Healing and Activating Through Breathwork With Kurtis Lee Thomas

A Personal Note From Orion

Greetings, luminous souls! I’m overjoyed to welcome you to another transformative episode of Stellar Life. This week, I’m joined by my amazing guest, Kurtis Lee Thomas, to explore how breathwork can illuminate your life’s journey to empowerment and healing.

Kurtis is a true visionary in the realm of mindfulness and conscious living. As a sought-after Corporate Mindfulness Trainer, public speaker, and bestselling author, he has dedicated his life to guiding others toward their highest potential. Kurtis is the founder and CEO of Breathwork Detox Inc. and board chair of the Just Breathe Foundation. Kurtis’ accolades include the #1 international bestseller, The World is Yours and 2024 Entrepreneur of the Year in Best Holistic Life Magazine.

In this episode, Kurtis shares his inspirational journey and profound insights on the life-changing practice of breathwork. You’ll learn tangible tips to activate the “God molecule,” gain clarity, and facilitate profound healing within yourself and others. His unique, wise perspectives on love, compassion, and personal growth are sure to uplift and empower you.

So take a deep, nourishing breath, open your heart, and get ready to receive the wisdom Kurtis has to share. I can’t wait for you to experience the magic that unfolds when we step into our highest selves. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the show!

In This Episode

[02:05] – Orion welcomes Kurtis Lee Thomas back to the show, with Kurtis sharing his best lessons from the last two years.
[05:17] – Kurtis talks about attracting the right people to your team.
[10:13] – Kurtis explains how his breathwork detox modality is the deepest cleansing and cathartic and why they focus on specific techniques.
[17:50] – Kurtis expresses his biggest dream to impact more lives through breathwork, aiming for a ripple effect on the planet.
[23:35] – Orion and Kurtis discuss detaching from negativity and hardships by turning off the news and practicing spirituality.
[29:45] – Orion emphasizes the importance of staying in the light and having the right intention, while Kurtis views darkness as a multifaceted concept that can be both feared and embraced.
[33:30] – Orion and Kurtis elaborate on handling challenging situations in breathwork facilitation training.
[44:22] – Kurtis offers tips for living a stellar life.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hi, Kurtis. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here again. I’m super excited to be talking to you.

I’m excited, too. Let’s get it on.

Before we dive in, can you share one or more of the best lessons you have learned in the last year or two?

I don’t know if I’d call it a lesson, but I just had a new appreciation for people. When you have really good people in your company who are aligned with your mission, they can take so much of your stress and things off of your plate so you can focus on your genius and the things that you’re good at and passionate about.

When you have really good people in your company who are aligned with your mission, they can take so much of your stress and things off of your plate so you can focus on your genius.

Delegation and automation were really great lessons for me. I realized that I didn’t need to do it all myself. I think the Capricorn problem is that we think we need to do it ourselves. I noticed that when you have a new business or a startup, you always have to hire the person who’s going to do the best job for the lowest amount of money.

When you’re doing startups all the time, that person is always you because you’re going to do it cheaper than everyone else, and you’re going to do it the way that you want to. Building a like-minded team helps us get to the mission and what we all want to accomplish. That has been a good lesson, just realizing that I don’t have to do everything on my own.

How do you attract those people?

It probably just ties right into the law of attraction. I did have to go through what they said about a few frogs. I had to find the tribe. Your vibe attracts your tribe, and I think that the more you grow and the more you put yourself out there, the more the right people will resonate and want to be a part of that. That’s really what’s been happening. I have been attracting some pretty amazing folks to come along and be a part of this ride with me.

The law of attraction is always in effect. You can’t turn it off, skip a turn, or do anything. It’s always an effect. It’s like gravity. If I pick this bottle cap up and let go, it will drop.

It’s the same with the law of attraction. It’s always in motion. You can’t unplug it. You can’t do any of these things, so you just have to learn how to utilize it better. You don’t need to learn the law of attraction because you already know how to attract things. You’ve been doing it your entire life.

Sometimes, we attract the wrong things, or we attract things that we don’t want, or manifesting is really slow. There are tips, tools, tricks, and techniques to expedite manifestations, for sure. But I want to just throw that out there, saying that you don’t really need to learn it because you’ve already been doing it. You just need to fine-tune it.

The law of attraction is always in motion.

