Back to all posts

Revelation Breathwork and Life Coaching with Jason Amoroso

7 years ago

Our guest today is Jason Amoroso. He coaches professional athletes on mental peak performance. He is a life coach and a Revelation Breathwork teacher. In this episode, he talks about his life experiences and how his search for some meaning in his life lead to where he is today.

---

Listen To The Episode Here

Revelation Breathwork and Life Coaching with Jason Amoroso

Our guest today is Jason Amoroso. He coaches professional athletes on mental peak performance. He is a life coach and a Revelation Breathwork teacher. Jay, I’m really excited to talk about Revelation Breathwork today because it’s such an amazing form of meditation release. First, I’d like to talk about your life and all the amazing paths you’ve been on that led you to the one you’re on now. Jay, where are you from?

Originally, I grew up in Long Island, New York. I was there in New York through undergrad, and then moved out to LA to go to graduate school. I’ve been out here for about almost sixteen years.

Were you in any sports growing up as a kid?

Yeah. When I was a kid, primarily baseball and basketball. My father and grandfather both played baseball in college. My grandfather played in the Minor Leagues. Baseball was a great father-son bonding experience.

Were you more into basketball or baseball?

Both. I love playing basketball. It’s just a different experience. Baseball is very much a one-on-one sport guys in a team environment. It’s really pitcher and hitter. You’re always just on your own in baseball, even though it’s a team sport. But basketball really is much more of a team sport. To me, it’s like poetry in motion. It’s art. The energy of five guys playing together at one time is pretty amazing.

Are you enjoying the March Madness right now?

Yeah, I do like the March Madness. To be honest, I’m more of an NBA guy. A lot of people love college. For me, I like watching the best. Those guys are amazing. It’s fun. The excitement of college basketball is pretty awesome too.

What did you want to do after college? What were you into then?

I did not want to get a job.

What options did that leave you with?

EM 004 | Revelation Breathwork

I think it was in high school, maybe when I was a junior, a senior, I saw Jerry Maguire. I’m going to give you the short version. Back in the day, before Fantasy Baseball and Fantasy sports was a real thing, we used to do our own, what was called Rotisserie Baseball at the time. We draft our guys on napkins in the pizza parlor. We do our stats twice a year, because that’s when they printed stats in the newspaper, USA Today, at the end of the first half and at the end of the season. That’s what we did. Fantasy Baseball, or at that time Rotisserie Baseball, was a big part of my life. I loved it, I loved the wheeling and dealing and trading and trying to find the diamond in the rough. I wanted to be a GM when I was very little, probably like middle school age.

To go back to the Rotisserie Baseball drafting, did you guys make up the rules and the point system for that? Or was there a universal thing going on already where you guys just followed it?

There was more of an established structure. My dad had been doing it at his work with his coworkers. We took a page from them and did a kids’ version of that. I wanted to be a GM. But then when I saw Jerry Maguire, which I can’t remember how old I was, it was somewhere between junior high school and probably sophomore in college, whenever that movie came out, then I wanted to be an agent. That movie had a big impact on me. I went to undergrad, graduated from Cornell University. I say graduate because I started out in Saint Joseph in Philly, transferred up to Cornell. When I graduated, I did not want to work. I was like, “How can I delay working?”

I thought about grad school. My undergrad degree was in Labor Relations, which is business-y. It’s a small school at Cornell.  Gary Bettman, who I think might still be the Commissioner of the NHL, he was at the time, he went there. His daughter went there. It was a pre-law thing. I never want to be a lawyer. But my dad’s a lawyer, my uncle’s a lawyer, my stepmom’s a lawyer. There are a lot of lawyers in our family. I knew that having that degree would be valuable regardless of what I did. To get an MBA, which my brother has, usually you have to go work and then go back to get an MBA. I didn’t want to work, so I didn’t want to go to business school. I ended up applying to a bunch of law schools and got in to a couple out in LA and ended up going to Pepperdine Law School.

Was that something you always wanted to do, move out to California or it just worked out where that’s where you’re going to school?

