A Personal Update from Sean Fargo on Self-Love, Purpose, and Conscious Breathing

Speaker 1 · 0:00Hi, I'm Sean Fargo, founder of Mindfulness Exercises. Thanks for coming. Today I'd like to share something personal about my recent experience with mindfulness. Today it's a beautiful Monday afternoon in Berkeley, California. The uh rain stopped a few hours ago, and now there's that fresh scent that comes after the rain. The sun hits the ground. We got our fountains on, and there's a nice breeze coming through the back door as my puppy moves in and out of the room. Um so I had a little bit of space today to sit and to reflect, and I wanted to share um what's been going on. Um so as a part of our mindfulness exercises podcast, I'm interviewing a lot of um really interesting people about their own mindfulness journeys. Um one of them was with this woman named Sophie Sheesh. And I will put a link to her website below, but um, she's a serial entrepreneur, um psychologist, um, meditator, and she helps people uh discover their purpose, and she also helps people to um find a deeper sense of self-love. And in our conversation in the podcast episode, it became increasingly clear, first of all, how much joy she feels on a day-to-day basis by having a really clear purpose, really clear boundaries, um, and a practice that feels very embodied. She uh has kind of been living in a masculine world, but she's been cultivating her feminine by really um living in her body and her heart more, uh, by uh dancing and playing and um feeling into her heart center, allowing the energy to freely flow through her. Um and so I was struck by that wonderful energy that she had. Um, but I was struck by how much she connected a sense of purpose with self-love. Um, I had never quite thought of those two things being um so connected before, and it made me want to work with her personally, and I think we will shortly, but I was sensing into the sense of how we can envision our future by connecting with what's here now, in this sense of uh connecting with our love for ourselves and connecting with what we want for ourselves now and in the future. And so, you know, I had that conversation with Sophie. Feel free to check it out. So this is kind of percolating in my subconscious for a few days, and then I had a conversation with a man named uh Anthony Abignano, who's the founder of Alchemy of Breath. He's one of the pioneers in um breath work, uh, and he's you know trained thousands of people on how to become breathwork facilitators. And I had never heard of him before our conversation because uh one of my assistants um lined up the conversation for me, but it became increasingly clear in speaking with him that the breath work that he finds most powerful is infused with self-love. And he um part of his work is he teaches people how to breathe with a sense of conscious, connected breath in this moment with a sense of care, and we're able to bring the stories from our past, our traumas, our moments of confusion and anger. The difficult moments of our past, we're able to think of those and breathe with them now with a sense of conscious, connected breath. And he invites people to go through their own hero's journey from their past. And even try to get as much detail as you can about the years before you were born in terms of the energy that your parents were carrying. But the invitation is to move through your life in these increments of seven years, write down as much as you can, bring uh to mind all the difficulties, and to work with those difficulties with a conscious connected breath, connecting with the whole body, the heart. Um, and then there's other layers to it that I'll share later, but um these two conversations that I had with Sophie about this sense of self-love and our purpose, and then with Anthony about self-love and breath and our past. Um this felt like new territory for me in some ways. Um, so I've been practicing mindfulness of breathing for a long time. Um, and it seems like when I'm