How do you attract the right people, and how do you keep them? How do you do good management? How do you manage your group in the best way? Do you guys do breathwork together? Do you go on trips together? How do you create teamwork?

Know thyself. That’s number one. Number one is I hate managing people. That’s not my thing. I’ve always been an entrepreneur; we just get things done independently, and that’s how I am. I don’t want anybody managing me, and that’s just the DNA of an entrepreneur.

I’m not good at managing other people. I want proactive, self-sufficient people, but people do need to be managed. It’s just not by me. So then you have to find a manager to manage the people who need managing.

That’s not where I’m good at. That’s a lot of it. It’s just knowing yourself, realizing who you are, who you’re not, what you’re good at, and what you’re not.

What are you good at? What’s your genius?

My genius is connecting the dots between whether it’s information like I did in The World Is Yours. It took profound occult, mystical information and practical spiritual-level information like the law of attraction. I took these two worlds, and I connected them into a very easy-to-read narrative for the average person who’s looking to awake or someone who’s deep down the path, who can read this book, and it can help put everything into perspective.

Breathwork Detox by Kurtis Lee Thomas

It’s like the edges of a puzzle board. If you have all the edges of the puzzle board, it’s a lot easier to put your pieces on the puzzle board and see the picture, but it’s really hard to just get your puzzle piece and figure out where it is. That’s what that book is, really connecting dots.

Also, within business, it’s the overall vision of where we’re heading, what we’re looking to do, the macro level of business, and marketing. I’m good at marketing.

I also would like to get good at doing this right here: a podcast. Because you have to look at things like, “What can you delegate?” Well, it’s crazy because now you can actually delegate an AI avatar to do video.

Maybe in a few months, but it’s not there yet.

No, it’s there. I promise there are videos right now that you can go to on AI platforms and just record them like this. I can upload this video and give it a script of something I’ve written or something that it can write for me. Then I’ll take my video and have me say in that script as if I’m talking to you right now, and you can barely tell the difference that exists today.

Yeah, I know in different languages, but you can tell. It’s not there where it’s completely 100% polished. But yes, if you get a voicemail, it will sound completely like you. AI scares me.

I have a buddy who’s really deep into AI and has, I think, over 12 patents. He’s been in it for a really long time, and his AI is a little bit different. He explained that AI is all about making computers smarter so they can eventually take over jobs. That’s the point of AI and the direction in which it’s going.

Know yourself and realize who you are, who you’re not, what you’re good at, and what you’re not.

His AI is focused on making humans smarter, so it’s much different than the AI out there and what he’s trying to do. His company is called ALAI, and some of the things that he’s doing are pretty cool. I’m not sure what I can divulge, but I like his intention because his intention is pure in what he’s creating within AI. It’s scary to see some things happening in the AI world.

Not everybody is pure. We have very evolved beings, and we also have some who want to destroy the planet or have some evil plan. Even Elon Musk has been warning people about the implications of AI. Do you think AI will ever have consciousness like we do?

I think there are already AI entities in the world that are hybrids—not in this world, but in the universe—that aren’t fully human. I think that already exists, for sure. It’s probably the beings and entities stewarding this AI evolution, but that’s my opinion if you want to go out there.

First of all, how did you develop your method of breathwork? What is the difference between it and other methods?

There are many different types of breathwork. You have many forms of pranayama. There’s also alternate nostril breathing. There’s box breathing. There are many different techniques that do different things. I focus on a deep diaphragmatic breathing technique in certifying people, and there are many names for that as well.

My modality is called breathwork detox. There’s a reason why I called it breathwork detox: not because this modality is the deepest cleansing, but because it is the most cathartic modality out there. Nothing can compare to the power of deep diaphragmatic breathwork, AKA breathwork detox.

I focus on that modality just because I’ve been in life coaching. I’ve been certified in NLP, hypnotherapy, Reiki Master, sports science, and all these different modalities. I think anyone who is a therapist, a trainer, or a coach is in the business of helping people. That’s why they’re there. They go to school, or they get these certifications, or they learn these techniques and modalities ultimately because they want to produce results for their clients, and I wanted the same.

Unfortunately, not all modalities are as effective as others, and no modality is created the same. I liked breathwork detox because I found a vehicle that could house the ultimate, like the transformers, and that could fit all the other certifications, skill sets, and modalities that I had into this container.

