165: Christian Minson – Healing Your Life With Breathwork

“Plant medicine and breath were the mandate to bring Rythmia into existence.”
– Christian Minson

Hello everyone and welcome back to ONKEN Radio (previously NION Radio)! I am so excited to have you all here with me today, and we have a great episode in store for you today. You all know that my main goal with this podcast is to heighten your creativity, business, and life to the highest level possible, so it comes as no surprise that today’s guest possesses unique tools to help all of you creative entrepreneurs out there do just that. 

If you tune in regularly to the podcast, you may remember my previous episode, #164, in which I discussed my journey with breathwork and how it has helped me improve my creative flow as well as the immense healing potential it has. Going back even further to episode #161, I told you all about my first experience at Rythmia. In the following episode, I sat down with founder Gerard Powell and had a great conversation all about his story and how he founded Rythmia. 

Today, however, we have the director of breathwork at Rythmia, Mr. Christian Minson, here to talk about all the wonderful things this practice can do for not only your creativity but your life in general. So, without further delay, let’s jump into today’s episode.

Who Is Christian Minson?

Christian has been a breathwork facilitator for the past 12 years and is a senior trainer with the Transformational Breathwork Foundation. He has traveled to the far reaches of the world giving seminars and meeting with individuals privately, giving them this breathwork technique for the healing of physical ailments, emotional balancing, spiritual connection, greater connectivity, and connection to their intuition. 10 years before all of this, however, Christian lived as a monk.

Christian said he likes to include this fact about himself because as a monk, the meditation techniques that he practiced were really just modified breathing techniques, which he further simplifies as “manipulating the breath to send the energy up and down the spine so that we could let go of body consciousness and attain higher states of awareness.” Including his time spent as a monk, Christian credits himself with 22 years of working with the breath in some way. For the past two years, Christian has been the director of breathwork at Rythmia, and he says he is loving the program there. 

Christian’s Story

When I asked him how he found himself pursuing the life of a monk, Christian had this to say:

“[After taking psychedelic medicine in my senior year of high school,] … I just felt this communication happening. There were no words, there was no message. It was just this understanding that God, if you will, and I were in communion. And from there, that really kickstarted my desire to seek deeper into what the true meaning of life was and the true purpose of my life in particular. And through that seeking, I basically came upon a book called Autobiography of a Yogi by a spiritual master called Paramahansa Yogananda. And he basically laid it out and said the purpose of life is our own self-realization, our own evolution towards embracing our own divinity and realizing that in body, mind, and soul, and the way to do that — his primary way — was through meditation.”
– Christian Minson

Christian went on to join the self-realization fellowship called The Yoon Organization, which was actually headquartered in Los Angeles and lived there as a monk for 10 years. If you’re like me, you may be wondering how you can live as a monk in downtown Los Angeles. Christian said that they resided on top of a hill called Mount Washington with a beautiful view that stretched out over the pacific. Even though they were a mere 7 minutes from downtown, Christian says he felt so removed from everything that it hardly felt like you were in the city at all. 

After a full decade of living as a monk, I wondered what made Christian decide to leave the monastery and integrate back into society. He said that it ultimately came down to his evolution as a person and the importance of realizing when to make changes in your life that benefit growth. Shortly before leaving the monastery, Christian was introduced to breathwork by a friend and found it to be immensely helpful in getting in touch with his emotional nature and working through his emotions. 

Christian began to feel like he was only remaining a monk because he was afraid to reintegrate back into society, so once he realized how big of an impact breathwork was having on him, he decided to share it with the world. Christian hasn’t looked back since and says the only part of being a monk he misses is the simplicity of everyday life where he was free of having a job or maintaining emotional relationships. 

“When you’re on your path, you feel in tune, and you feel in sync, and even if life is rough, which it has been rough, the easier path was definitely to stay in the monastery, but I’ve met those challenges. And a lot of those challenges have been the things that I came out to face. That’s where my evolution edge has been. So you’re always on that edge of evolution — you’re always in a little bit of fear because you’re always on the edge. But you’re always also in excitement because that’s where you’re growing. That’s where you’re evolving.”
– Christian Minson

Wow, I couldn’t agree more with that. Christian’s story is a real testament to taking a leap of faith even if it intimidates you or you don’t want to leave the comfort of familiarity. Part of this is what Christian believes led him down this path in the first place. Christian was raised in a military household, so almost everything was compartmentalized and rigorously structured — “very 9-5,” as he puts it. As he grew up, he began to understand that he wanted something different out of life. He had a natural entrepreneurial spirit and wanted to make his own way in life instead of following in his parent’s footsteps, so that is precisely what he did.

Breathwork, Explained

Now that we know a bit about Christian’s backstory, we can dive into the specific type of breathwork he teaches at Rythmia. 

“What I was teaching really comes from a modern wave of breathwork starting in the 1970s, and from there another popular style called holotropic breath emerged, and then transformational breath, which is the school that I studied in led by a woman named Judith Kravitz. Those were what I call ‘the big three’ in this modern-day wave of breathwork. So that’s the style that I teach. It comes from the transformational breath school and in this modern-day breath style.”
– Christian Minson

Christian went on to explain that transformational breathing is the most hands-on approach, where facilitators actually work with you to enhance your breathing. The breathing technique used in transformational breathing is called a full free-flowing breath pattern, which will not only bring up emotional catharsis but also model a breath pattern you can use in every breath you take regardless of what you’re doing. With enough practice, you can incorporate this type of breathwork into your everyday life and actually make yourself feel better without having to schedule and go to a therapeutic session. 

This is a game-changer, guys. We all get beat up by the daily struggles of life and end up in need of catharsis, so having a way to recenter yourself while going about your normal daily routine is a huge advantage. I am continuously blown away by the profound impact breathwork can have on our lives and am so thankful Christian was here to tell us about his story. This is all critical information and beneficial to everyone, but how does breathwork specifically aid in creative processes?

“So breath oxygen just happens to be the element that carries prana (Sanskrit term for life force) in abundance, the most abundance. It’s prana that makes flowers grow and continue to evolve. It’s prana that animals continue to survive. It stimulates our own creative nature. So as we’re breathing and bringing this product into our physical space, it starts to activate the creative agent in our brain, and we start getting creative insights. It tweaks your brain so that this creative energy is there in abundance.”
– Christian Minson

Identity Alchemy

There is no better accompaniment to the creative process than breathwork. By incorporating the techniques described by Christian, you are opening the door for so many more opportunities with your creativity. Not only that, but it can help you work through the process of Identity Alchemy as well! 

Alchemy is defined as the process of taking something ordinary and turning it into something extraordinary, sometimes in a way that cannot be explained.

With that being said, I define Identity Alchemy as the process of deconstructing who you don’t want to be in order to realize who you want to become. 

Through it, you’ll be able to identify your shadows or the things you don’t want to be true about you and shed them slowly. I believe that the deconstruction process of life and your inner world is such a huge piece of understanding who you are so that you can curate who you want to become. In general, I noticed for myself that the more inner work that I do — the deeper shadow work that I do to understand myself — the better life becomes toward the path of wholeness.

If you loved this episode, make sure to check out Christian’s website, and he’s also on Facebook and Youtube.

And by the way, don’t forget to check out my website too. There, you can find a quick ten-question quiz designed and get some of my best free content to help you out on your creative journey.

Thank you so much for joining me today, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode — if you did, please screenshot it and post it to Instagram and tag me, @nickonken. And if you’ve got time, leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. I’d love to hear your feedback.

I’ll see you guys next time!

Nick Onken

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“What our body, mind, and soul runs on is prana. Oxygen happens to be the element that carries prana in abundance.”
– Christian Minson

Some things we learn in this podcast:

• Christian’s long history with breathwork and teaching its process [3:23]
• Why Christian moved on from the Monk lifestyle [9:41]
• How breathwork became a career path for Christian [14:42]
• The differences between different styles of breathwork [19:41]
• What’s happening in our brain when you participate in breathwork, and how it can facilitate creativity [21:52]
• How Christian utilizes breath to get into his own creative space [26:51]
• Where you can go to work on your breath with others [29:24]
• How Gerry and Christian met and how he started working at Rythmia [31:01]
• What makes Rythmia such a unique place to try plant medicine [38:59]
• What a breath session looks like [45:00]

Links Mentioned:

• 161: Experimenting with Plant Medicine
• 162: Gerry Powell – How Plant Medicine Can Change Your Life
• 163: Dr. Jeff McNairy – How Plant Medicine Works In Your Brain
• 164: How Breathwork Has Helped My Creative Flow
• Autobiography of a Yogi by P. Yogananda
• Rythmia

Connect with Christian Minson on Facebook | YouTube | BreathFlow.com