everything accessible to you to taking showers
(05:05):
will not showers, but what wecall bucket baths, right, like heating
up water over a fire and thenmixing it with some cold water and then
pouring that over your body. Andthat's how you you know, showered every
day or every other day or whatever. And then washing hands or washing your
clothes by hand, cooking over afire, going to the well to get
(05:28):
water. You know, all ofthese things that you know, just on
a basic, primal survival level,you don't really think about, we can
turn the faucet on, we canrun the washing machine. So that in
itself was a massive shift. Thenyou have the cultural aspect of being in
a place where one, you know, nobody spoke English. I had to
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learn Swahili and you know, reallybegin to integrate myself into this very foreign
society. And you know, beyondthat, it was just the day to
day And what I began to realizeis how backwards our culture actually is in
the sense that, yes, wehave the technology, and I'm grateful for
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that, but in the sense ofliving right because living there, we lived
tribally in a community where people wouldhelp each other out that I go to
my neighbor's house and I need something, They're more than willing to support me
and come over and give me whatI need. And people are eating together
and living together. And so thatway of life really resonated with me and
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still does to this day. Andrealizing how separate we've created ourselves, and
how individualistic of a society we've created, which actually goes against our mental health
and what we need and belonging andacceptance of coming together in tribe and community,
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and so there's so many different facetsof that experience, and you know,
above all else, you know,being able to yes, create an
impact, yes, being able toserve, but also them serving me from
a relational standpoint, And the thingsI learned through these people there, and
the ability to disconnect from the ratrace and reconnect with myself, And so
(07:21):
my daily life really looked like readingand writing and meditating and yoga, and
how I really got into breath work, and how I discovered all these tools
and modalities and begin to clear awayall of the bullshit that wasn't me,
all the fear and limitations that Ihad created for myself as a result of
(07:43):
my societal conditioning. And so forth. So it was massive, massive impact
on my life. Wow. Yeah, that's incredible, brother, and quite
the life experience to create a shifton your journey. And wow, I
can't imagine. Brother. Hopefully someday I could experienced something similar. Yeah.
(08:03):
So I was also going to ask, so you got you got introduced
to breath work while you were overthere? I guess I know I will
gain and boga is you know,prominent over there. I'm not necessarily sure
which specific areas, but did youcome across that at all or those who
(08:26):
were, you know, doing ceremonieswith it over there while you were there?
You know? Interesting enough? No, I had actually learned that,
you know, I will gain andthat whole realm had you know, really
existed pretty prominently, but not somuch in the area that I was in
in Tanzania. I'm sure it washappening, but I think there's very specific
(08:48):
parts of I mean, as weknow, the continent of Africa is quite
large, fifty four countries, sothere's a lot of different cultural, different
things happening in different regions. Butyou know, so for me personally,
the discovery of breath work and thepower of my own breath that was more
of my own internal discovery. Itwasn't based on anything I was being taught
(09:09):
externally. I was given synchronistically.We used to trade thumb drives and USB
drives as volunteers to exchange like TVshows and movies because sometimes you just you
know, want to connect with somethingright, and so you plug it into
your computer and you get to watcha show or whatever. But one time,
this volunteer gave me their thumb driveand there was all these different yoga
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practices and one of them was Kundaliniyoga. And I at that point wasn't
familiar with Kundalini, but for anybodylistening, that's not It's essentially a practice
that combines you know, these differentkoreas, these different movements with breath and
sound and breath being one of thecore pillars. And so during that experience
of practicing and finding the power ofyou know, breath and specifically this practice
(09:56):
of breath of fire, this rapidpace of bre I mean, it really
was a massive catalyst for me andhelped me to really shift my energetic state.
And I was beginning to notice thesubtle and also very apparent changes that
were coming from that. And sothen My inquiry went deeper when I got
(10:16):
back and then started getting certified andall that, but that was kind of
my introduction into that. Wow,that's incredible. Yeah, that was cool.
Before we get too far into Ijust wanted to mention my former roommate.
He moved out about six months back. But I would say like that
that book you mentioned by Brian Weiss, that was his introduction into his spiritual
(10:41):
path as well. I'm yet toread it. I'm very familiar with it
and what it's about and the pastlives and everything, but I just found
that interest interesting synchronicity because you know, now he's in Australia living in an
auschrom so, uh, he's takingquite the journey. We had some bout
oscar ceremonies together and uh yeah,so it's quite a same for me.
(11:05):
That's that's great. I really appreciateyou sharing that. That's very interesting how
that had come up. And Iwas just telling you offline. I was
doing a podcast literally before this,and I had mentioned that because a similar
question came up, and he wasjust saying how that book came up literally
this morning with him and his wifetalking in conversations. I'm like something's happening
here. That's crazy, dude.Yeah, like a book like that for
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me was definitely a Celestem Prophecy wasone of the first ones I read early
on in my journey, and justall the sinks I've had with that book
over the years is I could say. But yeah, I think books like
have this this mystical nature to themin the sense of, you know,
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reading something on the screens a littledifferent than like, you know, getting
getting deep in there and taking thesmells in of the pages and you know
just what it can create for you. I mean, with your imagination.
It was the original entertainment back ofthe day. But yeah, just like
the the synchronicities that can come withbooks is fascinating to me. So anytime
(12:11):
I encountered that, I gotta payavage but amazing, man, I appreciate
you sharing that. Yeah, man, uh, I had to had to
bring that up. So yeah,I just wanted to let's kick this off
with with the breath work side anduh, you know how you you know
you said it it was an internalthing for you. Uh, not external
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like finding a teacher that taught youthis, but an internal realization. So
I guess when did that that fullrealization come that like, Okay, this
is what I'm meant to be doing. This is something I want to be
teaching others. Once I learned asa student myself. I guess where did
that all begin? Once you gotback? Yeah? That that, in
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itself, I appreciate that question isa very interesting story itself as an origin
story, because I was I thinktwo years removed from the Peace Corps.
I got back. I met mywife there and we were at that time
we were doing many different practices andsharing many different things, getting certified and
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coaching and herbalism and energy work andall of these things, and began our
own coaching practice, our own podcast, and we were then doing speeches at
these different wellness festivals. And oneperson came up to me. It was
twenty seventeen, I believe it was. She came up to me, one
of the event coordinators and said,are yoga teacher? Canceled? She had
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something come up? Can you teachyoga? I'm like, no, I
don't really teach yoga. I practiceyoga, but I guess I'll just teach
people how to breathe. Right.It was like the first thing that came
out and She's like okay, cool, like do whatever you got to do.
We just need to fill the slot. So there was like seven five
people in this tent and I'm guidingjust a very simple breathing practice for like
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twenty twenty five minutes. And Irealized as I'm doing it, like in
my awareness, like wow, likesomething about this facilitation of this breath,
of this practice, this modality.It's like I had done this a thousand
times before and that I was meantto do this. And I had people
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reflect me after a while. Thatwas amazing and like really cool and all
this stuff, and I'm like wow, like yeah, clearly I've tapped into
something here. And so I thenyou know, began to get certified in
different breathwork practices, and I then, you know, long story short,
founded my own company and went downthat route, which we can talk about
later. But all in all,it was like this ancient remembrance in a
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way. And I've done plant medicineceremonies, specifically working with aahuasca, and
I remember my first yahuasca journey.I was shown myself in a previous time,
a lifetime if you want to callit that, where I was in
a like around a fire with agroup of men and a group of people,
and I was this elder and Iwas teaching these men the importance of
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working with their breath and it wasso clear, and so it was like
I was waking up to what Ihad already known, and it was just
a pure gift that was coming throughmy channel. And so from that point,
I'm like, well, you know, this is one of the many
gifts that I have, and weall have many gifts, right, and
so how can I utilize this toinspire, heal and impact others in a
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profound way? And so that's kindof how it began. Wow, it's
incredible, man. You know,it brought up something for me. My
former guest of mine, Jason McCard. He mentioned how, you know,
you go back to the root wordof conspiracy and trace it back etymologically and
everything, and you break it downand it basically means to breathe together.
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And that's what it made me thinkof when you have this massive group of
seventy five people and you're just like, all right, I'm going to teach
these people how to breathe like thatfirst experience, like you were all breathing
together and then it all hit youlike, this is what I'm supposed to
be doing, and you know,to have that reaffirmed and the ayahuasca experience,
man like quite the journey. Andyeah, I think we're all in
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the process of re remembering, youknow, previous incarnations, previous skills,
previous past We were on unfinished business, if you will, you know,
unraveling our karmic cycles and you know, walking in our dharma. And uh,
I think you're truly embodying that,brother, And I can't say enough
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about that too. You know,come to that crossroads and keep marching forward
after you've rediscovered what you're supposed tobe doing here. So yeah, bravo
brother, thank you. Yeah,I appreciate that. And beautiful what you
just shared there. And I thinkeverybody's going through this, this transformation that's
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happening, you know, in whichwe are remembering more of our true nature.
And that's really our duty here asspiritual beings having a human experience.
It's anchoring all of that into ourhuman experience and being able to share those
core unique gifts that we all holdand doing that in a way that uplifts
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and empowers humanity. So yeah,very very well said totally. So Yeah,
I wanted to also mention, likeI have had the privilege to sit
on or sit in one of yoursessions with Ryan and the breath working cannabis
collaboration. Can you talk about likehow that relationship formed and you know,
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I guess how you guys decided thisis what you were going to do,
combining forces and finding how cannabis whenused in the right way alongside breath work,
can really mutually benefit one another.Yeah, that's a great conversation because
breathwork in itself, and just tokind of preface what I'm about to say
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and talk about the breathe of thecannabis space, breathwork in itself is a
very powerful modality for shifting your physical, mental, emotional, energetic state in
any given moment. The power ofyour breath and what you hold within is
that medicine that when you tap intoyour own inner pharmacy in that way,
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you can create massive transformations. Andso that alone will be a catalyst for
you now. And you know,another thing to add to that, just
before I dive into the cannabis part, is that what I've discovered along my
own journey because it's been a lotof trial and error, of course,
and trying different things, and whyI've created what I did and co created
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what I did with my business partnerJohnny Buffalo, who's an amazing musician and
savant, and what he's created withbeats and breath and what we've put together
here in our Sonic breathwork technology.What we call it is the primordial powers
of breath and sound and how bothof those work together to create a third
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energy almost and when you combine breathwith intentional ways of using sound, because
sound can be manipulated and is beingmanipulated on a mass scale, especially in
mainstream music and all of that.You're casting spells with words, you're creating
distorted frequencies. But when you actuallycreate frequencies, frequencies can heal or harm.