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Then, this container was actually the most receptive from clients and corporations because I was not saying, “Hey, let’s go and hypnotize your employees. Let’s go to NLP. Let’s go Reiki master them.” It’s like, “Hey, we’re going to do a breathing exercise.” But little do they know it’s the Trojan horse and it’s the most profound breathing exercise that they can do next to DMT or ayahuasca, and it’s completely natural and normal. It’s very euphoric. Once they go through the experience, they’re like, “Oh my God, I never knew that existed, and they’re very grateful.”

I do like going into companies, but I also spend a lot of time certifying other teachers to teach my modality. My two areas of time are most allocated to training teachers and trainers and working with corporations.

What happens when you do breathwork? From my understanding, you activate the God molecule. What are you connected to?

Everything. The God Molecule, I believe you’re referring to AKA The Spirit Molecule, which they did a whole documentary. They call DMT (dimethyltryptamine).

What is 5-MeO-DMT?

It’s like the toad or the frog that activates the DMT in the body, which causes profound experiences. It’s probably the most profound experience you’ll ever have ever in every area of ever.

Ever ever?

100%. It’s also an active component in ayahuasca. Any of these crazy experiences that you hear it’s because of DMT. However, it’s in everybody. It’s in every plant and every animal. Everybody has it in them. We secrete it every night within our pineal gland, which causes us to go into our dream state.

When that DMT secretes while we’re sleeping, it launches us into literally the most magnificent virtual reality gaming system ever known to man, which is the dream world where you can be in there, and you feel it so real. The next thing you know, you wake up and say, “Oh, that was a dream,” and then go about your life. That’s the power of that chemical.

Breathwork detox is the most cathartic modality out there.

But when you say it activates the God Molecule, which is the same thing that we’re talking about, what I discovered is that the DMT not only secretes from the pineal gland but also from the lungs and actually more than the pineal gland. It’s just hard to activate it within the lungs. However, this technique that I found activates it, but it’s not absurd doses or amounts.

Someone’s listening to this and is like, “Wait, I don’t want to trip my balls off or end up in a different reality.” It’s not like that. It secretes just enough to make you feel euphoric, blissful, and connected to a higher power—to that AKA God molecule.

It gives you profound insight and realizations about your life, and you’re able to solve problems that you couldn’t solve before. It activates the transient hypofrontality, that process in your brain that gives you immense clarity. Clarity is just so valuable. I believe that because I think the opposite is confusion, and confusion is temporary insanity.

When you’re able to do a natural technique that gives you clarity, deep healing, and profound insight into this natural euphoria, it’s like, “What? How much is that drug? Oh, wait, it’s for free! I can learn this, and I can teach it to other people. Okay, teach me what you know.”

That’s how I get many of my newbies who are curious to go through the experience, and then a good portion of those people want to have this tool in their toolbox, whatever type of coach or healer therapist they are.

Do you teach it more over Zoom or in person?

The DMT not only secretes from the pineal gland but also from the lungs and actually more than the pineal gland.

I do both, but mainly, it’s virtual. I’ve cultivated a pretty awesome virtual experience that has been extremely effective and allowed me to lead tens of thousands of people in over 29 countries right now, and it’s all virtual. I do some live performances. I did a live one in South Florida.

Where in Florida, please?

It’s in Sebastian, Florida, near Orlando. It’s at this private 40-acre utopia, a beautiful, awesome glamping. It’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s called ChoZen Retreat Center. That’s when we’re doing our next retreat, which is also a breathwork detox certification. I did a regular live event at St. George, Utah, on March 2nd. Then I’ll just do pockets of tours. I’ll do an East Coast, but mostly it is virtual.

I can’t wait for you to come to Miami. That will be really fun.

Oh, you’re in Miami. I was just in Naples doing some breathwork events.

Okay, cool. Even doing the virtual with you—I’ve done it only once, and I don’t want to shoot all over myself—I should do it again because it was a profound experience for me. It was really very powerful, actually. Amazing.

I’m curious to see how I’ve evolved as a person doing it the second time. I wondered how you think you evolved with all this work, doing so much breathwork and touching so many lives.

Doing breathwork for myself and facilitating breathwork for others affects my life in many ways. It gives me my own clarity and insight. It’s more of an inside job, and that’s extremely beneficial for me because I’m getting the same benefits as other people who go through the experience.