I’m married to your cousin who I met in high school. When I was sixteen years old, we started dating and were together. When I was at Cornell, Mora, your cousin, was at Ithaca College. We stayed in the same city. She was going to chiropractic college and decided to come out to the one in Southern California, Southern California University of Health Sciences. I said, “I’ll move out to California as well.”

Did you enjoy going to law school at Pepperdine?

I did. I’m just going to be really honest, my paths are different than everybody’s. I loved going to law school because I got to play basketball all day. I lived in Venice Beach and I got to play basketball every single day. I definitely would go to class but law school was not my primary focus. I definitely was a decent enough student to learn and get by, but it wasn’t my passion. A lot of people go to law school and they’re like, “I love the law.”

People must have not liked you for playing basketball. They were probably studying their asses off. Did you just come to the school and just come naturally to you? Were you just able to wing it?

I just did what had to get done. My study methods weren’t really great. I would cram a lot. I would scramble a lot. But I always did okay. I think I have a B+ average in law school. I’m fortunate enough to have a pretty good memory when it comes to looking at things and remembering it and regurgitating it. If you ask me now what the law is, I couldn’t tell you what it is. But I knew it at the time and then three days later, I forget.

You’re getting ready to graduate law school, what’s your next step there?

EM 004 | Revelation Breathwork

Revelation Breathwork: To have a relationship is big. Every single one of my jobs in my entire life have come from a relationship.

When I was in law school at Pepperdine, all my friends during the summers were getting these $10,000 summer jobs. I wanted to work in sports. I wanted to work in baseball still. I still wanted to be, at that point, either an agent or a GM, but more on the GM side. To have a relationship is big. Every single one of my jobs in my entire life, and I’ve had many, have come from a relationship, from knowing people and caring about them. That’s really important to get to know you and trust you. If you do good work, then you have opportunities. At that point, the General Manager now of the San Diego Padres, A. J. Preller, was at the Dodgers. I was able, through that relationship, to get an internship, not in baseball operations at all but with the hospitality team. In LA, there’s lots of celebrities and they have a lot of the luxury boxes. I was one of the young kids with a suit and tie and I would walk Tom Hanks to his suite. That’s what I did that first summer when all my friends were making bank, working for law firms. I did that my first summer. Law school is three years, that was after my first year.

I slowly moved up into my second year, I was able to intern in the PR Department. In PR Department, a lot of people had gone from PR into baseball operations. I wanted to be on that track to get into baseball operations. I was able to work in PR that next summer. That was another level of exposure where I got to go down into the clubhouse after the games. The sports writers for the LA Times and all the people who covered the Dodgers at the time, they need quotes after the game to put in their story. I would go down and when some of the other media would interview, let’s say Éric Gagné, I would be there taking notes, writing down everything he said, then I’d run up to the press box and then some of the guys, the sports writers, who couldn’t go down there were like, “What do you got for me?” Then I’d tell them what I thought the best quotes were. That was really fun.

That must have been a dream job for you starting out, right? That must have been awesome.

It’s a pretty cool gig in the summer. You get to go to every single Dodgers game, every single home game, meet the players. It’s exciting at first, meeting Tom Hanks and meeting these celebrities. You realize very quickly they’re just regular people, very quickly. Especially in that job, if you have an opportunity to get inside and behind the scenes, the people who are star struck don’t last very long because they don’t want those kinds of people around. You start to see they’re regular people. They just happen to be extremely talented in sports or just high profile. That was my second summer.

Then I graduated law school and didn’t want to get a job. I wanted to stay in baseball but there are only 30 teams. On my third year of law school, during the year, those other two were summer jobs, in the third year, during the year, I actually was fortunate enough to intern in the baseball operations department at the Dodgers. That was awesome, breaking in, not making any money. But it’s just an amazing opportunity. A lot of people, I understand, need to make money. I was living off law school alone so that was just a priority for me, more the experience, the exposure, and be able to meet people, again, relationships, and show what I could do workwise and work hard. I did that as an intern. It was awesome.