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And when you create a frequency toheal, you begin to see what
happens internally with people from a brainwave standpoint, from a nervous system standpoint,
all of that, and then youput the breath on top of it,
and it's like a game changer.And so when you just those two
technologies, right, breath and sound, then you look at the aspects of
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cannabis and people wonder why how doescannabis fit into this? And you know,
it's been a very interesting road forme in my own relationship to cannabis,
which I'll briefly touch on here,is that you know, as we
all know, cannabis is a veryaccessible plant medicine and not everybody even looks
at it as a plant medicine,just something they do right to escape or
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numb or whatever. And for me, I mean, I started using cannabis
when I was in eighth grade.I was thirteen, fourteen years old,
and I was in my friend's garage, you know, ripping a four foot
five foot bong like you know,just like doing some like really silly shit
there. But what I began toopen myself to the powers of cannabis,
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which came later on, you know, more or so eight seven, eight
years ago, and began to useit in a ceremonial sense. I began
to see how this was an ultimateteacher and that it really assisted me in
accessing the parts of myself in whichI had rejected, abandon or just completely
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you know bypassed, and allowed meto really reintegrate all of the different aspects
of me into the whole of whoI am, and cannabis has really opened
me up creatively, intuitively on manylevels. So I have deep respect for
the plant. And then I starteddoing it with breath work back in twenty
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eighteen, twenty nineteen, and I'mlike, holy shit, this is a
marriage right here, these two together. And then long story short, I
end up meeting Ryan a few yearsago and seeing his passion and expertise in
the cannabis realm and my expertise andpassion in the breathwork realm, It's like,
how can we create something that willcreate true transformation? And holy shit,
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it's been a year and a halfand we've been doing monthly workshops staying
consistent, and we have seen somany incredible things that almost make me emotional
because seeing people heal on such adeep level and it's so beautifully accessible.
Whereas like when we talk about ayahuascaand eyebo gain and buffo and all these
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things, they're pretty like very intenseexperiences in cannabis and breathwork can be as
well, but you can integrate ita little bit easier, I've found,
And so it acts as a waywhere you're taken to this place you're showing
what you need to be shown,felt what you need to felt. But
you can easily more easily into greatthat back into your human experience, whereas
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in iahuasca and these other plant medicines, you know, it can be a
lot more a lot more time back. Yeah. Yeah, so happy to
dive deeper in that. But that'sa little bit of the backstory around that.
No, well said, brother.Yeah, I've heard Ryan talk about,
you know, shadow work with cannabis, and you know, just I've
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had Rick Strassman on and he's,you know, said, how all these
plant medicines they're just amplifying what's alreadywithin you. So you know, if
you're already carrying a lot of insecuritiesand things like even a mild psychedelic like
cannabis is going to bring that outand it's going to amplify it to where
you're gonna have to face that andyou're gonna have to sit with it.
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And then the process of breath work, when you combine the two, I
think it really allows you that spaceto do so and to you know,
harmonize with it and not like runfrom it or be scared of it.
When used in a recreational way.And I also wanted to bring up my
first introduction to breath work was actuallyat a Yeah, it was actually out
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of ayahuasca retreat and you know,I was familiar with whim Hoff and had
dabbled with it a little bit,but like it was my first full on
hour long breath work or I thinkit's holotropic breath work is what it's called.
Uh and uh, you know youhad the music element to it,
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like you were saying with the soundand then the breath, and you know,
I was sober in the experience.It was the day after a ceremony
with Aya, but you know,I'm I'm sure people would say, well,
it was still in your system,man, But like I literally had
visions that were more powerful than theayahuasca ceremony itself. And I was completely
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blown away by the breath work experience. And through a soul quest done in
Florida. They used to have monthly, I think it was even weakly hour
long breath work sessions through Zoom andyou know they would have different playlists every
time, and yeah, man,I sat through a lot of those and
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took in the experience and yeah,I think it's it's it's extremely undervalued.
It's it's extremely overlooked. I thinkit's coming back to the forefront with people
like one Hof stepping forward and guyslike yourself. I think it's all coming
back, man. And it isthis overarmed, overwhelming sense of we're all
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coming back to what was lost andremembering what we once knew. You know,
m beautifully said man, and sotrue, And that's what it is.
It's like, really the simplicity ofit all, like we've made things
very complex. Yes, we haveso blessed to have so many beautiful tools
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and modalities and practices and resources tohelp us really remember all of what we're
talking about here and really returning backhome to ourselves and our true nature in
this way. But none other Man, Like the breath. It's like we
breathe over twenty thousand times per day, right, and most, if not
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all, of those breaths are completelyunconscious, as it's an automatic function of
the body. But when you bringfive or ten percent of your directed focus
and energy to working with your breath, you begin to see massive shifts happen
in your life. And it's suchan undervalued, understated thing that you know,
most people, unless they have adirect experience or a felt experience.
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They don't realize like how powerful ittruly is. And it's like, Man,
if there's one thing I can talkabout all day and share with people,
it's that It's like all you gotto do is return back to your
breath and man, like that isin itself something that everybody should be doing
at least a few minutes a day, one hundred percent. Man, it's
(27:06):
a way to get high on yourown supply. I mean, yeah,
it's a free drug. Yeah,that's it. Man, I love it.
Uh yeah, man, I didn'tknow if this is a good good
time to you know, kind ofget towards uh the gene keys aspect of
your work and how you got intothat, or you want to save that
(27:27):
for later. Now we can jumpin whatever. I'm open, bro,
Yeah, I'd be happy to youknow. I'm I'm very new to this
whole concept. I've I've listened toa few shows on it. But I
guess, you know, for thoseunfamiliar with what the gene key system is
(27:49):
and you know how it's benefited you, how you've found it applicable to your
own life and a benefit. Ijust love to hear about how you got
introduced and how it's been a usefultool to you. Yeah, absolutely,
I would love to share. It'sone of my favorite topics. It's funny
enough because synchronistically, literally the bookis sitting right next to me. I
(28:10):
didn't plan that because I didn't knowwe were going to talk about it,
but I was contemplating one of mygene keys earlier. So I was reading
through it. And you know,this book has been worn many I mean,
it's been with me for many yearsnow, and it's got tape over
the top. I referred to itas almost like my Bible, because it's
really been a profound set of teachingsfor me. So, in its simplest
(28:33):
essence and form, the gene Keysis a system for self discovery and for
personal transformation. And what it doesis it combines your astrological blueprint, your
astrological makeup with the sixty four archetypesof the Chinese Ea Ching and the Chinese
Each Ching is an ancient text,right, and it looks at these different
(28:56):
arch types of humanity which we allhouse within our genetic so to say.
And the intention with the jin Keysis to help you understand who you are,
why are here? And how you'remeant to serve. And with this
very interesting blend of these two youknow, wisdoms from astrology and the Chinese
(29:17):
e ching, you begin to unlockyour hidden gifts that are stored within your
DNA. And as we've kind ofalluded to before, is that we all
come with certain gifts that we're meantto share. And when you begin to
contemplate and work with your gen keys, which in your personal profile you'll have
eleven gen keys, right, andeach of these jin keys has three frequencies.
(29:41):
They have the shadow frequency, thegift frequency in the city. The
city is your highest the highest potentialof that archetype or that jing key.
And so when you begin, yeah, exactly. And so when you go
through the contemplation, which is thepractice of the jin keys, it's inquiry.
So with with this book you cansee how thick it is. With
(30:03):
some audio contemplations and guidance from RichardRudd, you begin to understand more of
who you are and it brings avery deep level of illumination and inquiry into
yourself. And so I was introducedto the gene keys about five six years
(30:26):
ago by some dear friends of mineand right. I've always had this deep,
like this deep thirst for self knowledgeand self discovery. So when I
heard about this, it was veryintriguing to me, and so I started
to, you know, go downthe rabbit hole and go through the different
sequences and the different journeys that areset up because the gene keys, when
(30:48):
you start to go through them,they're set up like quests. So you
have the Activation sequence, which isall about discovering your higher purpose you'll or
Venus sequence, which is all aboutopening your heart and relationships and healing your
core wounds from zero to twenty one. And then your Paral sequence, which
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is all about liberating your prosperity inyour business and your leadership and your relationships
and so forth. And so whenyou go through all of these sequences,
which make up eleven keys in total, you begin to unlock all of these
codes. And for me, I'vealways loved the sort of narrative of the
quest and these When I was younger, I play these video games where you'd
(31:33):
go on these adventures and find treasureand things like that, and it's sort
of like a similar approach. Youget to go on this innerquest and know
more of who you are, andRichard the founder had this very sporadic awakening
moment back in the early two thousandsand then basically channeled these texts over the
(31:55):
course of seven years. But Iwould say that most of your listeners and
anybody that's maybe into this realm ofastrology or numerology and all that probably have
heard of human design and human designis very much linked with the gen Keys
in the sense that they both sharethe knowledge of astrology and the eaching pair
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together. It's just that in humandesign they're known as gates instead of keys,
and though a structure of human designis set up completely different, but
they're very similar in many ways.But the Gen Keys is more of like
these wisdom teachings that have come throughand that really appeals to me, and
so that's why I went got certifiedas a guide and went down their sort
(32:38):
of rabbit hole. But it's broughta lot of deep healing to my life
and also helped me understand the arctype of who I am and really get
that really quench that thirst for selfknowledge in a big way. And honestly,
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out of all of the different personaltransformation tools I've used, aside from
breath work, you know, genekeys have had the biggest impact on me.