kind of going through my darkest times, including in the Buddhist monastery where I was a monk, um, it was mindfulness of breathing that helped me to find uh relief by really sensing into the beauty of this breath right now, like through my nose and out my mouth, and really feel that and feel the energy of the breath moving in and out of the body, and really surrendering everything else, suspending everything else, so that I could focus and bring full attention to the feeling of this very inhale, and the feeling of this very exhale. So I've had a lot of background with mindfulness of breathing, but I've never explicitly thought of it in terms of or experienced it in terms of healing the past, envisioning my purpose for the future, or feeling each breath as sort of an affirmation of self-love, or an invitation for self-love. And Anthony Abbignano uses this phrase, this conscious connected breathing. So conscious or fully awake to this very inhale and this very exhale, and all the mini moments of each inhale and exhale, and he he was talking about how the inhale is kind of a um force of like will sometimes, and then the exhale is like a surrender or letting go, and that you need both, but um, but we're very conscious of our breath, conscious of our body, conscious of what's happening in our experience, regardless of what it is, we're just conscious of it without judgment, and we're connected with the breath. And to me, there's this heartfelt quality of connection, and heartfelt quality of connection with who we really are. And for some of us, it's easier to sense into who we really are when we think of our childhood, like the good times of our childhood, or the moments we've felt free in our life, the moments when we feel light and joyous, or just ourselves. Maybe we can re-reflect on the moments of our life that's felt unique, like when we've really felt like we're in our flow, maybe during some form of play or creativity or reading or imagination or connection with others. Who are we really? You know, it's not these moments when we're stressed at work or you know, um at our wit's end as a parent. There's something in our essence that is much closer to who we are, and we can uh recall, you know, like what did our mom or dad call us when we were a child? Sometimes that helps us to remember this feeling of our soul, our spirit. Um this sense of connection with who we are, the sense of connection with um breathing in the outer world into our body. Um Anthony talks about breathing in each inhale as a delicious nectar, and really like sensing or tasting or savoring the breath as a delicious nectar, really breathing that in, this delicious nectar, and that can feel so nourishing in our bodies, in our lungs, in our hearts. This delicious nectar connecting with the outside world, breathing it in. You know, we can infuse a sense of prayer, connection with all humans who've lived now and before us, because they they're breathing the same air as we are. You know, the animals, the majestic, cute, wild animals, trees. So we're connecting more fully with our bodies and hearts, ourselves, the outside world, all these layers, connecting with energy and breathing through the whole body. And so when we are breathing this conscious, connected breath, meeting elements of our past or the sense of what we want for ourselves that are really based out of love and connecting with the love that we've had for ourselves that we may have lost over time, and we're able to tap into that sense of care, we can meet anything, and we can dream big because we know we can meet anything, because as long as we have that sense of love for ourselves, and when we know when we have this capacity to meet whatever's here with this conscious connected breath, it almost doesn't matter what happens on the outside, because we're finding freedom within. Breathing with consciousness, breathing with an unfolding connection, meeting these stories with consciousness and connection until they hold less weight.