I got to leverage my legal education a little bit where I got to work on some salary arbitration cases for the Dodgers. I was able to do a little bit helping out our legal team in our baseball ops team when the team went up against Scott Boras and Éric Gagné, which at the time was the biggest split. They wanted $8 million and we were offering $5 million. The arbitration has to pick either/or. Being a part of that was awesome. Just to finish up this path, after I graduated from law school, I just waited, which probably wasn’t the best decision. I graduated in May and I didn’t have a job. I planned our wedding, we got married in June. In the baseball season, people switched jobs usually in the off-season, which is October.

My good friend, A. J. Preller, was able to get a job with the Texas Rangers when his good friend, Jon Daniels, became, at 28, the GM of the Texas Rangers. He left. I was very fortunate, the timing worked out where I was able to slide in at the entry level spot at the Dodgers and the baseball operations. At the time it was called Assistant Baseball Operations. That was my first full-time job in baseball. Timing worked out. I believe everything maybe doesn’t happen for a reason, but I think we can find the meaning in everything. The timing, if we’re patient enough and are able to, which I think is really hard, in a way surrender to the timing and be patient with life’s timing, we can really have more of a grace and a flow in life than trying to force our way in to when we think something should happen at a certain time.

I find that if you do enjoy what you’re doing somewhat, I feel like those situations are easier to come by too. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. Doors tend to open and we tend to create our own opportunities by, not just our attitude and what we’re focusing on, but also if we work hard, if we don’t complain, if we add value. JJ Watt has this expression, “Every person in every job, your goal should be to outperform your contract.” To work so hard and establish so much value and help that people think you’re underpaid, just because that’s a mindset to outperform your contract. I love hearing that.

I’m a huge Jim Rohn fan. He was saying, “Add more value to yourself than you do to your job.” Work harder on yourself than you do on your job and then everything will start working better for you. A lot of people, all they do is work on their job. They don’t spend any time on their selves. They’re out working 9 to 5. By the time they come home, they’re exhausted and they really don’t do anything for themselves to help add value to themselves. If you work harder on yourself than you do on your job, every aspect of your life could have potential to grow.

EM 004 | Revelation Breathwork

Revelation Breathwork: Make the time and make it a priority to invest in yourself. That’s something that separates people.

I’ve been a lifelong student of life, of myself, of growth. I would agree that if we make the time and make it a priority to invest in our self, and I don’t think we’re really taught to do that or taught the importance of it in our traditional world, that’s something that separates people.

I had a Leadership Class in high school where they gave us The Seven Successful Habits of Highly Successful People. It was taught a little bit but there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on personal growth that I wish I could’ve started or knew about when I was that age. Because if you start working on it at that age, you’re way ahead of the game.

My big moment or awakening happened in my early 20s, maybe when I was 24. You can start in high school or middle school, just learning a little bit here and there, learning about mindfulness and meditation, and learning about more self-awareness. You have a huge advantage over a lot of people.

What happened when you were 24? What was your a-ha moment?

That’s a whole other story.  The short version of it was that I was searching for some meaning in my life. At that point, I think that was when I was interning at the Dodgers. I seemed to have a good, by all means, resume; a law school graduate, working for the Dodgers. It sounds so awesome. Just at the time, my wife and I at that point weren’t married and we’d broken up. We’ve been together for six and a half years, which was a long time, through a lot of our formative, early teens or early 20s. We broke up, which was totally necessary even though it was really difficult. I just had to find myself who I was outside of being in a relationship, finding me, which I never really did. I had some challenges with gambling, with alcohol. Just searching, trying to find some meaning, trying to figure out who I was, what I wanted to do, what my life was about. I really had no love in my life. I really had no concept of what love was outside of romantic love, but more like my connection to myself, my connection to life. What was my purpose? Who am I? Who was I?