Embrace curiosity for a rewarding and fulfilling future.

But when I facilitate other people when I get to be with them, have them share their testimonials, experiences, and breakthroughs, when I get to see that time and time again and be the catalyst for their healing, for their life-changing realizations, I can’t tell you how many times people have gone through breathwork with some problems. It doesn’t even matter what they are. Then they come out, and they solve the problem.

This could be a problem they’ve had for 4, 5, 10 years, or it could be a healing, something they’d be trying to heal from energetically, emotionally healed in one session, or just anything that’s been going on in their life.

They come and say, “Wow, that one breathwork session that I did with you completely changed the way I looked at this or that.” Hearing that time and time again doesn’t boost my pride as maybe it did in the beginning, but more now, as I settle into what I do, it confirms that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m in my purpose, and that is a really good feeling.

Amazing. What’s your biggest dream? Where do you want to be? What do you want to achieve in this realm?

Confusion is temporary insanity.

My biggest dream right now is honestly just doing more of what I’m already doing. I already feel so aligned with what I’m teaching and who and how I’m impacting people. I’m at the point now where I want to impact more lives, so tens and thousands. What about tens of millions? I want to create that ripple effect. I can’t imagine what type of impact that would make on the planet because we’re all connected.

One of the great things I realized in spirituality is that people would be shocked if they realized how when they heal within themselves or have certain realizations or epiphanies within themselves, it doesn’t just affect them. It affects their ancestors, their kids, their ancestors, dead or alive, and even their galactic lineage.

These things get downloaded within the collective of your exact lineage and the collective of humanity. That profound realization or just knowledge that I’ve learned is why you hear the great—this isn’t just me talking about this—Lao Tzu says, “Be the change you wish to see.” If you want to get rid of all of the darkness in the world, get rid of all the darkness within yourself. If you want to get rid of all the suffering in the world, get rid of the suffering within yourself. It really comes down inside of you. The transformations you make within you actually affect the collective.

They did these scientific studies with small groups in Washington, D.C. They’d go to Washington, D.C., which at the time—I think this was in the 1980s —was the murder capital of the world. They would take small groups of people meditators, and they would meditate on peace.

I remember in this study, the police chief came on air, and someone asked him, “What do you think about this study that’s supposed to increase the peace in DC?” He says, “It’s going to take two feet of snow to decrease the violence in this city right now.” Sure enough, they employed this meditation, and it dropped by 46%. Even the police chief was like, “This woo-woo stuff is real?”

Doing breathwork for myself gives me my own clarity; it’s more of an inside job.

They also did it in the Middle East, where 7,000 people employed meditation. They measured its effectiveness by the number of terrorist attacks and hospital visits. Violence was how they made this quantifiable and measurable. When they did meditation, all of the bombings, terrorist attacks, and hospital visits would decrease. Then, when they stopped the meditation, slowly, you’ll see it go up.

You can Google this. It’s called the Maharishi effect. A small group of people can literally affect the collective of an entire area, continent, and even the world. I think that is probably the biggest realization that anyone on the path can have, and probably the only way that we could save the planet is if just small groups of people unite and we all collectively have the same vision for the world. That would literally change everything all night.

There are so many things and plans to divide people. They constantly try to divide us and put us in boxes. What’s your race? What’s your agenda? What’s your tax bracket? What’s this? What’s that? It’s like constant division, pitting people against them, this pitting Democrats and Republicans.

It’s all these, they’re them, they’re that, and it’s mainly to stop us from uniting because if we all united on one vision, we’d be astounded at how fast the entire planet can change. I truly believe that, and that’s why I believe there’s so much division in the world.

How do you deal with bad news or hardships or the state of the world in everyday life? How do you detach? Because even though I consider myself a spiritual person with many spiritual practices, I, too, sometimes get sucked into that illusion of separation.

Step one is to turn the news off. I haven’t watched the news for over ten years. I haven’t turned on the TV and put on the news. I remember going to the barbershop, and every time I went to the barbershop, they’d have this news on the news station, and I’d be like, “Dude, do you have any idea this stuff is just programming everyone’s subconscious in here?” He’s like, “Really? Man, I’m always stressed out.” I’m like, “Yeah, because you watch the news every single day. Turn it off.”