Speaker 2 · 15:57And we can sense into our future for me, and this is part of my personal update.

Speaker 1 · 16:09Um lately I've been clueless about what I envision for myself, um, even my family. I've been kind of taking things one day at a time and not really having a big vision because, quite frankly, you know, I've kind of gotten much farther than I thought I would in terms of um say teaching mindfulness, um being able to help others. You know, I've I'm I'm very, very lucky. Um, it's taken a lot of work, but I've kind of met a lot of the goals. And so lately I've been floundering a little bit. You know, I get excited by things, and I hope that my newsletters are exciting and supportive and encouraging. You know, our mindfulness teacher certification is really um a beautiful community that I love, and you know, if you ask me, you know, what am I doing in five years that's different? I couldn't tell you. Thirty years from now, I don't know. And there's a beauty in not knowing, and it's also helpful to have a vision and tuning into my um lack of love for myself has been um something I think that I've been avoiding for a little while. Um, you know, I've done a lot of self-love work, and I love myself more now than I did five years ago, 15 years ago, etc. But it's still not fully there, it's not fully baked all the time. There's still imposter syndrome, there's still uh fears of judgment, fears of people not loving me. Um, sometimes I feel like I have to kind of be a certain way or say the right things, or sometimes I hold things in because I don't know what's going to happen if I'm fully expressive. And so I'm tuning into that and the ways that I hold myself back, and the ways that I limit myself, the ways that I let fear um influence me, the ways I judge myself, and um the ways that I don't dream, the ways that I don't have, you know, envision a purpose that's really exciting. You know, I'm quick to tell others that I love them because I do. But I'm slow to tell myself that I love me. And so this practice, like the actual exercise of this conscious, connected breathing, inhaling this delicious nectar. I've been doing that more and more, especially when I have some anxiety, and I'm able to meet that anxiety fully, because that's what mindfulness is. It's this allowing ourselves to feel whatever we feel and staying with it. So I bring this conscious connected breathing to the anxiety, and there's something around these words of conscious, connected breathing that helps me to continue breathing. My breathing doesn't get shallow and small and fearful, it gets almost bigger. And what I'm finding is that when the breath meets the anxiety or meets the stress or tension, there's this expansion that happens, this fluidity of energy. It allows the energy of anxiety to flow. And in my mind, I realize that I don't need to run from this fear or anxiety, I can meet it. And, you know, situations in life that in the past would have otherwise yielded a big reaction or suppression, reaction usually meaning like anger, or suppression, meaning, you know, just tuck it away in my body and forget about it, maybe with a slice of pizza. Now I'm able to instead meet it and breathe with it, and almost like breathe it as part of this connection, and as I continue breathing, I continue inhaling and exhaling fully, that you know, anxiety dissolves or it moves, and I'm filled with a sense of agency. It's like I am breathing, I am inhaling and exhaling with a conscious connection, and I'm sustaining it, and I feel enlivened, invigorated, awakened. Anthony Alpagnano said that it's um the most powerful practice he's come across. And he spent 17 years in India as an ascetic. He's worked on every kind of breath work you can imagine, from Lamas to holotropic breath work with Stan Groff to Wim Hof to you name it. And time after time, for himself and with others, this conscious connected breathing has been so helpful in healing these stories from our past. And with Sophie Sheeh, she's talking about using this as a way to envision our future because we have this newfound sense of agency and love for who we are, what we've been, what we want. So, to help us to integrate some of this, I'd like to invite us to do a very quick little practice to see if we can integrate this ourselves. So, you know, there's no special posture, and I'll be uh learning how to facilitate this more in the future. But I'd just like to invite both of us to breathe in this delicious nectar and out with consciousness breathing in. Consciousness breathing out.

Speaker 2 · 24:51Disconnection breathing out.

Speaker 1 · 24:59Maybe calling to mind something from the past that's maybe not traumatic, but something mild from our past that was unpleasant, stressful, reliving it a little bit. Maybe feeling that tension.

Speaker 2 · 25:25Breathing in with consciousness, breathing out with consciousness, breathing in with full connection. Breathing out with full connection.

Speaker 1 · 25:56Maybe with this increased, enhanced form of self-care or tenderness, or just sensing into who we really are as people we love as a lovable human being.

Speaker 2 · 26:19Imagine our future with this sense of freedom and self-love.

Speaker 1 · 26:36How would we feel in the future with this sense of loving ourselves fully? What would we be doing?

Speaker 2 · 26:47How would we be doing it? Feel into it because we deserve it. Why not?

Speaker 1 · 27:11And so as we practice these practices, remembering that self-love is crucial.

Speaker 2 · 27:29It's not just important, it's everything.

Speaker 1 · 27:36You know, we can be teaching mindfulness and meditation, we can be certifying to teach these things. But if we don't love ourselves, there's always going to be something missing. And we'll probably strive and burn out by trying to fill the void in ourselves by trying to do too much or convince others that mindfulness and meditation is like the best thing ever. And it is. But if we're missing that sense of self-love underneath, then there's always going to be something missing for us. And you know, this includes myself, definitely a work in progress. Oh, actually, I'm already fully lovable. Just remembering that self-love is a work in progress. And this practice of conscious, connected breathing is what I'm finding to be really, really helpful. So I hope this was helpful for you. I hope that you're able to bring more consciousness and connection to your actual breathing right now and in every breath that you take. And I hope that you have many, many, many, many more breaths to take in this lifetime. Please know that I love you. I'm rooting for you.

Speaker 2 · 29:44And may we all find this self love and conscious connected breathing for the rest of our lives. Good care.