My ex-girlfriend at the time, now wife, invited me. She invited me to a place down in California. Coming from New York, being more of a New Yorker, I see myself as a bridge between two worlds. The traditional world; grow up, go to school, get a good education, get good grades, get a good job, make good money, and that’s that law school path. Then there’s this other world which is just always drawn to me, which is more of a nonphysical, spiritual connection that I’ve always felt my whole life. I’m open to more Cali thing. I came from New York and one world, that’s California. Still on that traditional career path, but on the personal side, my wife took me to a place called the Agape International Spiritual Center. Reverend Michael Beckwith, he’s a lot more well-known now than he was then, from The Secret and from Oprah and all these things. I went to a service on a Sunday and the timing again was divine. There was just this one moment where I was overcome with this intense, almost electrical feeling in my body, which I can’t really describe. It sounds weird. I was shaking. Now, I know what it is. It was really love. My heart was so closed off at that point. I didn’t let my guard down; it just went through all the armor that I had up. It was a life changing experience. I remember like it was yesterday. It was one of those moments I’ll never forget. From that moment on, I was like, “What is this all about? I need more.” That’s how I started my personal growth path.

At this point, you’re working for the Dodgers. I’m curious, how did life coaching become one of your interests?

Once I had that spiritual awakening, I started Agape-offered classes. My wife Mora and I started taking classes there and really enjoying it. She was pregnant with our first child. We have four kids now. This was at least probably eleven and a half years ago or twelve years ago now. We were in a HypnoBirthing class. We went full on hippie when we moved out to California. Now, that’s not so crazy anymore. We had a substitute teacher in our HypnoBirthing class. Our substitute teacher was sharing about her background in the beginning of class and had mentioned that she had a Master’s in Spiritual Psychology. That just perked my ears up and my wife too, Mora. We were both like, “That sounds awesome. We want to do that.”

We looked into it at the University of Sta. Monica in Sta. Monica, California. We went to an information evening and it was very clear that this was the next path for me and her. But she was pregnant at the time so I went first. That was the two-year Master’s program. They’ve changed their structure now so they don’t offer the master’s program anymore. But the education they offer is life changing, world class, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Once I was in that program, I realized that coaching was a job.

I was working at the Dodgers at that point, concurrently to that, as I enrolled in USM. I started working in baseball operations in the Dodgers. I saw in baseball, as much as that was my dream to be a GM one day, it was totally a dream, it was something I felt like it was something I was born to do. When she got pregnant, I looked around the game and the game demands a lot. It really is a 365 days a year, 24/7 job. There’s a lot of travel involved. My parents got divorced when I was eight or nine. I’ve been with my wife since I was sixteen with that little break I talked about for about a year and a half. Relationship and family is very, very important to me. I looked ahead and didn’t see too many great examples of people with healthy family lives that worked, at least in my perception at the time.

I ended up leaving. I left my path, gave that up, to be a GM one day, and gave it up for family. It was definitely the right decision at the time. As timing always works perfectly, the Associate Counsel at the Dodgers was leaving to go somewhere else. There was an opening there. Usually, Associate Counsel positions for in-house are filled by people with law firm experience. That’s the traditional path. You go to law school, then you work for a big law firm, and then you can work in-house council. Again, I always bucked the tradition. That’s just how it has always been. The general counsel was amazing. He’s still there, San Fernandez gave me an opportunity. I’m still grateful for him. My wife was pregnant with our second child, I was studying for the Bar and I presumed my Master’s in Spiritual Psychology all at the same time. It was a pretty intense time. I took the Bar and I passed it and then I was an attorney for the Dodgers for about a year and a half. While I was an attorney, that’s when I was going through my degree at University of Sta. Monica for Spiritual Psychology.

EM 004 | Revelation Breathwork

Revelation Breathwork: It’s pretty rare in our lives that other people are actually listening and genuinely care about our lives.

To answer your question, life coaching, the way that the program of USM is set up is that it’s once a month. It’s designed for working adults. You go to a class on a weekend and then you have a whole month to practice the skills that you’re learning. I would go into my day job at the Dodgers as a lawyer. When you’re open and you’re practicing listening from your heart and listening to the person and not just waiting to talk, or you’re really present with them, people tend to gravitate towards you. Because it’s pretty rare in our lives that other people are actually listening and genuinely care about our problems or our lives. People would just come into my office and start telling me their problems and I would get to practice what I was learning. I was like, “This is a career. Life coaching can be a job.” I know there are therapists, there are marriage and family counselors, there’s all that. But I was done with school. I didn’t want to get another license. That just wasn’t my path. There are a lot of path and a lot of people I know and it’s awesome, it just wasn’t my path. That’s how I got interested in life coaching. I don’t even love that term, but that’s what we call it.