And the last thing I'll say isthat when you combine the gene keys
and you combine breath work together,that's a whole other baby that's born.
You know, we talked about breathworkand cannabis. Breath work and gene keys
(33:20):
is also is a really core secretthere. It's very powerful. Wow.
So I guess you know, ina first session with someone, like introducing
them to their gene keys, you'rebasically learning those first eleven you said,
gates versus or no gates is thehuman design versus y gene keys? Is
(33:43):
what again? Keys? Keys?Yeah, they're keys, and there those
represent the arc type of the sixtyfour you know, arch types of humanity
is what I was sharing before.Gotcha, Yeah, because you know it
makes me think man like, andI think a lot of people forwarn like
people going into you know, oneof these heightened experiences with plant medicine,
(34:05):
Like if you're not understanding the archetypesbeing shown, you might misinterpret that,
like you might be completely terrified ofwhat that was showing you, and like,
you know, it could ruin yourlife after that and things like this,
you know, and like McKenna himselfwould say, you know, to
read Psychology and Alchemy by Carl Youngbefore even embarking on the experience, just
(34:28):
to understand what's being shown to youfrom an archetypal perspective. And I think
this is just another pathway to understandon a deeper level what you're experiencing,
not just in the psychedelic experience,but even your meditation, your breath work,
past traumatic experience, all these differentyou know, experiences we go through
(34:53):
in life. It's just another pathwayto help understand, you know, why
why that happened to us, Likewhat was the experience about? What was
the deeper lesson from it rather thanjust seeing it from the surface level,
and you know, becoming a victimas a result versus becoming a victor of
(35:13):
those circumstances and rising above above themto further integrate them into your life to
become who you were meant to be. Yeah. I really like what you
shared there, man, And somethingthat I really want to highlight in what
you said is that around the victimizationaspect and also the plant Madison aspect,
(35:34):
I'm a proponent of plant medicine.I will stand by that because it's been
supportive for me in certain ways,and it's also been quite intense. I've
seen a lot of dark shadows thatyou know, have come up as a
result. And you know, ifyou're not in a grounded place to receive
that, that can really send youthrough a loop man of psychosis in a
way. And so I always sayapproach with caution and do the work to
(35:58):
integrate your experiences because that is abig, big part of it. And
if you're not doing that and you'rejust chasing the peak experience, then you're
rarely not getting anything from it.And so with tools and like again I
say, I appreciate plant medicine forwhat it can do, but you don't
necessarily need it either, like breathworkand tools, like we just mentioned the
(36:21):
gen keys. You know you canhave these altering experiences with this type of
work, but you know one partof it regarding the victim standpoint. So
the gen key shows you when youlook at your chart, as I mentioned,
you have eleven keys in your fullchart, and each of those keys
has those three frequencies. The shadowof the gift in the city. Now
(36:44):
we have these wounding patterns and thesetraumatic experiences that happen to us as children,
where we go through certain experiences andeven as teenagers and adults, and
that's a result of living in thisworld right. So externally we're having these
experiences, whether it's from our parentsor society as a whole, but our
(37:07):
soul has also chosen certain wounding patternsand certain shadows that we incarnate with to
learn from it. And that's kindof the script around the Jain Keys,
is that you have these shadows embeddedwithin you, and they can be triggered
or provoked by external circumstances or theyjust naturally come up as you go through
(37:28):
this journey and begin to realize whereyou're existing in these shadow states, and
sort of the core teaching around thisis not to live in the shadows.
It's good to feel and experience yourshadows and your darker states, but they
are the catalysts and the gateway toyour gifts. And so when you begin
to understand that, when you gointo the shadows, you begin to reveal
(37:50):
more of your gifts. So thedarkness is the gateway to the light essentially,
and a lot of people are scaredto go into the basement of their
consciousness into the dungeon, because that'swhere the demons lie. But those are
all part of your life experience.And when you begin to face those with
humility, and you begin to facethose with compassion, you begin to reveal
(38:15):
more of your truth and more ofyour light, and more of your love.
And so they are necessary, butwe should not ever play victim to
it. They are gifts and disguisethat help us to get to that next
octave. Yeah, I couldn't agreemore man, And I think, you
know, to ignore them, you'rejust going to further prolong you know the
(38:36):
influence they're going to have in yourlife and of that victim consciousness. But
to you know, face them,it's like that is becoming your full self
and your full authenticity. To notnot shy away from that. I mean,
that's what I've learned from all myexperiences with plant medicine, was you
have to go through the dark toget to the light and to see that
(39:00):
you are the light in that darkness. Like that light exists within you,
It exists within every one of us, and we're so scared to like confront
that part of ourselves. But oncewe do, like that fear is no
longer there like you've you've confronted it, so you understand it from a deeper
perspective and like the purpose that itserves. Like you said, there's a
(39:22):
gift within that curse. You know, it's originally framed as and I think
that's part of the integration of youknow, the gift is to live it
out and embody it, you know, through authenticity. One percent. Man,
it couldn't agree more. I'm gladwe're on the same page with that.
It's so it's so true. Ifthere's one message that anybody could take
(39:43):
from that this conversation, I wouldsay it's that it's like really looking at
the whole of yourself and your humannessand really embracing that and and that's really
where we can mine all of thegold. Oh yeah, but we agree,
brother. Yeah. I wanted totouch a bit on I guess what
(40:04):
what was the catalyst or influence foryou starting your podcast Masculine mass Mastery and
uh, you know what what yourgoals were with it and you know where
you're taking it in the future.Yeah, So you know, Masculine Mastery
was born from a walk in thepark. You know, I was just
(40:28):
contemplating life as I usually do,and this name masculine mastery kind of popped
into my awareness. And you know, for me, a big, a
big catalyst on my journey, asidefrom what we've already discussed and breath work
and gene keys and all of that, has been men's work and surrounding myself
with other men that are really doingthis inner work and really wanting to become
(40:51):
better, greater versions of themselves.And you know, a lot of my
healing has come from being in spaceswith other men and knowing that you know,
and just being in that place whereyou can be man to man and
share your heart and your vulnerabilities,your authenticity with that other person. That
(41:13):
creates not only a deep brotherhood anda deep bond, but it also helps
you to fully reconcile and transmute allof that energy that you've been carrying within
yourself. We just talked about shadowsand stuff. It's a great place to
bring yourself to and share all ofthat with other men. And so for
me, as both a participant anda facilitator of men's work, you know,
(41:36):
really sharing the message around creating moreheart led, soul led men in
the world that can be anchors andleaders and providers and protectors for humanity at
large. Because what we're seeing rightnow on a massive scale is a and
have been for a long time,is this divide and conquer. Right,
(42:00):
Dividing the sex is dividing you youinternally, right, that's most important,
is dividing you where you are inan extreme state. And what we've seen
in this world today is generally thisfight or flight hyper masculine state in which
we're doing more, producing more,having to be more, all of these
(42:22):
things where we've ignored a very keyaspect of ourselves, and that's the feminine,
and that's the intuitive, the creativepart of us. That's the very
very important aspect of ourselves that nomatter how you identify male or female or
whatever on the outside, we havethese energies and these principles within us.
(42:45):
And so a big part of thismission is really integrating men back with their
hearts. And that does not meanlosing that core power. It actually means
strengthening in it, because you haveto soften yourself and humble yourself to life
into your experiences and open your heart. And opening your heart often means going
(43:09):
through some grief and deep fucking challengeswhere you have to descend into those places
within you to really crack yourself open, because most of our lives is live
from this left logical, analytical placethat yes, it serves us to a
degree, but when you're in thatplace all the time, you get stuck
(43:30):
in these loops and you're not reallyfully living from your feeling sense and opening
yourself up to life in this way. And so for me, the work
has been personally really opening my heartto life and to others and to not
have those barriers or those walls ofprotection mechanisms that I've put up, and
(43:52):
then helping other men to do thesame. And so when I speak to
masculine mastery, it's all about thisjourney of self mastery, of mastering your
physicality, your mentality, your emotions, your energy, all of that to
really make you a complete, awhole, integrated man walking on this earth.
(44:13):
I love that brother beautifully said.You know, it made me think
of a lyric by one of myfavorite bands, wookie Foot, The longest
journey ever is from the heart tothe head, And yeah, I can't
agree more a bit. I thinkit just speaks to, you know,
the society we're living in in themodern day, and I think the shift
(44:34):
of consciousness that's slowly progressing, maybefaster than I'm perceiving it, but I
think it is shifting, and menare opening up to their vulnerable side,
to their feminine side, to youknow, integrate that and to balance it
with the masculine because I think whatyou're describing is just an unbalanced state of
(44:55):
being and you know, sooner orlater that's going to cause you know,
problems down the line, and theform of an injury, a disease,
you know, a mental health thingor crisis. You know it's bound to
happen. You hear it all thetime of like guys in the the rat
race of our society and they havea they have a panic attack, like
(45:21):
in the middle of a corporate meetingor something, and like they didn't even
see it coming, but yet foryears they were ignoring the warning signs of
like you know this go go gohustle and bustle mentality, Like there's got
to be a balance with that.Like and I think that that is what
we're all after, whether we knowit or not, is finding that balance.