The law of attraction is an ever-present force that subconsciously shapes our reality — you can't turn it off, pause it, or opt-out. Click To Tweet

He’s like, “Yeah, but how will I know what’s going on?” I’m like, “I haven’t watched the news in many years.” He goes, “Do you think I’m okay? I’m like, “You’ll be fine. Trust me.” Turning the news off is number one. That would make such an impact because of how many people are addicted to the news. People are addicted to serial killer movies and all these things.

I went to NGH (National Guild of Hypnotists), the oldest and largest hypnotherapy school in the world. That’s what I got certified by. I’m a very skeptical person. If anyone’s listening to this, and I sound far out there, trust me. Stick around because I’m probably more skeptical than you. At one point, maybe not anymore, I was just skeptical of different groups of people than I am now.

What they teach you and when you learn about the subconscious mind is that it doesn’t know the difference between experiencing something or watching it on TV. You could be sitting there, and bombs are going off in Syria or Gaza or wherever. What’s going to happen? Your heart’s going to elevate and race. You’ll get nervous, but your eyes are seeing all these things.

If you’re watching an intense movie about the bombing—it’s suspenseful, it’s a thriller—your palms begin to sweat, your heart’s racing, and you have anxiety. All the physiological triggers go off in the body the same as if you were there, but the subconscious does not know the difference between whether it’s physically happening or you’re there.

In order to eradicate the world’s darkness, you must first erase your own internal darkness.

That’s why all these reactions in the body still happen. The brain doesn’t shut off and say, “Oh, this is just a movie, so we’re not going to feel stress, anxiety, or fear.” No, you still feel stressed, anxious, or fearful.

If you’re constantly watching the news and seeing all these horrible things happening, you’re programming your subconscious to constantly connect to negativity as its default. They say neurons in the brain, neurons that fire together, wire together. What does that mean? It means that when you have these thought synapses that keep firing, they create a neural pathway, becoming the path of least resistance.

What about social media? Sometimes, things sneak in on your social media. If social media entertains you and you want to watch it, then you eventually are going to come across stuff that you don’t like.

I could substitute those two for social media because I am on social media. But you can change the channel on social media and control who you follow. I don’t follow pages that I know post this stuff. If I’m watching a page and it evokes an emotion inside of me that I don’t like consistently, I unfollow it. It’s very simple. I follow people who lift me, inspire me, and give me new knowledge and information. That’s it. It’s simple.

Be the change you wish to see. – Lao Tzu

When I arrived in the States and watched Halloween happening for the first time, it was quite appalling to me. I’ll go trick or treat with my son, but I see all those images like skulls and ugly things and bloody things. It’s just so dark. What is this dark obsession? Why are people so obsessed with darkness?

They’re decorating their whole houses with skulls, graves, and dark, horrible things. It just feels like a big, dark national holiday. Watch dark things, dress as dark things, and get your sugar on. That would be great for your body and soul.

You said exactly what it is. It’s a demonic day. The devil has his own day here. It’s quite clear. The crazy part about it is how we actually celebrate it. We get so excited, and we celebrate it and buy it. It’s very much a demonic day. It doesn’t take an awakened soul or rocket scientist to figure that out.

I just thought I was a rocket scientist for a second there.

We know you are. You’re from Orion. You are special. You’re absolutely right. There are many things we do on this crazy planet that either don’t make sense, or maybe we don’t understand what we’re actually doing, celebrating, worshiping, idolizing, or believing. There’s a lot of that that goes on.

There’s a house near mine, and they were obsessed with Halloween. They had maybe 200 items in their backyard and front yard, and scary sounds played on and off for two weeks. My little boy was scared of going down the street or trying not to look when we drove to school. It was pretty wild.

When you encounter darkness, I go back to that: What do you do to stay in the light, focus on the light, and have the right intention?

Follow people who lift me, inspire me, and give me new knowledge and information.

I look at darkness as a different thing. It could be Halloween, like you’re talking about. There could be crazy things on TV. I’ll try to stay out of the darkness, but I’m also unafraid. Finding that happy balance works for me because even the work I do with breathwork is very healing, but sometimes people have these profound experiences. I’ve witnessed some crazy healings in my eyes that could be perceived as like, “Whoa, that’s pretty crazy. That almost looks like this or that.”