What would you call it?

I don’t know. I’ve never been able to describe it. It just sounds so Cali. The judgment I have is it sounds so soft and not substantial, even though it is the most substantial thing that I’ve ever experienced in working with people on.

I feel like when people hear life coaching they’d go, “Why would I need a life coach?”

It’s like a luxury for people who have nothing better to do; just bored and want to talk about their problems. But it’s actually so much different. I’ll share with you a little bit. The coaching that I do is from the perspective of Spiritual Psychology. After the two years at USM when I got my master’s, I did another third year of specifically soul-centered coach training with Kyle Mercer, who does the inquiry method. He is phenomenal. He’s up in Ashland, Oregon. That really complemented my USM education in Spiritual Psychology. Basically the context from which I work from, which is not for everybody, but it’s the way that I’ve lived my entire life since USM, is that our life experiences is a school. We each have our own unique curriculum. Your life is your curriculum. Life is not something that we get through. It’s not something that we have to deal with. We do make it and we do create it, but at many points, we don’t. It’s more about now, are we willing to surrender to the life that wants to emerge through us? When we’re able to slow down enough to listen to what that is, that’s when life brings us on these paths that we never could have imagined going down if we didn’t stop and listen.

People call it coincidences. In this community, you might call it synchronistic. The timing just happened to work out. That’s what happens when you’re quiet, when you’re still, when you’re listening, when you go within. The coaching that I do, it does acknowledge the world. We all want to create something in our life. For lack of a better word, we have goals. I like the word vision because it implies it’s more heartfelt. A goal could be, “I want to make a million dollars.” That’s great, awesome, have fun. If your vision is, “I want to build something and money’s a part of that.” That’s awesome. If it’s heartfelt for you, that’s awesome. Because the context of Spiritual Psychology says, as we move forward in our worldly goals or creating this vision of our life, that’s the goal line. We’re going to have opportunities to also move forward on the soul line. What are the unresolved issues inside of us, the limiting beliefs, the past emotional pain that we hold on to, the coping mechanisms that we’ve held on to, that we adopted as we were younger? All these of things that are in our way from achieving and creating and manifesting our vision come up in that process. That’s the work that I love doing with people. Let’s go for this huge heartfelt dream and goal. It’s got to have heart and meaning.

As you do that, all of these life situations are going to pop up. Most people think those are obstacles to creating and manifesting this vision and they get discouraged. “My boss is being a jerk. My wife or my husband is not cooperating. This happened. This deal fell through.” They don’t realize that all of those things are actually the universe bringing these things up for you so that we can resolve them and come to peace with them. Really look at the limiting beliefs and the self-judgments we’re holding on to. When we can release those, we’re more free to experience life. We’re more free to take action from a place of creativity as opposed to reactivity. We don’t feel like we have to prove our worth that we have to prove we’re enough, that we have to prove to other people and really to ourselves or even to God that we deserve good things to happen to us. It’s just a different context.

There’s that really good quote, “Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you.” Is that true? Maybe, maybe not. But I guarantee you, the person that does believe it and doesn’t believe it lead two different lives. That’s where it’s, “Is it true or is it not?” It’s not really the right question.

Just to piggy back on that statement, this stuff can be simple but it’s not necessarily easy to apply. It’s not always easy to find the “good” in a shitty situation. There’s a great video on YouTube, it’s called How to Deal with Adversity, Failure, Setbacks by a former Navy Seal called Jocko Willink. He wrote an amazing book called Extreme Ownership. This video, it’s more of an audio, is about this one word that he uses for everything and it’s, “good.” Whatever happens in your life, what’s the good in it? I know that can seem very flippant and Pollyannaish, “That’s a bunch of BS.” But it takes a lot more creativity to stay in that game of, where is the good in this? How can I use anything that happens, regardless if it’s awful, for learning and growth?

EM 004 | Revelation Breathwork

Revelation Breathwork: Find one example of something awful that happens that you can’t find the good in.