(45:44):
And that's always been my life goalfrom the very beginning. Is finding
balance, man, I think that'swhat we're all after, is like uh,
you know, not not drawing toomuch into one thing or another,
but keeping keeping and keel and youknow, just being able to confront whatever
(46:04):
it is with an open mind,with an open heart, empathy for whoever
we're listening to, and putting ourbiases aside, just to be able to
receive a new perspective to integrate intoour own lives rather than coming off as
this like macho, you know,like mental giant, like I know it
(46:27):
all, no one's got anything toteach me, and you know, just
being open to new new philosophies,new ideas, new ways of being and
seeing the benefit of what's outside ofall that you don't know, you know,
dude so well said. I lovehow you stated all of that,
(46:50):
and it's so true, and yeah, it's really I don't want it to
get confused. Like we hear theword masculine and feminine and it's like,
we really need to understand the energeticsof what we're talking about here, and
that's really what it comes down toit. And so it's exactly what you
said, living a more balanced,coherent way of living our lives. And
(47:10):
I've struggled with this. I knowall of us have. And I've had
my fair share of injuries that havebeen like life stepping in the way,
Like dude, just let the fuckdown, like you know, hurting my
breaking breaking a toe or hurting myankle. It's like, yeah, you
want to know, you're immobilized.Now, find some stillness, find some
pause, And actually that's a goodto circle back around for a moment.
(47:34):
One of the core teachings of thejin kis around contemplation, is to pause
and to take time every day tojust sit and do nothing and allow yourself,
even for a few minutes, justto exist in that space, because
you retrain your nervous system from reallya point of where we've been and where
we are of over activity, overstimulation, where we can begin to exist
(47:58):
in a more parasympathetic state, whichis more calm, grounded, focused and
still. And this is something Ihave to do daily to fucking remind myself
to do that, because it's likeit's very easily to get very caught up
in that mentality, right yeah,I uh, you know, I was
gonna ask you as we get towardsthe end here, got about ten minutes
(48:21):
or so, but I usually endoff with the daily spiritual practices. But
since you brought that up, Iguess, do you have like a strict
routine every day you're waking up,you're following, or is it kind of
just going with the flow of thingsand seeing where the day takes you,
or do you are you like,well, if I don't get my breath
(48:44):
work in today, I'm not gonnabe a good person today type of thing,
or like whatever spiritual practice it isfor you. Yeah, no,
I appreciate that question. I usedto be pretty strict, and I'm not
so much anymore. I've really foundsome beautiful balance. Some of that I
do do practices every day. Really, my sort of like core ethos is
(49:07):
just movement and breath man Like,whether that's you know, a ten minutes
shaking practice and moving my energy thatway, or it's an intense hit workout
or sitting down and doing some breathwork, which I generally do every day,
regardless of whether it's a formal sessionor it's just me sitting pausing and
(49:28):
just taking some breaths. Like afterthis podcast, since I have other meetings,
I'll probably just ground myself for fifteenminutes and do that right. But
yeah, I mean it's gotten lesssort of rigid. But I definitely incorporate
movement and breath in my every dayand just really integrating that into my life.
I see a massive difference in mymental health when I'm not. If
(49:52):
there's a day I don't have movementor breath in a way that's more intentional,
I just feel more chaotic internally andmore anxious, and so I have
to move. I have so muchlife force energy in me, as going
back to human DESI, and I'ma generator, so it's just like a
lot of energy moving within me allthe time, a lot of ideas and
(50:12):
creative ideas and all these things.And if I'm not moving that it just
stagnates and I just need to justjust move my body. So that and
breath are are key for me.I agree, brother, those are huge,
And I definitely notice the difference towhen I don't meditate or do breath
work or even exercise, Like definitelytakes a toll on your mental state and
(50:36):
you feel the effects of it.So I couldn't agree more on that.
Yeah, I would say, like, what has been your experience as a
coach and you know, for thoseout there listening what they can expect,
you know, kind of mentoring underyou and your program and having one on
(51:00):
ones just you know, tools thatyou can give them to help them to
find their interhaler within them and startto integrate where they're struggling in life.
And you know kind of how thatpath is kind of switched roles for you
of learning from your clients but alsobeing able to teach them and bring forth
(51:25):
new things for them, but kindof switching roles and finding humility within that
of like you're learning as you're teaching, you know, if you will,
yeah, yeah, for sure,And yeah, I kind of I've I've
done a lot of mentoring and coachingover the years, and you know I've
now, you know, many yearsin have found sort of like my I
(51:51):
guess way in structure of how Ilike to work with people, although I
still bring a very intuitive flow tomy work, but I kind of look
at this three core things. Welook at self discovery. So what that
means is like core values, vision, passion, purpose, What does that
look like for you? Really havingthat deeper understanding of who you are on
(52:12):
that level? Somatically Somatic healing andlooking at the body and how the body
and mind are interconnected and intertwined,and where we carry certain traumas and wounding
within our within our body, andhow we can begin to liberate some of
that energy that's been stored and stagnatedwithin you, and that in itself is
(52:37):
very powerful, working somatically and kindof some of those practices that I bring
around that is inner child work,shadow work and really that level of deep
inquiry and where we can really beginto alleviate and free ourselves from some of
that tension that we're carrying within us. And then the last part is like
(52:58):
more around the soul and spirituality andconnecting deeper with that part of ourselves,
because if we don't have that connection, we're just living in this materialistic,
ego driven world from our personality andthat you know, you could chase all
the money in the world and doall the fucking things you want to do,
but if you don't have that connectionwith your soul, none of that
(53:19):
shit matters. Like you know,for me, it's like I value money.
I love money, and I lovebeing able to have the experiences I
want to have and be able tolive the life I want to live,
but not at the cost of mysoul and not at the cost of that
connection, and so really connecting peoplewith that, so you have self discovery,
you have this sort of somatic healingapproach, and then the soul connection,
(53:40):
and those three together create this sortof trifecta where really bringing people through
this process where they can just reallybegin living as their authentic selves and really
sharing from their authentic soul expression.And that's really, at the end of
the day, what people want themost. Whether you know, I'm surface,
it's always going to be the moneyor love and health and all these
(54:02):
things, which is great, butall that comes as a result of you
living in alignment with yourself. Beautifullysaid brother, and highly recommend you know
those out there listening to hit upChristopher and I can't say enough about what
he's doing. I've experienced firsthand thebreath work and cannabis sessions that he's performed
(54:28):
or phenomenal, and I can't sayenough about them. So go ahead and
check that out. I just wantedto give you an opportunity, brother,
just to kind of tell the listenerswhere they can find you, what you
got coming up in the future.Anything you want to plug workshops or retreats
coming up. Love to hear more. Yeah, thanks, thanks for the
(54:50):
space man. I really appreciate thisconversation today. So everybody, whether it's
my breath work, my men's work, my coaching, my programs, all
that can be found at Christopher Augustdot co. On my website. You
can find all the links for everything. Again, if you want to have
like just really simple, easy directaccess right away, you can download my
(55:12):
breathwork app, Beats and Breath,and that's free on iOS and Android.
People can download that. They getyou know, there's a few free sessions
in there, and then we havea whole library that where we have and
that we're building, and so thatwhole interface and having the app and all
of that is a really great wayjust to tap in. Man, just
do some breath work and you know, find yourself in that way. And
(55:37):
so other than that, I amfinally it feels like this is the year
I'm writing my book. I havea book that I'm going to be releasing.
My intention is by the end ofthis year, hopefully sooner. And
that's all about how you can usethe power of breath to elevate your life
(55:58):
and every aspect of your life,from relationships to your health, to your
soul, connection to manifestation, tobusiness and so forth. I'm really touching
on all these different aspects and howbreath is deeply intertwined with every part of
our lives. So God, I'mexcited about it. And I always we
got a monthly breathe with cannabis workshops. Those are always a great time to
(56:21):
tap in. And yeah, Igot a lot more coming, but I'll
leave it there. Love it,brother, Thank you once again for coming
on. Brother. I really enjoyedthis conversation. Hope all you out there
listening enjoyed it as well. Isend you all peace and love. Hope
you have a beautiful rest of theweek. And yeah, thanks for listening. Peace.
Welcome to Ascension of the Chessmen,diving into the esoteric, occult, spiritual,
and conspiratorial aspects of life, focusedon solutions to the problems we face
in our everyday lives. Let usascend above all differences. Let us be
the light in darkness, a breadthof fresh air to those who can hardly
(00:23):
breathe, and together awaken into greatness. This is Ascension of the Chessmen,
with your host, Andre Mitty.Welcome to the Ascension of the Chessman podcast.
I'm your host, Andre Middy.Today's guest is a spiritual seeker,
(00:44):
breathwork practitioner, transformational coach, genekeys, reader and host of the Masculine
Mastery podcast. Ladies and Gentlemen,Hobbits and Fairies give a warm welcome to
Christopher August. Well what's up,brother, Good have you or good to
see you here and good to beon this show with you. Man.
I appreciate you. It's an honorand a pleasure brother. Thanks, thanks
(01:07):
for coming on and I know thishas been in the works for a little
bit. Here shout out to RyanSprague for introducing us. Love that guy,
RAN's amazing, Yes, sir,but yeah Christopher, it's a pleasure
and honor to meet you. LikeI said, I usually kicked my show
off with this first question, foreverguest. So for those who aren't familiar,
(01:30):
can you explain what it is thatyou do? And I guess what
woke you up to realize? Andmaybe there's more to this life than you
were originally taught or thought. Ilove that question. That's great, so
I'll start with the ladder there.So back in two thousand and eight,
I was given a book you probablyor may have read and maybe people listening
(01:53):
to this pretty popular called Many Lives, Many Masters by her doctor Brian Weiss,
and that was sort of my hada list in a way. Like
you know, as a child,I was always very intuitive and sensitive and
knew that there was much more thanthe reality I perceived. But of course,
living in a society that tells youthe opposite, you know, you
come away with your own conditioning andprogramming. So ironically, somebody in my
(02:17):
life who I didn't really particularly likeat that time give to me this book,
and it was the best gift thatI was given because it was able
to really bring me into a spacewithin myself where I can begin to ask
those deeper questions and so from therethat's kind of when my journey really started,
and more so in twenty twelve twentythirteen, when I left my corporate
(02:42):
job. I was at a techfirm, a really intense way of life,
of partying on the weekends, makingsome good money in my mid twenties,
but just not feeling fully fulfilled andfeeling like something was missing and won't
go into the whole story now,but we could talk later if need be.