I have to be comfortable in the energy of people’s pain and darkness, and I have to be able to sit in mine and other people’s. That’s not even an opinion that I have. It’s more integrated into the fabric of who I am because it’s been my training since childhood, but I didn’t know that because I didn’t know I’d be doing what I’m doing now—being able to sit in someone’s darkness and also not judge them.

I feel like Jesus’ time was a time for unconditional love. I personally believe the time that we’re in now, 2024 and beyond, is about compassion—righteousness first and then compassion.

To me, compassion is love and understanding for people. I don’t believe love is a separate ingredient or emotion. Love is the foundational emotion for all emotions. When you have the absence of love, no love, zero love, or low love, it turns into hate. Let’s just say you have love and happiness; that’s joy. Love and understanding, that’s compassion.

Love is the foundation for every ingredient. We either have a whole lot of it or none at all. Let’s say you have 100% love—that’s unconditional love, which is the highest frequency, period.

I’ve been obsessed with hearts lately. I got a lot of items with hearts and have the word love in my house. I noticed a lot.

There you go. You’re a love warrior.

If we all united on one vision, we’d be astounded at how fast the entire planet can change.

Yes. I believe that God is love. I love your definition of love as the base of every emotion. It’s either love plus something. It’s no love or with love. All the positive emotions have some or a lot of love. Then, all the negative emotions have a lack of love. That’s cool. That’s incredible.

I had an unpleasant breathwork experience sometime last year. It was someone famous in this field. He came to Miami. It was a big convention center area, like a hall in the hotel, and 200 or 300 people were on the floor. The process was cool, and I was flying high. It was amazing.

Then somebody had an epilepsy attack or a heart attack. I don’t know. She was shaking on the floor, and suddenly, the whole energy shifted from being super high to just dropping really low. Many people are in fear and going from a super high state into a holy state. What is going on here?

I felt like the facilitator was not leading at that moment. It was like, “Okay, guys, we’re going to go, and everybody, please leave and give some space around that person.” Then the fire truck came, and everybody was rushing outside. It was just awful. I was thinking to myself because one of my dreams is to be a facilitator in a big event like that one day. What do you do when stuff like this happens?

My criticism was you can’t have people have their subconscious so wide open and just leave them hanging and say, “Congratulations, we’re done. Go home.” It doesn’t work that way. There may have been a different way of taking care of that person and yet taking care of the hundreds of people you’re responsible for and their psyche because you are opening their psyche in that moment.

One, I still give compassion to the facilitator because that is unfortunate.

Yeah, it was unfortunate. When I sent them an email, they were not even responding to what I told them.

The World Is Yours by Kurtis Lee Thomas

It’s probably the trickiest part of holding space. I’m not saying breathwork because this could be breathwork, ayahuasca, or anything else.

I’ll give you an example. When I first started breathwork and had these circles of groups, I’d start really small. We’d only have 20 people in a group and would go through the experience. Then, I would have these unpacked, or we could call them integration afterward.

It’d be so amazing because somebody would come out after the breathwork and say, “Oh my God, that was amazing. I saw my grandmother, and she talked to me and gave me a message.” Another person said, “I’ve been trying to manifest this one thing. I couldn’t figure out what was in the way. I just got this thought. I need to get rid of this one thing in my life, and it will clear the space.” Another person said, “I’ve been trying to solve this problem, and I just got the answer.” Another person says, “My hips have been hurting for 25 years, and this is the greatest relief I’ve ever felt in my hip.”

You’re going around the room, and then one person you get to them, and they’re like, “Yeah, my dog died. Then I just had this thought when my dad used to beat my grandma and my dog raped my frog.” I hear these crazy things. Suddenly, the energy in the room is like a boom. It’s just like, “What is going on with this person?” All your high, all those vibes.

I stopped doing that because all these people, whether it’s 300 people in a room or 20 people in a room, every single person’s going to have a different experience. Now, for the most part, I will say this: Prior to breathwork, I used to take people to the jungles of Peru to be with Mother Ayahuasca. I have a lot of experience in this. I’ve been on the opposite side, and I’ve been on the other side.

I will say this. There’s no such thing as a bad trip, and there’s no such thing as a bad journey. One will give you an experience or show you something you are either ready or not to see or know. That’s it. And we’re talking about a very small amount of these experiences because you didn’t have a bad experience. It turned into a bad experience because you allowed yourself to have that bad experience. That was the experience for everybody. It’s always an experience for everybody, whatever happens, that’s what it is.