I challenge some of the people I work with, “Let’s play a game. Find one example of something awful that happens that you can’t find the good in.” We use the example of another great book, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, a very famous Psychologist. That’s an incredible book where he was in the Nazi Prison Concentration Camps and how he looked around, everything that’s happening, people being beaten to death, starving to death, hell on Earth conditions. There were two types of people. The type of person that saw what was happening to them and around them, and basically felt victimized by that and gave up on their will to live. They were much more likely to get beaten. They were much more likely not to survive. Another group of people that looked at all the same horrific things happening and saying inside, “I’m not going to give my power to choose my response and the meaning in this away to the Nazis and my abusers.” They were much more likely to smile, to share food or blanket with someone. They refused to give away their internal state to what was happening outside of them. It’s the same for Jesus, it’s the same for Gandhi, it’s the same for all the mystics and masters and people who reside in love throughout history. It’s about choice.

You’re still doing the life coaching and everything, right?

I do. I work with all different kinds of people. I’ve worked with executives. Here’s the sexy thing. I’ve worked with executives and millionaires and entertainers and that’s like, “Ooh,” and they’re just people. I’ve worked with teachers and waitresses, servers. I’ve worked with all different walks of life; moms, dads. If you’re a person, if you’re here in a human body, then you have a spiritual curriculum. You have issues that you’re working through that are your specific relationships with people, that are giving you the opportunity to open your heart more to love, first to yourself and then to others.

Jay, how did you stumble upon Revelation Breathwork?

Revelation Breathwork is what I’ve called this practice. This is not my invention or creation, by any means. The reason that I’ve given it that name is because, as I’ve shared this with other people, they typically say, “I’ve done breathwork before.” But when they do this type of breathwork, they usually say, “Holy smokes. I’ve never done that before.” Because it is such a unique experience for most people the first time. At least I did, I was like, “Holy smokes. That was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. For myself, I want more.” I also want to be able to bring it to the people that I help and work with because it is such a phenomenal tool, the most effective tool that I’ve experienced. I’ve done a lot of meditation, tried a lot of different things.

This is the most effective, that’s really what it comes down to. In terms of being able to get out of our head, in terms of being able to release emotional pain. Some of the other modalities I’ve taught, you can help support people in releasing emotional pain but it might take a long time. I’ve had people, decades of emotional pain and they’ve been holding on to for decades, in one session, if they’re willing and open to. It’s much more effective than talk therapy or something like that to get that emotional stuff out. We try and think our way into positive. If you’re feeling crappy, it’s hard to just think positive. That’s why a lot of people get turned off by the whole “Just think positive” idea because you feel crappy. When you’re able to release the emotional pain and the emotional energy that is the cause for our feeling crappy, then the thoughts are just positive. It’s easier. It’s like cleaning the slate and now, what positive thinking do I want to reinforce acceptance and what’s true for me?

Revelation Breathwork, I learned it from an amazing teacher. His name is David Elliott. His website is DavidElliot.com. He’s a healer. David has been doing this for a long time. He’s a phenomenal teacher. He’s well-known in the LA area, in this community, and I’m very grateful. I’m still learning from him. I’m still working with him. I was fortunate enough to be trained by him to offer this. It’s really been a game changer, pun intended for the athlete’s that I work with and for everybody else. It’s a different context.

In the athlete world, it’s more about releasing pressure, releasing stress. Because there’s a lot of young men that are very competitive, that are very driven, that have high expectations and a lot of pressure that comes with that. As young men too, we’re not really taught what to do with our emotions even, so we stuff them, we don’t really feel them too much. We want to either avoid them or deny them or put them to the side, instead of letting them come up and then out and they just pass through us so we’re not a slave to them in a way. They don’t impact us so much. This has been a great tool for them to be able to do that.

One of the cool things about Revelation Breathwork is it’s an active meditation. A lot of people, especially these young kids who have a lot of energy, you ask them to sit quietly and meditate and notice their thoughts, their breathing, it’s hard for them. But when they lay down on the floor in the breathwork and they do the active meditation, it gets their mind almost something to be occupied with. As you continue to do the breathing, all of a sudden your mind is gone and you don’t even notice that it’s gone, and you’re just breathing.