But long story short, I finishedmy master's degree and I said fuck
(03:05):
this, and I decided to leavethat corporate job after a series of synchronistic
events that led me to the PeaceCorps, where I served as a volunteer
for two years of my life inTanzania, Africa, with nothing, no
modern amenities, no running water,living in the middle of this rural village,
the only English speaker. So thatreally all of that together created this
(03:29):
sort of catalyst for me to jumpinto now what I do, which of
course is multifaceted and multi dimensional asI wear many hats, but overall just
being a guidance facilitator for people ontheir journey of healing and awakening and allowing
people to really start to peel backthe layers of themselves to understand who they
(03:52):
are, why they're here, andhow they're meant to serve, and how
they're meant to step into their corehigher purpose in life. Oh. Brother,
I couldn't agree more with where you'retaking things and where your journeys led
you. So you said, yousaid you you went into the Peace Corps
and before that you were living upon the East Coast of New York.
(04:15):
Is that right? Yeah, Iwas in Buffalo. That's where I was
born and raised in Buffalo, NewYork. And yeah, so very interesting
to go from Buffalo then eight thousandmiles away to Tanzany, Africa is quite
the quite the shock and system,I would say, Yeah, well,
what was that like? Can youtalk about like what the culture shock was
like and you know, how thatprocess of adjusting was and just I guess
(04:42):
a new sense of empathy or perceptionof the world might have shifted for you
and maybe a paradigm shift as well. Yeah, just kind of explain what
that was like. Yeah, itwas a pretty big paradigm shift as you
can imagine, you know, reallyliving in you know, my modern day
culture where you have internet, youhave everything accessible to you to taking showers
(05:05):
will not showers, but what wecall bucket baths, right, like heating
up water over a fire and thenmixing it with some cold water and then
pouring that over your body. Andthat's how you you know, showered every
day or every other day or whatever. And then washing hands or washing your
clothes by hand, cooking over afire, going to the well to get
(05:28):
water. You know, all ofthese things that you know, just on
a basic, primal survival level,you don't really think about, we can
turn the faucet on, we canrun the washing machine. So that in
itself was a massive shift. Thenyou have the cultural aspect of being in
a place where one, you know, nobody spoke English. I had to
(05:49):
learn Swahili and you know, reallybegin to integrate myself into this very foreign
society. And you know, beyondthat, it was just the day to
day And what I began to realizeis how backwards our culture actually is in
the sense that, yes, wehave the technology, and I'm grateful for
(06:11):
that, but in the sense ofliving right because living there, we lived
tribally in a community where people wouldhelp each other out that I go to
my neighbor's house and I need something, They're more than willing to support me
and come over and give me whatI need. And people are eating together
and living together. And so thatway of life really resonated with me and
(06:36):
still does to this day. Andrealizing how separate we've created ourselves, and
how individualistic of a society we've created, which actually goes against our mental health
and what we need and belonging andacceptance of coming together in tribe and community,
(06:57):
and so there's so many different facetsof that experience, and you know,
above all else, you know,being able to yes, create an
impact, yes, being able toserve, but also them serving me from
a relational standpoint, And the thingsI learned through these people there, and
the ability to disconnect from the ratrace and reconnect with myself, And so
(07:21):
my daily life really looked like readingand writing and meditating and yoga, and
how I really got into breath work, and how I discovered all these tools
and modalities and begin to clear awayall of the bullshit that wasn't me,
all the fear and limitations that Ihad created for myself as a result of
(07:43):
my societal conditioning. And so forth. So it was massive, massive impact
on my life. Wow. Yeah, that's incredible, brother, and quite
the life experience to create a shifton your journey. And wow, I
can't imagine. Brother. Hopefully someday I could experienced something similar. Yeah.
(08:03):
So I was also going to ask, so you got you got introduced
to breath work while you were overthere? I guess I know I will
gain and boga is you know,prominent over there. I'm not necessarily sure
which specific areas, but did youcome across that at all or those who
(08:26):
were, you know, doing ceremonieswith it over there while you were there?
You know? Interesting enough? No, I had actually learned that,
you know, I will gain andthat whole realm had you know, really
existed pretty prominently, but not somuch in the area that I was in
in Tanzania. I'm sure it washappening, but I think there's very specific
(08:48):
parts of I mean, as weknow, the continent of Africa is quite
large, fifty four countries, sothere's a lot of different cultural, different
things happening in different regions. Butyou know, so for me personally,
the discovery of breath work and thepower of my own breath that was more
of my own internal discovery. Itwasn't based on anything I was being taught
(09:09):
externally. I was given synchronistically.We used to trade thumb drives and USB
drives as volunteers to exchange like TVshows and movies because sometimes you just you
know, want to connect with somethingright, and so you plug it into
your computer and you get to watcha show or whatever. But one time,
this volunteer gave me their thumb driveand there was all these different yoga
(09:31):
practices and one of them was Kundaliniyoga. And I at that point wasn't
familiar with Kundalini, but for anybodylistening, that's not It's essentially a practice
that combines you know, these differentkoreas, these different movements with breath and
sound and breath being one of thecore pillars. And so during that experience
of practicing and finding the power ofyou know, breath and specifically this practice
(09:56):
of breath of fire, this rapidpace of bre I mean, it really
was a massive catalyst for me andhelped me to really shift my energetic state.
And I was beginning to notice thesubtle and also very apparent changes that
were coming from that. And sothen My inquiry went deeper when I got
(10:16):
back and then started getting certified andall that, but that was kind of
my introduction into that. Wow,that's incredible. Yeah, that was cool.
Before we get too far into Ijust wanted to mention my former roommate.
He moved out about six months back. But I would say like that
that book you mentioned by Brian Weiss, that was his introduction into his spiritual
(10:41):
path as well. I'm yet toread it. I'm very familiar with it
and what it's about and the pastlives and everything, but I just found
that interest interesting synchronicity because you know, now he's in Australia living in an
auschrom so, uh, he's takingquite the journey. We had some bout
oscar ceremonies together and uh yeah,so it's quite a same for me.
(11:05):
That's that's great. I really appreciateyou sharing that. That's very interesting how
that had come up. And Iwas just telling you offline. I was
doing a podcast literally before this,and I had mentioned that because a similar
question came up, and he wasjust saying how that book came up literally
this morning with him and his wifetalking in conversations. I'm like something's happening
here. That's crazy, dude.Yeah, like a book like that for
(11:28):
me was definitely a Celestem Prophecy wasone of the first ones I read early
on in my journey, and justall the sinks I've had with that book
over the years is I could say. But yeah, I think books like
have this this mystical nature to themin the sense of, you know,
(11:48):
reading something on the screens a littledifferent than like, you know, getting
getting deep in there and taking thesmells in of the pages and you know
just what it can create for you. I mean, with your imagination.
It was the original entertainment back ofthe day. But yeah, just like
the the synchronicities that can come withbooks is fascinating to me. So anytime
(12:11):
I encountered that, I gotta payavage but amazing, man, I appreciate
you sharing that. Yeah, man, uh, I had to had to
bring that up. So yeah,I just wanted to let's kick this off
with with the breath work side anduh, you know how you you know
you said it it was an internalthing for you. Uh, not external
(12:35):
like finding a teacher that taught youthis, but an internal realization. So
I guess when did that that fullrealization come that like, Okay, this
is what I'm meant to be doing. This is something I want to be
teaching others. Once I learned asa student myself. I guess where did
that all begin? Once you gotback? Yeah? That that, in
(12:56):
itself, I appreciate that question isa very interesting story itself as an origin
story, because I was I thinktwo years removed from the Peace Corps.
I got back. I met mywife there and we were at that time
we were doing many different practices andsharing many different things, getting certified and
(13:20):
coaching and herbalism and energy work andall of these things, and began our
own coaching practice, our own podcast, and we were then doing speeches at
these different wellness festivals. And oneperson came up to me. It was
twenty seventeen, I believe it was. She came up to me, one
of the event coordinators and said,are yoga teacher? Canceled? She had
(13:41):
something come up? Can you teachyoga? I'm like, no, I
don't really teach yoga. I practiceyoga, but I guess I'll just teach
people how to breathe. Right.It was like the first thing that came
out and She's like okay, cool, like do whatever you got to do.
We just need to fill the slot. So there was like seven five
people in this tent and I'm guidingjust a very simple breathing practice for like
(14:07):
twenty twenty five minutes. And Irealized as I'm doing it, like in
my awareness, like wow, likesomething about this facilitation of this breath,
of this practice, this modality.It's like I had done this a thousand
times before and that I was meantto do this. And I had people
(14:30):
reflect me after a while. Thatwas amazing and like really cool and all
this stuff, and I'm like wow, like yeah, clearly I've tapped into
something here. And so I thenyou know, began to get certified in
different breathwork practices, and I then, you know, long story short,
founded my own company and went downthat route, which we can talk about
later. But all in all,it was like this ancient remembrance in a
(14:54):
way. And I've done plant medicineceremonies, specifically working with aahuasca, and
I remember my first yahuasca journey.I was shown myself in a previous time,
a lifetime if you want to callit that, where I was in
a like around a fire with agroup of men and a group of people,
and I was this elder and Iwas teaching these men the importance of
(15:18):
working with their breath and it wasso clear, and so it was like
I was waking up to what Ihad already known, and it was just
a pure gift that was coming throughmy channel. And so from that point,
I'm like, well, you know, this is one of the many
gifts that I have, and weall have many gifts, right, and
so how can I utilize this toinspire, heal and impact others in a
(15:45):
profound way? And so that's kindof how it began. Wow, it's
incredible, man. You know,it brought up something for me. My
former guest of mine, Jason McCard. He mentioned how, you know,
you go back to the root wordof conspiracy and trace it back etymologically and
everything, and you break it downand it basically means to breathe together.