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Is it easy to pay money to go to this place, have all these hopes and dreams, and have this amazing experience, then something out of your control happens and you allow it to ruin your experience? Now, granted, you could be like, “I don’t like how that facilitator handled it.” There is a responsibility when it comes to the facilitator of being able to hold the container for the other 299 people who are there who paid their money to have that experience. Then, you have to attend to that one person, which is less than 1% of the people there.

How do you separate those two so they each have those experiences? There are different ways to do that. I won’t get into that now because it’s not a teacher training protocol that I’m going to discuss right now; it’s anything related to medicine. I’ll give you an example.

Whenever one of my teachers asked me, “Hey, Kurtis, a three-month pregnant woman asked if they could do breathwork.” I say, “Well, if their doctor says it’s okay, then it’s okay with me.” Then they’ll say, “Okay, this person broke their elbow, and they’re wondering if they can do breathwork.” I say, “If your doctor says it’s okay, then it’s okay with me.” “I broke my pinky ten years ago.” “If your doctor says it’s okay, it’s okay with me.”

I’m not a doctor. I’m a breathwork facilitator. I don’t make those decisions for people. There are right ways to handle certain situations but not right ways to handle situations. What I’m saying is that guy was in a really crappy predicament, and there are some ways to make people feel at ease. Sometimes it’s the truth.

Compassion is love and understanding for people.

I like what you said about taking responsibility for my experience. That is absolutely 100% right. As a future facilitator, it got me into deep thinking of like how I would handle that situation because nobody’s prepared for somebody shaking on the floor, or God forbid having a heart attack, or you never know what can happen in events like that, or what are the preconditions that people are coming with even if they sign a waiver or a form. How do you still hold space, take care of those people you’re with, and take care of that person?

Number one is that you need helpers. You need to have a group of people with you. There need to be protocols in place so that if this happens, you react to it this way. Because if you have one person doing everything, how can they attend to that person, facilitate, and hold space? They can’t.

You have helpers who are able to take care of that person because, first and foremost, that person needs to be taken care of because that’s what everyone else in the place would want as well. Then you have your helpers take care of those people. They know exactly what they need to do, and you can continue facilitating and guiding those people.

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Amazing. It makes me want to study with you. What is your training like? Your teacher training? I guess all of your teachers are having a lot of breakthroughs themselves while going through the process.

It’s interesting. Right before I got on with you, I had an IG live with the ChoZen Retreat Center, and she asked the same question. Because breath work is the most transformative natural modality, many people want to get certified right now. They want to have that tool in their toolbox. They know that they’re going to go out there and transform lives, but sometimes they don’t know that the first slide they’re going to transform is theirs.

Neurons that fire together, wire together.

I designed this training. I really should call it a personal development retreat or a breakthrough retreat. I got the domain breakthrough boot camps. I’m going to be doing those soon, but my specialty is actually in transformative work. I was taking people on retreats, bringing people through experiences, and creating these breakthrough experiences for people.

The foundation of my teacher training is personal development. I tell them, “You can look at the first video on my website. You’ll see me talking to the group, and I intend for something to shift in you while you’re here so that they come in one person and leave another. You just so happen to leave fully certified in breathwork and know everything you need.”

It’s like a personal development retreat. It’s a certification retreat. Then, we do it by getting you certified, not just in levels one and two. When you go to level one, we say, “Here’s how you create your breathwork practice. Here are the fundamentals you need to know of how to hold space, which is what we just talked about, and it’s different holding space for one-on-one. We’ll get to groups in a second. Then it’s how to guide one-on-one.”

If you’re constantly watching the news and seeing all these horrible things happening, you’re programming your subconscious to constantly connect to negativity as its default.

In level two, you learn how to guide couples and large groups and hold space for large groups, which differs from the one-on-one approach. You leave fully certified in levels one and two, so you can go out there and do your thing. Then, we have support systems. People who are out in the world with these questions have a big community of other teachers that I’ve trained with whom we all work together.

Everybody, listening, if you feel called to study with Kurtis, do it. You’ll get your own breakthrough. You still do the virtual sessions, right?

Yeah, I’m doing that every two weeks.

Wonderful. Where can people find you?

@manfromthestarts on Instagram is one way, or you can go right to breatheworkdetox.com and get in touch with us there. You can see all the programs and services that we offer. You can get access to the virtual event there. On Instagram, you can see all my crazy posts that I do and connect to me there.

Are we from the same star?

At one point, yes.

Wonderful. It’s good. I didn’t know that. What are your three top tips for living a stellar life?

Being brutally honest with yourself is number one. Being curious and asking a lot of questions is really good. Curiosity didn’t kill the cat; ignorance did. Any amazing thing from my life has been getting really curious about a certain topic, stimulating that curiosity in your life because that will lead you down a path that’s usually pretty rewarding and fulfilling. I love that.

Well, first you have to be honest with yourself, be curious, and boldly go where no one has ever gone before.

I just watched this movie. Have you ever seen the movie with Jim Carrey, Yes Man?

Yes, I liked it.

That is such a good movie. After I watched the movie, I thought, “Oh my god, I’m going to say yes to every opportunity.” I was like, “Wait a second. Am I really going to do that?” But yeah, I do. I had gone through these phases, and at one point, I really did say yes to every opportunity.

I said yes to every speaking opportunity and every podcast, and I’m talking about speaking opportunities where I wasn’t even paid. People ask me to go to events. Everything was yes, so I first got to Los Angeles. At one point, when I started to be all right, I wanted to build this infrastructure and business, but then I went into no season. In no season, it is just as powerful as yes season. It allows you to focus and just say no to everything so you can do deep dives and work on a lot of these things.

Knowing when to say yes and when to say no, or just going into your season of yes and your season of no and knowing the difference, has been really effective for me. So watch Yes Man.

As you grow and open yourself to new opportunities and experiences, you’ll resonate with the right people and want to be a part of your tribe. Click To Tweet

Thank you, Kurtis. It was a real pleasure having you on the show. I love everything that you teach. I love your wisdom. You’re incredible. Mostly, I love that we are from the same star system. It’s cool. Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much.

And thank you, listeners. Remember to be honest with yourselves, be curious, watch Yes Man, say yes to every opportunity, say no in the season of no and yes in the season of yes, and just love yourself. Be fulfilled, find fulfillment, enjoy every day, and have a stellar life. This is Orion, till next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓}Turn off the news and avoid scary movies. This helps to prevent programming your subconscious with negativity. Give your mind a break from the constant barrage of fear and despair.

{✓}Unfollow social media accounts that evoke negative emotions. Remember, you have the power to curate your online experience.

{✓}Align your actions with your vision to attract like-minded people. When you operate from a foundation of authenticity and passion, you’ll naturally draw in individuals who resonate with your energy and goals.

{✓}Practice breathwork or meditation to increase clarity and solve problems. When you create space for stillness, the answers you’ve been seeking often reveal themselves with crystal clarity.

{✓}Honestly reflect on your strengths and weaknesses. Celebrate your gifts without ego and compassionately acknowledge areas for improvement.

{✓}Stay curious and ask questions to stimulate personal growth. A beginner’s mindset and a thirst for knowledge will keep you engaged, inspired, and ever-evolving.

{✓}Surround yourself with a supportive team or community. A network of positive, like-minded individuals can provide you with encouragement, accountability, and fresh perspectives.

{✓}Focus on your purpose and passions. When you align your daily actions with your “why,” even mundane tasks take on profound meaning.

{✓}Delegate tasks to team members or professionals who excel in those areas. This will alleviate your workload and ensure a higher-quality outcome.

{✓}Connect with Kurtis Lee Thomas by following him on Instagram @manfromthestars and visit breathworkdetox.com to learn about his breathwork programs, services, and upcoming virtual events.

Links and Resources

Connect with Kurtis Lee Thomas

Further Resources

About Kurtis Lee Thomas

Kurtis Lee Thomas is a sought-after Corporate Mindfulness Trainer and public speaker. He is the Founder and CEO of Breathwork Detox Inc. and Board Chair of the Just Breathe Foundation. Kurtis is the #1 International best-selling author of The World Is Yours: The Secrets Behind “The Secret,” and the #1 new release, Breathwork Detox: How To Thrive In The Age Of Anxiety. He was recently named 2024 Entrepreneur of the Year by Best Holistic Life Magazine.