That’s why I love it, because you have to work for it in order for it to work. It’s active. Sometimes you don’t think you’re going to make it through some of those songs because you’re really working hard. I think that’s why it’s great too, because you’re really working hard and then you get to really chill out for ten minutes, fifteen minutes afterwards and really take in everything that you just did. After the breathwork part is over, the intense part, do you do the meditation where you guide people through?

EM 004 | Revelation Breathwork

Revelation Breathwork: The healing is in the breath, it’s not in all the other things. It just makes it more of a fun experience.

The way that the breathwork, at least the classes that I do that I have in Sta. Monica on Monday nights for groups is it’s about 32 minutes or so of the active breathing. Every breathwork teacher’s different. Some people play meditation, spiritual music, which is cool. For me, I like to play upbeat, rock, pop, fun music with a beat so you can breathe to the beat, that’s just me. I like that. We do that for 30 minutes. It sounds like a lot but once you start to breath, it’s over before you know it. It is work. You can work really hard and get a really big payoff. You don’t have to work hard either. The healing is in the breath, it’s not in all the other things. It just makes it more of a fun experience.

After we do the 32 minutes of active breathing, I always tell people the intention is to really open your heart as you’re breathing. If we do that, the healing happens, the energy moves through our body. In the yoga world, it’s called Shavasana, where you just lay on the ground with breathing through your nose and you relax. We do that for about twelve to fifteen minutes. I play calmer music there. People just have really big experiences at that point.

I’ve had more major spiritual experiences where I’m connected to God, source, love, and that’s inside, not somewhere out there, doing breathwork than I’ve had before. I’ve had some pretty big ones at USM and other places before, but this is such a tool that just clear out all the crap. My philosophy on life, spirituality, coaching, working with athletes, working with everybody, can be summed up in one of my favorite quotes by Toni Morrison, “If you want to fly, you have to give up the shit that weighs you down.” Because it’s all the crap that we’re holding on to, it’s all in our head, in our own consciousness. A more spiritual thing would be from one of the mystic poets Rumi, which is, “Our task is not to seek for love. Our task is to seek for all the obstacles to love and remove them.” Same idea.

Our natural state is loving. Our natural state is freedom. Our natural state is peace. It’s all the extra crap that we’ve bought into, adopted from when we were little, and all the stuff that gets in the way of that. It’s more of an un-conditioning process. It’s more of a letting go process, instead of a searching and seeking for this love, this freedom, this energy. It’s already here.

You can see the emotional release on almost everybody’s face coming out of that door when that class is over.

Yes. It’s crazy.

How many people come up and hug you after one of those sessions? I feel like everybody’s just so grateful for where they are at that moment. It’s one of the most unbelievable things I’ve seen collectively, in a collective meditation like that.

It’s really cool, beautiful experience for people to open up like that. The group energy, the group dynamic is bigger than a private. I do privates too and those are really different. They can be intense but they can be beautiful. They’re slower, they’re more gentle. The privates are more for people that are dealing with something in their life that they’re either stuck on or they’re ready to let go of. They know they need to shift but they don’t know how. It’s really intimate and personal. So much of a different flavor, but it’s still using the breath for healing and release. Either one, it’s about opening our hearts. People do this, we armor up. At some point, we get hurt and we’re like, “I don’t want to feel that anymore.” We armor up our hearts and we develop coping mechanisms to not let people or life into that tender wound that we still have that’s never healed. But the only way it’s going to heal is if we’re willing to open up and we’re willing to feel and release that pain that we’re holding on to. This kind of work, this personal growth work, whether it’s in breathwork, whether it’s in life coaching, even mental coaching, it takes a lot of courage to look at the parts inside of you that are hurting or that are feeling betrayed or abandoned. Every single human being on the planet can relate to all of that stuff. This feeling of somehow not enough, not worthy enough, we all have it.

Just when you feel like you’ve got it all figured it out, it hits you in the face again and you’re right back at it.

EM 004 | Revelation Breathwork

Revelation Breathwork: I’m no master by any means. I just made a commitment to go down this road.