(16:10):
And that's what it made me thinkof when you have this massive group of
seventy five people and you're just like, all right, I'm going to teach
these people how to breathe like thatfirst experience, like you were all breathing
together and then it all hit youlike, this is what I'm supposed to
be doing, and you know,to have that reaffirmed and the ayahuasca experience,
man like quite the journey. Andyeah, I think we're all in
(16:33):
the process of re remembering, youknow, previous incarnations, previous skills,
previous past We were on unfinished business, if you will, you know,
unraveling our karmic cycles and you know, walking in our dharma. And uh,
I think you're truly embodying that,brother, And I can't say enough
(16:57):
about that too. You know,come to that crossroads and keep marching forward
after you've rediscovered what you're supposed tobe doing here. So yeah, bravo
brother, thank you. Yeah,I appreciate that. And beautiful what you
just shared there. And I thinkeverybody's going through this, this transformation that's
(17:18):
happening, you know, in whichwe are remembering more of our true nature.
And that's really our duty here asspiritual beings having a human experience.
It's anchoring all of that into ourhuman experience and being able to share those
core unique gifts that we all holdand doing that in a way that uplifts
(17:40):
and empowers humanity. So yeah,very very well said totally. So Yeah,
I wanted to also mention, likeI have had the privilege to sit
on or sit in one of yoursessions with Ryan and the breath working cannabis
collaboration. Can you talk about likehow that relationship formed and you know,
(18:06):
I guess how you guys decided thisis what you were going to do,
combining forces and finding how cannabis whenused in the right way alongside breath work,
can really mutually benefit one another.Yeah, that's a great conversation because
breathwork in itself, and just tokind of preface what I'm about to say
(18:30):
and talk about the breathe of thecannabis space, breathwork in itself is a
very powerful modality for shifting your physical, mental, emotional, energetic state in
any given moment. The power ofyour breath and what you hold within is
that medicine that when you tap intoyour own inner pharmacy in that way,
(18:52):
you can create massive transformations. Andso that alone will be a catalyst for
you now. And you know,another thing to add to that, just
before I dive into the cannabis part, is that what I've discovered along my
own journey because it's been a lotof trial and error, of course,
and trying different things, and whyI've created what I did and co created
(19:15):
what I did with my business partnerJohnny Buffalo, who's an amazing musician and
savant, and what he's created withbeats and breath and what we've put together
here in our Sonic breathwork technology.What we call it is the primordial powers
of breath and sound and how bothof those work together to create a third
(19:36):
energy almost and when you combine breathwith intentional ways of using sound, because
sound can be manipulated and is beingmanipulated on a mass scale, especially in
mainstream music and all of that.You're casting spells with words, you're creating
distorted frequencies. But when you actuallycreate frequencies, frequencies can heal or harm.
(19:59):
And when you create a frequency toheal, you begin to see what
happens internally with people from a brainwave standpoint, from a nervous system standpoint,
all of that, and then youput the breath on top of it,
and it's like a game changer.And so when you just those two
technologies, right, breath and sound, then you look at the aspects of
(20:22):
cannabis and people wonder why how doescannabis fit into this? And you know,
it's been a very interesting road forme in my own relationship to cannabis,
which I'll briefly touch on here,is that you know, as we
all know, cannabis is a veryaccessible plant medicine and not everybody even looks
at it as a plant medicine,just something they do right to escape or
(20:44):
numb or whatever. And for me, I mean, I started using cannabis
when I was in eighth grade.I was thirteen, fourteen years old,
and I was in my friend's garage, you know, ripping a four foot
five foot bong like you know,just like doing some like really silly shit
there. But what I began toopen myself to the powers of cannabis,
(21:08):
which came later on, you know, more or so eight seven, eight
years ago, and began to useit in a ceremonial sense. I began
to see how this was an ultimateteacher and that it really assisted me in
accessing the parts of myself in whichI had rejected, abandon or just completely
(21:30):
you know bypassed, and allowed meto really reintegrate all of the different aspects
of me into the whole of whoI am, and cannabis has really opened
me up creatively, intuitively on manylevels. So I have deep respect for
the plant. And then I starteddoing it with breath work back in twenty
(21:51):
eighteen, twenty nineteen, and I'mlike, holy shit, this is a
marriage right here, these two together. And then long story short, I
end up meeting Ryan a few yearsago and seeing his passion and expertise in
the cannabis realm and my expertise andpassion in the breathwork realm, It's like,
how can we create something that willcreate true transformation? And holy shit,
(22:15):
it's been a year and a halfand we've been doing monthly workshops staying
consistent, and we have seen somany incredible things that almost make me emotional
because seeing people heal on such adeep level and it's so beautifully accessible.
Whereas like when we talk about ayahuascaand eyebo gain and buffo and all these
(22:38):
things, they're pretty like very intenseexperiences in cannabis and breathwork can be as
well, but you can integrate ita little bit easier, I've found,
And so it acts as a waywhere you're taken to this place you're showing
what you need to be shown,felt what you need to felt. But
you can easily more easily into greatthat back into your human experience, whereas
(23:02):
in iahuasca and these other plant medicines, you know, it can be a
lot more a lot more time back. Yeah. Yeah, so happy to
dive deeper in that. But that'sa little bit of the backstory around that.
No, well said, brother.Yeah, I've heard Ryan talk about,
you know, shadow work with cannabis, and you know, just I've
(23:25):
had Rick Strassman on and he's,you know, said, how all these
plant medicines they're just amplifying what's alreadywithin you. So you know, if
you're already carrying a lot of insecuritiesand things like even a mild psychedelic like
cannabis is going to bring that outand it's going to amplify it to where
you're gonna have to face that andyou're gonna have to sit with it.
(23:47):
And then the process of breath work, when you combine the two, I
think it really allows you that spaceto do so and to you know,
harmonize with it and not like runfrom it or be scared of it.
When used in a recreational way.And I also wanted to bring up my
first introduction to breath work was actuallyat a Yeah, it was actually out
(24:11):
of ayahuasca retreat and you know,I was familiar with whim Hoff and had
dabbled with it a little bit,but like it was my first full on
hour long breath work or I thinkit's holotropic breath work is what it's called.
Uh and uh, you know youhad the music element to it,
(24:32):
like you were saying with the soundand then the breath, and you know,
I was sober in the experience.It was the day after a ceremony
with Aya, but you know,I'm I'm sure people would say, well,
it was still in your system,man, But like I literally had
visions that were more powerful than theayahuasca ceremony itself. And I was completely
(24:56):
blown away by the breath work experience. And through a soul quest done in
Florida. They used to have monthly, I think it was even weakly hour
long breath work sessions through Zoom andyou know they would have different playlists every
time, and yeah, man,I sat through a lot of those and
(25:17):
took in the experience and yeah,I think it's it's it's extremely undervalued.
It's it's extremely overlooked. I thinkit's coming back to the forefront with people
like one Hof stepping forward and guyslike yourself. I think it's all coming
back, man. And it isthis overarmed, overwhelming sense of we're all
(25:38):
coming back to what was lost andremembering what we once knew. You know,
m beautifully said man, and sotrue, And that's what it is.
It's like, really the simplicity ofit all, like we've made things
very complex. Yes, we haveso blessed to have so many beautiful tools
(26:00):
and modalities and practices and resources tohelp us really remember all of what we're
talking about here and really returning backhome to ourselves and our true nature in
this way. But none other Man, Like the breath. It's like we
breathe over twenty thousand times per day, right, and most, if not
(26:21):
all, of those breaths are completelyunconscious, as it's an automatic function of
the body. But when you bringfive or ten percent of your directed focus
and energy to working with your breath, you begin to see massive shifts happen
in your life. And it's suchan undervalued, understated thing that you know,
most people, unless they have adirect experience or a felt experience.
(26:45):
They don't realize like how powerful ittruly is. And it's like, Man,
if there's one thing I can talkabout all day and share with people,
it's that It's like all you gotto do is return back to your
breath and man, like that isin itself something that everybody should be doing
at least a few minutes a day, one hundred percent. Man, it's
(27:06):
a way to get high on yourown supply. I mean, yeah,
it's a free drug. Yeah,that's it. Man, I love it.
Uh yeah, man, I didn'tknow if this is a good good
time to you know, kind ofget towards uh the gene keys aspect of
your work and how you got intothat, or you want to save that
(27:27):
for later. Now we can jumpin whatever. I'm open, bro,
Yeah, I'd be happy to youknow. I'm I'm very new to this
whole concept. I've I've listened toa few shows on it. But I
guess, you know, for thoseunfamiliar with what the gene key system is
(27:49):
and you know how it's benefited you, how you've found it applicable to your
own life and a benefit. Ijust love to hear about how you got
introduced and how it's been a usefultool to you. Yeah, absolutely,
I would love to share. It'sone of my favorite topics. It's funny
enough because synchronistically, literally the bookis sitting right next to me. I
(28:10):
didn't plan that because I didn't knowwe were going to talk about it,
but I was contemplating one of mygene keys earlier. So I was reading
through it. And you know,this book has been worn many I mean,
it's been with me for many yearsnow, and it's got tape over
the top. I referred to itas almost like my Bible, because it's
really been a profound set of teachingsfor me. So, in its simplest
(28:33):
essence and form, the gene Keysis a system for self discovery and for
personal transformation. And what it doesis it combines your astrological blueprint, your
astrological makeup with the sixty four archetypesof the Chinese Ea Ching and the Chinese
Each Ching is an ancient text,right, and it looks at these different
(28:56):
arch types of humanity which we allhouse within our genetic so to say.
And the intention with the jin Keysis to help you understand who you are,
why are here? And how you'remeant to serve. And with this
very interesting blend of these two youknow, wisdoms from astrology and the Chinese
(29:17):
e ching, you begin to unlockyour hidden gifts that are stored within your
DNA. And as we've kind ofalluded to before, is that we all
come with certain gifts that we're meantto share. And when you begin to
contemplate and work with your gen keys, which in your personal profile you'll have
eleven gen keys, right, andeach of these jin keys has three frequencies.
(29:41):
They have the shadow frequency, thegift frequency in the city. The
city is your highest the highest potentialof that archetype or that jing key.
And so when you begin, yeah, exactly. And so when you go
through the contemplation, which is thepractice of the jin keys, it's inquiry.
So with with this book you cansee how thick it is. With
(30:03):
some audio contemplations and guidance from RichardRudd, you begin to understand more of
who you are and it brings avery deep level of illumination and inquiry into
yourself. And so I was introducedto the gene keys about five six years
(30:26):
ago by some dear friends of mineand right. I've always had this deep,
like this deep thirst for self knowledgeand self discovery. So when I
heard about this, it was veryintriguing to me, and so I started
to, you know, go downthe rabbit hole and go through the different
sequences and the different journeys that areset up because the gene keys, when
(30:48):
you start to go through them,they're set up like quests. So you
have the Activation sequence, which isall about discovering your higher purpose you'll or
Venus sequence, which is all aboutopening your heart and relationships and healing your
core wounds from zero to twenty one. And then your Paral sequence, which
(31:11):
is all about liberating your prosperity inyour business and your leadership and your relationships
and so forth. And so whenyou go through all of these sequences,
which make up eleven keys in total, you begin to unlock all of these
codes. And for me, I'vealways loved the sort of narrative of the
quest and these When I was younger, I play these video games where you'd
(31:33):
go on these adventures and find treasureand things like that, and it's sort
of like a similar approach. Youget to go on this innerquest and know
more of who you are, andRichard the founder had this very sporadic awakening
moment back in the early two thousandsand then basically channeled these texts over the
(31:55):
course of seven years. But Iwould say that most of your listeners and
anybody that's maybe into this realm ofastrology or numerology and all that probably have
heard of human design and human designis very much linked with the gen Keys
in the sense that they both sharethe knowledge of astrology and the eaching pair
(32:15):
together. It's just that in humandesign they're known as gates instead of keys,
and though a structure of human designis set up completely different, but
they're very similar in many ways.But the Gen Keys is more of like
these wisdom teachings that have come throughand that really appeals to me, and
so that's why I went got certifiedas a guide and went down their sort
(32:38):
of rabbit hole. But it's broughta lot of deep healing to my life
and also helped me understand the arctype of who I am and really get
that really quench that thirst for selfknowledge in a big way. And honestly,
(32:58):
out of all of the different personaltransformation tools I've used, aside from
breath work, you know, genekeys have had the biggest impact on me.
And the last thing I'll say isthat when you combine the gene keys
and you combine breath work together,that's a whole other baby that's born.
You know, we talked about breathworkand cannabis. Breath work and gene keys
(33:20):
is also is a really core secretthere. It's very powerful. Wow.
So I guess you know, ina first session with someone, like introducing
them to their gene keys, you'rebasically learning those first eleven you said,
gates versus or no gates is thehuman design versus y gene keys? Is
(33:43):
what again? Keys? Keys?Yeah, they're keys, and there those
represent the arc type of the sixtyfour you know, arch types of humanity
is what I was sharing before.Gotcha, Yeah, because you know it
makes me think man like, andI think a lot of people forwarn like
people going into you know, oneof these heightened experiences with plant medicine,
(34:05):
Like if you're not understanding the archetypesbeing shown, you might misinterpret that,
like you might be completely terrified ofwhat that was showing you, and like,
you know, it could ruin yourlife after that and things like this,
you know, and like McKenna himselfwould say, you know, to
read Psychology and Alchemy by Carl Youngbefore even embarking on the experience, just
(34:28):
to understand what's being shown to youfrom an archetypal perspective. And I think
this is just another pathway to understandon a deeper level what you're experiencing,
not just in the psychedelic experience,but even your meditation, your breath work,
past traumatic experience, all these differentyou know, experiences we go through
(34:53):
in life. It's just another pathwayto help understand, you know, why
why that happened to us, Likewhat was the experience about? What was
the deeper lesson from it rather thanjust seeing it from the surface level,
and you know, becoming a victimas a result versus becoming a victor of
(35:13):
those circumstances and rising above above themto further integrate them into your life to
become who you were meant to be. Yeah. I really like what you
shared there, man, And somethingthat I really want to highlight in what
you said is that around the victimizationaspect and also the plant Madison aspect,
(35:34):
I'm a proponent of plant medicine.I will stand by that because it's been
supportive for me in certain ways,and it's also been quite intense. I've
seen a lot of dark shadows thatyou know, have come up as a
result. And you know, ifyou're not in a grounded place to receive
that, that can really send youthrough a loop man of psychosis in a
way. And so I always sayapproach with caution and do the work to
(35:58):
integrate your experiences because that is abig, big part of it. And
if you're not doing that and you'rejust chasing the peak experience, then you're
rarely not getting anything from it.And so with tools and like again I
say, I appreciate plant medicine forwhat it can do, but you don't
necessarily need it either, like breathworkand tools, like we just mentioned the
(36:21):
gen keys. You know you canhave these altering experiences with this type of
work, but you know one partof it regarding the victim standpoint. So
the gen key shows you when youlook at your chart, as I mentioned,
you have eleven keys in your fullchart, and each of those keys
has those three frequencies. The shadowof the gift in the city. Now
(36:44):
we have these wounding patterns and thesetraumatic experiences that happen to us as children,
where we go through certain experiences andeven as teenagers and adults, and
that's a result of living in thisworld right. So externally we're having these
experiences, whether it's from our parentsor society as a whole, but our
(37:07):
soul has also chosen certain wounding patternsand certain shadows that we incarnate with to
learn from it. And that's kindof the script around the Jain Keys,
is that you have these shadows embeddedwithin you, and they can be triggered
or provoked by external circumstances or theyjust naturally come up as you go through
(37:28):
this journey and begin to realize whereyou're existing in these shadow states, and
sort of the core teaching around thisis not to live in the shadows.
It's good to feel and experience yourshadows and your darker states, but they
are the catalysts and the gateway toyour gifts. And so when you begin
to understand that, when you gointo the shadows, you begin to reveal
(37:50):
more of your gifts. So thedarkness is the gateway to the light essentially,
and a lot of people are scaredto go into the basement of their
consciousness into the dungeon, because that'swhere the demons lie. But those are
all part of your life experience.And when you begin to face those with
humility, and you begin to facethose with compassion, you begin to reveal
(38:15):
more of your truth and more ofyour light, and more of your love.
And so they are necessary, butwe should not ever play victim to
it. They are gifts and disguisethat help us to get to that next
octave. Yeah, I couldn't agreemore man, And I think, you
know, to ignore them, you'rejust going to further prolong you know the
(38:36):
influence they're going to have in yourlife and of that victim consciousness. But
to you know, face them,it's like that is becoming your full self
and your full authenticity. To notnot shy away from that. I mean,
that's what I've learned from all myexperiences with plant medicine, was you
have to go through the dark toget to the light and to see that
(39:00):
you are the light in that darkness. Like that light exists within you,
It exists within every one of us, and we're so scared to like confront
that part of ourselves. But oncewe do, like that fear is no
longer there like you've you've confronted it, so you understand it from a deeper
perspective and like the purpose that itserves. Like you said, there's a
(39:22):
gift within that curse. You know, it's originally framed as and I think
that's part of the integration of youknow, the gift is to live it
out and embody it, you know, through authenticity. One percent. Man,
it couldn't agree more. I'm gladwe're on the same page with that.
It's so it's so true. Ifthere's one message that anybody could take
(39:43):
from that this conversation, I wouldsay it's that it's like really looking at
the whole of yourself and your humannessand really embracing that and and that's really
where we can mine all of thegold. Oh yeah, but we agree,
brother. Yeah. I wanted totouch a bit on I guess what
(40:04):
what was the catalyst or influence foryou starting your podcast Masculine mass Mastery and
uh, you know what what yourgoals were with it and you know where
you're taking it in the future.Yeah, So you know, Masculine Mastery
was born from a walk in thepark. You know, I was just
(40:28):
contemplating life as I usually do,and this name masculine mastery kind of popped
into my awareness. And you know, for me, a big, a
big catalyst on my journey, asidefrom what we've already discussed and breath work
and gene keys and all of that, has been men's work and surrounding myself
with other men that are really doingthis inner work and really wanting to become
(40:51):
better, greater versions of themselves.And you know, a lot of my
healing has come from being in spaceswith other men and knowing that you know,
and just being in that place whereyou can be man to man and
share your heart and your vulnerabilities,your authenticity with that other person. That
(41:13):
creates not only a deep brotherhood anda deep bond, but it also helps
you to fully reconcile and transmute allof that energy that you've been carrying within
yourself. We just talked about shadowsand stuff. It's a great place to
bring yourself to and share all ofthat with other men. And so for
me, as both a participant anda facilitator of men's work, you know,
(41:36):
really sharing the message around creating moreheart led, soul led men in
the world that can be anchors andleaders and providers and protectors for humanity at
large. Because what we're seeing rightnow on a massive scale is a and
have been for a long time,is this divide and conquer. Right,
(42:00):
Dividing the sex is dividing you youinternally, right, that's most important,
is dividing you where you are inan extreme state. And what we've seen
in this world today is generally thisfight or flight hyper masculine state in which
we're doing more, producing more,having to be more, all of these
(42:22):
things where we've ignored a very keyaspect of ourselves, and that's the feminine,
and that's the intuitive, the creativepart of us. That's the very
very important aspect of ourselves that nomatter how you identify male or female or
whatever on the outside, we havethese energies and these principles within us.
(42:45):
And so a big part of thismission is really integrating men back with their
hearts. And that does not meanlosing that core power. It actually means
strengthening in it, because you haveto soften yourself and humble yourself to life
into your experiences and open your heart. And opening your heart often means going
(43:09):
through some grief and deep fucking challengeswhere you have to descend into those places
within you to really crack yourself open, because most of our lives is live
from this left logical, analytical placethat yes, it serves us to a
degree, but when you're in thatplace all the time, you get stuck
(43:30):
in these loops and you're not reallyfully living from your feeling sense and opening
yourself up to life in this way. And so for me, the work
has been personally really opening my heartto life and to others and to not
have those barriers or those walls ofprotection mechanisms that I've put up, and
(43:52):
then helping other men to do thesame. And so when I speak to
masculine mastery, it's all about thisjourney of self mastery, of mastering your
physicality, your mentality, your emotions, your energy, all of that to
really make you a complete, awhole, integrated man walking on this earth.
(44:13):
I love that brother beautifully said.You know, it made me think
of a lyric by one of myfavorite bands, wookie Foot, The longest
journey ever is from the heart tothe head, And yeah, I can't
agree more a bit. I thinkit just speaks to, you know,
the society we're living in in themodern day, and I think the shift
(44:34):
of consciousness that's slowly progressing, maybefaster than I'm perceiving it, but I
think it is shifting, and menare opening up to their vulnerable side,
to their feminine side, to youknow, integrate that and to balance it
with the masculine because I think whatyou're describing is just an unbalanced state of
(44:55):
being and you know, sooner orlater that's going to cause you know,
problems down the line, and theform of an injury, a disease,
you know, a mental health thingor crisis. You know it's bound to
happen. You hear it all thetime of like guys in the the rat
race of our society and they havea they have a panic attack, like
(45:21):
in the middle of a corporate meetingor something, and like they didn't even
see it coming, but yet foryears they were ignoring the warning signs of
like you know this go go gohustle and bustle mentality, Like there's got
to be a balance with that.Like and I think that that is what
we're all after, whether we knowit or not, is finding that balance.
(45:44):
And that's always been my life goalfrom the very beginning. Is finding
balance, man, I think that'swhat we're all after, is like uh,
you know, not not drawing toomuch into one thing or another,
but keeping keeping and keel and youknow, just being able to confront whatever
(46:04):
it is with an open mind,with an open heart, empathy for whoever
we're listening to, and putting ourbiases aside, just to be able to
receive a new perspective to integrate intoour own lives rather than coming off as
this like macho, you know,like mental giant, like I know it
(46:27):
all, no one's got anything toteach me, and you know, just
being open to new new philosophies,new ideas, new ways of being and
seeing the benefit of what's outside ofall that you don't know, you know,
dude so well said. I lovehow you stated all of that,
(46:50):
and it's so true, and yeah, it's really I don't want it to
get confused. Like we hear theword masculine and feminine and it's like,
we really need to understand the energeticsof what we're talking about here, and
that's really what it comes down toit. And so it's exactly what you
said, living a more balanced,coherent way of living our lives. And
(47:10):
I've struggled with this. I knowall of us have. And I've had
my fair share of injuries that havebeen like life stepping in the way,
Like dude, just let the fuckdown, like you know, hurting my
breaking breaking a toe or hurting myankle. It's like, yeah, you
want to know, you're immobilized.Now, find some stillness, find some
pause, And actually that's a goodto circle back around for a moment.
(47:34):
One of the core teachings of thejin kis around contemplation, is to pause
and to take time every day tojust sit and do nothing and allow yourself,
even for a few minutes, justto exist in that space, because
you retrain your nervous system from reallya point of where we've been and where
we are of over activity, overstimulation, where we can begin to exist
(47:58):
in a more parasympathetic state, whichis more calm, grounded, focused and
still. And this is something Ihave to do daily to fucking remind myself
to do that, because it's likeit's very easily to get very caught up
in that mentality, right yeah,I uh, you know, I was
gonna ask you as we get towardsthe end here, got about ten minutes
(48:21):
or so, but I usually endoff with the daily spiritual practices. But
since you brought that up, Iguess, do you have like a strict
routine every day you're waking up,you're following, or is it kind of
just going with the flow of thingsand seeing where the day takes you,
or do you are you like,well, if I don't get my breath
(48:44):
work in today, I'm not gonnabe a good person today type of thing,
or like whatever spiritual practice it isfor you. Yeah, no,
I appreciate that question. I usedto be pretty strict, and I'm not
so much anymore. I've really foundsome beautiful balance. Some of that I
do do practices every day. Really, my sort of like core ethos is
(49:07):
just movement and breath man Like,whether that's you know, a ten minutes
shaking practice and moving my energy thatway, or it's an intense hit workout
or sitting down and doing some breathwork, which I generally do every day,
regardless of whether it's a formal sessionor it's just me sitting pausing and
(49:28):
just taking some breaths. Like afterthis podcast, since I have other meetings,
I'll probably just ground myself for fifteenminutes and do that right. But
yeah, I mean it's gotten lesssort of rigid. But I definitely incorporate
movement and breath in my every dayand just really integrating that into my life.
I see a massive difference in mymental health when I'm not. If
(49:52):
there's a day I don't have movementor breath in a way that's more intentional,
I just feel more chaotic internally andmore anxious, and so I have
to move. I have so muchlife force energy in me, as going
back to human DESI, and I'ma generator, so it's just like a
lot of energy moving within me allthe time, a lot of ideas and
(50:12):
creative ideas and all these things.And if I'm not moving that it just
stagnates and I just need to justjust move my body. So that and
breath are are key for me.I agree, brother, those are huge,
And I definitely notice the difference towhen I don't meditate or do breath
work or even exercise, Like definitelytakes a toll on your mental state and
(50:36):
you feel the effects of it.So I couldn't agree more on that.
Yeah, I would say, like, what has been your experience as a
coach and you know, for thoseout there listening what they can expect,
you know, kind of mentoring underyou and your program and having one on
(51:00):
ones just you know, tools thatyou can give them to help them to
find their interhaler within them and startto integrate where they're struggling in life.
And you know kind of how thatpath is kind of switched roles for you
of learning from your clients but alsobeing able to teach them and bring forth
(51:25):
new things for them, but kindof switching roles and finding humility within that
of like you're learning as you're teaching, you know, if you will,
yeah, yeah, for sure,And yeah, I kind of I've I've
done a lot of mentoring and coachingover the years, and you know I've
now, you know, many yearsin have found sort of like my I
(51:51):
guess way in structure of how Ilike to work with people, although I
still bring a very intuitive flow tomy work, but I kind of look
at this three core things. Welook at self discovery. So what that
means is like core values, vision, passion, purpose, What does that
look like for you? Really havingthat deeper understanding of who you are on
(52:12):
that level? Somatically Somatic healing andlooking at the body and how the body
and mind are interconnected and intertwined,and where we carry certain traumas and wounding
within our within our body, andhow we can begin to liberate some of
that energy that's been stored and stagnatedwithin you, and that in itself is
(52:37):
very powerful, working somatically and kindof some of those practices that I bring
around that is inner child work,shadow work and really that level of deep
inquiry and where we can really beginto alleviate and free ourselves from some of
that tension that we're carrying within us. And then the last part is like
(52:58):
more around the soul and spirituality andconnecting deeper with that part of ourselves,
because if we don't have that connection, we're just living in this materialistic,
ego driven world from our personality andthat you know, you could chase all
the money in the world and doall the fucking things you want to do,
but if you don't have that connectionwith your soul, none of that
(53:19):
shit matters. Like you know,for me, it's like I value money.
I love money, and I lovebeing able to have the experiences I
want to have and be able tolive the life I want to live,
but not at the cost of mysoul and not at the cost of that
connection, and so really connecting peoplewith that, so you have self discovery,
you have this sort of somatic healingapproach, and then the soul connection,
(53:40):
and those three together create this sortof trifecta where really bringing people through
this process where they can just reallybegin living as their authentic selves and really
sharing from their authentic soul expression.And that's really, at the end of
the day, what people want themost. Whether you know, I'm surface,
it's always going to be the moneyor love and health and all these
(54:02):
things, which is great, butall that comes as a result of you
living in alignment with yourself. Beautifullysaid brother, and highly recommend you know
those out there listening to hit upChristopher and I can't say enough about what
he's doing. I've experienced firsthand thebreath work and cannabis sessions that he's performed
(54:28):
or phenomenal, and I can't sayenough about them. So go ahead and
check that out. I just wantedto give you an opportunity, brother,
just to kind of tell the listenerswhere they can find you, what you
got coming up in the future.Anything you want to plug workshops or retreats
coming up. Love to hear more. Yeah, thanks, thanks for the
(54:50):
space man. I really appreciate thisconversation today. So everybody, whether it's
my breath work, my men's work, my coaching, my programs, all
that can be found at Christopher Augustdot co. On my website. You
can find all the links for everything. Again, if you want to have
like just really simple, easy directaccess right away, you can download my
(55:12):
breathwork app, Beats and Breath,and that's free on iOS and Android.
People can download that. They getyou know, there's a few free sessions
in there, and then we havea whole library that where we have and
that we're building, and so thatwhole interface and having the app and all
of that is a really great wayjust to tap in. Man, just
do some breath work and you know, find yourself in that way. And
(55:37):
so other than that, I amfinally it feels like this is the year
I'm writing my book. I havea book that I'm going to be releasing.
My intention is by the end ofthis year, hopefully sooner. And
that's all about how you can usethe power of breath to elevate your life
(55:58):
and every aspect of your life,from relationships to your health, to your
soul, connection to manifestation, tobusiness and so forth. I'm really touching
on all these different aspects and howbreath is deeply intertwined with every part of
our lives. So God, I'mexcited about it. And I always we
got a monthly breathe with cannabis workshops. Those are always a great time to
(56:21):
tap in. And yeah, Igot a lot more coming, but I'll
leave it there. Love it,brother, Thank you once again for coming
on. Brother. I really enjoyedthis conversation. Hope all you out there
listening enjoyed it as well. Isend you all peace and love. Hope
you have a beautiful rest of theweek. And yeah, thanks for listening. Peace.
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