I’m no expert. I’m no master by any means. I just made a commitment to go down this road. That’s just the most important thing in my life, is opening my heart and experiencing love and God and forgiveness and all these great things that we hear about and read about and understand intellectually. But when we have the experience of that, it’s something you never forget and you can never go back from.

Where can people find out about breathwork and everything, classes near them, to be more educated on the subject?

That’s the thing with the term breathwork. If you are not in LA and you want to try, you could type in breathwork and see what comes and see. What I’ve been trained in is the two-step technique. It’s a belly breath, chest breath, and an exhale. I recommend that people go to a class they can find instead of just listening to my two-second explanation there and trying it on their own. There’s different kinds of breathwork. There’s holotropic breathwork, which I’ve tried before. There’s yoga breathing. There’s the fire breath. There are all these different things.

My website’s RevelationBreathwork.com. I teach a class pretty much every Monday in Sta. Monica, from 7:30 to 8:30 for the most part. I do the privates. I’m also starting to do a men’s only breathwork group. Because in the work that I do with athletes, it’s all men. The energy is so awesome and different. It’s like warrior energy but not in a violent way. It’s more of like a healing way. It’s really cool and sacred. If you’re in LA, there’s a ton of breathwork.

How are the athletes? Are they receptive to the breathwork and everything?

Absolutely. It’s not unlike anything they’ve ever experienced. It gives them that, let’s them press the energetic reset button unlike anything else. Most young men and young people, let’s just say young men because that’s the athletes that I work with, we’re not taught really great strategies on how to deal with stress and pressure and the emotions that come with that. What do most of us do? We drink. We gamble. We play video games. We masturbate to porn. We do all this stuff that’s just becomes the outlet for us. Because one, we’re not really taught anything and that’s what other people do. It’s just how we’re conditioned. There are other ways. That’s one of my biggest missions with working with these young men, to show them that these other ways are one, more effective. If it works, if it’s more effective, do it. They are just healthier, more aligned outlets to recontextualize and let go of stress. They absolutely love it.

Probably after the breathwork, they’re naturally probably just making better life decisions.

We make bad life decisions when we’re not in touch with our intuition, when we’re not in touch with our heart, when we’re not clear on who we are as a person, what our values are. When we’re distracted, when we’re trying to prove something to somebody else, when we don’t want to look a certain way, when we care too much what people think. When our focus is on our ego and the externals in our life, we make decisions that are influenced by fear. A bad decision for the most part is one made by fear.

EM 004 | Revelation Breathwork

Revelation Breathwork: Every time somebody makes a decision against their intuition and their heart, it never works out.

I work with people all the time, they make decisions against their intuition because they think it’s the right thing to do or other people would be disappointed if they don’t, or for the money. Every time somebody makes a decision against their intuition and their heart, it never works out on its face. At the end, you can use that experience to realize how important it is to live from your intuition. The key though is we have to be willing to slow down enough, to make time to slow down and get really still and listen inside. Then it’s like a muscle, our intuition. The more we pay attention to it, the more we ask ourselves, what is my gut feel here? Am I courageous enough and willing to follow that? Because it’s not always the thing that makes the most sense. If we are, the more we use that muscle, the stronger it gets and the easier we are able to make good decisions that are aligned with who we are, our values. Yes, I think breathwork helps remove the crap that’s in the way, so we can experience who we really are, what we’re all about. Then we can live in the world from that place, which includes taking action and making decisions. It’s not always easy to do.

I miss going to those classes. I felt great after every single one.

I’m working on putting together a virtual class. When that happens, you’ll be the first to know and then maybe we can do something online where people can breathe from the comfort of their own homes.

Jay’s website is RevelationBreathwork.com. You can also find him on Jason Amoroso Coaching on Facebook. Jay, I had a great time talking today. It was an awesome podcast. Thank you for being honest and putting all the cards on the table. I really appreciate that.

It’s been a real pleasure. I’m just grateful to connect with you Kev, and just be able to share. Hopefully this is in service to someone and some people got value from it. At the end of the day, we’re all doing the best that we can. I appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you so much, Jay.

Thanks, Kev.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

Join Expect Miracles community today: