How to Awaken Your True Self Through Breath work and Authenticity

Christopher August on shedding the layers, trusting your intuition and why breath is the foundation of everything

TL;DR

• Authenticity means shedding the beliefs and conditioning that hide your true self. The biggest barriers are the fear of what others think and the fear of being fully seen.
• Breathwork is one of the fastest ways Christopher knows to quieten the mind and hear your intuition.
• You can live as a victim, where life happens to you, or as a creator, where you take inspired action.
• Relationships, parenting and business all act as mirrors for what you need to work on.

Introduction

Christopher August is a transformational author, speaker and co-founder of the breathwork app Beats and Breath. When we first connected, I thought we'd just be talking about breathwork. Then I dived into his book and content, and it took me places I didn't expect.

By his mid-20s, Christopher had everything he thought he wanted: a master's degree in business leadership, a corporate job, a new car and a fun lifestyle. He partied and DJed. But he felt empty, lost and confused. He prayed for a sign, and soon after he saw a billboard for the Peace Corps that read, "Are you ready to answer the call?" He gave up his corporate salary and moved from the suburbs of Buffalo, New York, to a rural village in Tanzania, living on about $150 a month.

While he was there, he nearly died on a whitewater rafting trip on the Zambezi River. Coming home brought reverse culture shock and depression, and he describes the decade that followed as a long series of initiations. We talked about authenticity, intuition, breathwork, relationships, AI and running a business from a place of love.

Lesson 1: Authenticity starts with letting go of fear

Insight: For Christopher, authenticity is uncovering your true self and letting it be expressed in the world. It's a process of shedding the layers of beliefs and conditioning, and he says he's still going through it.

He sees two fears getting in the way. The first is the fear of what other people will think, which leads us to wear a mask and say what we think people want to hear. The second, deeper fear is the fear of being fully seen. If you're fully seen, you can be judged or ridiculed. He believes it's an old survival mechanism. When you move past both, you can share from a place of truth and vulnerability, and that's what creates real connection.

He thinks that will matter even more as AI becomes part of everyday life. Authenticity, he says, is the gold currency of our time.

Action: Notice one moment this week when you hold back what you really think because of how others might react. Ask yourself what you'd say if you weren't worried about it.

Outcome: You start recognising the mask so you can begin to take it off.

Lesson 2: Quieten the mind to hear your intuition

Insight: I asked Christopher how people can tap into their intuition, especially when so many of my clients are caught in the noise of daily life. His view is that it's always been there. We just live in a fast, busy, distracted world, so we're constantly in our heads, and the ego wants to control everything.

When you surrender a little of that control, something else comes online. By surrender, he doesn't mean sitting back and letting life happen. He means letting your inner intelligence guide you, then taking inspired action from there.

One of the most direct ways to get there, he says, is through the breath. Even 10 or 15 minutes of conscious breathing can shift you out of fight-or-flight and into a calmer rest-and-digest state. That's when he finds the inner guidance turns on and creative ideas come.

Action: Before your next big decision, take 10 minutes to breathe slowly with your eyes closed. Then notice what your gut tells you.

Outcome: You make decisions from a calmer place rather than from stress.

Lesson 3: Don't try to get anywhere with your breath

Insight: When I tell clients to focus on their breath, some of them look at me blankly. Christopher understands why. In silent meditation, the monkey mind often takes over and you drift off into your thoughts. That's part of why he created an app that combines breath sounds with music. It gives the mind something to engage with until it settles.

His key point is that you're not trying to reach a certain state. If you're trying, you're going against the flow. You're simply allowing yourself to be and to breathe. The more you practise, the more centred you become.

At the end of the episode, he led a short practice that anyone can do:

• Pause whatever you're doing, close your eyes and put your feet on the floor.
• Scan your body from the top of your head down to your feet.
• Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, deep into your belly.
• Notice any tension and breathe into it.
• After a few rounds, take a big breath in, hold it at the top, then let it go.
• Return to your natural breath and notice what's shifted.

Action: Try that practice once today, even if it's just for two minutes. If you're driving, wait until you've stopped.

Outcome: You have a quick reset you can use anywhere.

Lesson 4: Move from victim to creator

Insight: Many people I work with want to act on a project that matters to them, then get pulled back into the rat race. Christopher says there are two states of being. The victim believes life is happening to them. The creator knows life is happening through them.

His formula is simple: be first, then do. Get into that calm, present state, then follow your highest joy and excitement to the best of your ability in each moment. What gets in the way is the mind, which doesn't trust that it can be that simple. There will always be a thousand reasons why you can't do something.

It doesn't mean life gets easy. Challenges still come up. But he says the way you meet them changes. You start to see them as something that's helping you grow.

Action: Write down one thing that excites you right now. Take one small step towards it today.

Outcome: You start acting on what matters instead of waiting for the right moment.

Lesson 5: Step into discomfort, one small step at a time

Insight: Christopher believes we have a finite amount of time in this life, and everyone has a purpose they came here for. Getting there means making a daily decision to do things that make you uncomfortable. There's no way around it, he says. You have to step into the fire.

His own path has been extreme. He's spent time in Tanzania, sat with elders and shamanic healers in the Amazon and done a dark room retreat. But he was clear that what's true for him may not be true for you. For most people, discomfort looks smaller: getting up 20 minutes earlier to breathe before your day starts, leaving a job or ending a relationship that isn't serving you.

When you look closely at fear, he says, you often find it's just the fear of fear itself.

Action: Choose one small uncomfortable thing to do this week, such as waking up 20 minutes earlier, having a hard conversation or saying no to something.

Outcome: You build trust in yourself each time you follow through.

Lesson 6: Relationships are mirrors

Insight: Christopher sees every relationship as a mirror and a teacher, reflecting back what's happening inside us. He says many of the relationships we've grown up seeing are codependent. When we look to a partner to fill something we feel is missing, it becomes extraction, and that drains the other person.

Two whole, sovereign people walking side by side is very different. Shadows and old patterns still come up, but they face them, talk about them and heal through them. If you realise you've been trying to get something from your partner that you need to give yourself, his first step is awareness. The second is honest communication. Then do the inner work. He asks clients what makes them feel joyful, wondrous and fulfilled, whether that's climbing a tree, going for a hike or playing an instrument, and encourages them to give that back to the younger part of themselves.

He also talked about parenting. He has a six-year-old son with some special needs, whom he describes as extremely gifted, and he says his son mirrors things back to him constantly. When Christopher is rushing around, his son will tell him straight: "Why are you going so fast? There's no rush. Slow down." His job as a parent, he says, is to steward his son and help him find his own gifts, not to project his own baggage onto him.

He often says that if you really want to grow, do three things: be in a conscious relationship, have a child and start a business.

Action: Think about the last time someone close to you really irritated you. Ask what that reaction might be showing you about yourself.

Outcome: You start using your relationships as a path to growth rather than a source of blame.

Lesson 7: Run your business, and your life, from love

Insight: Christopher has run his own business for more than a decade, and he sees it as an accelerator for the soul. Your business isn't separate from you. He says most traditional business models come from a shadow side of masculine energy, focused on pushing and taking. He's not talking about gender, but about energy and principles.

The alternative he describes is starting from a place of service, receptivity and abundance, then using systems and structures to give the idea a lane to flow in. Both energies are needed, he says, but we've been living out of balance, stuck in productivity, performance and doing. When business comes from your being first, it becomes a vehicle for your passion, joy and contribution.

On AI, he was optimistic. In the end, he says, every choice comes down to fear or love, and when you're guided by love you won't be steered wrong. I'm in the same camp. I think AI could free people to describe their lives, not just their work, when someone asks what they do.

Action: Before you start work tomorrow, take a few slow breaths and ask yourself how you can be of service today.

Outcome: Your work starts to feel more meaningful and less draining.

Quick wins

• Try Christopher's two-minute breathing practice before you check your phone tomorrow.
• Notice one moment when you hold back your opinion out of fear.
• Write down one thing that excites you and take one step towards it.
• Do something today that you loved doing as a kid.

Closing insight

Christopher believes we're living in an important time, and that the biggest shift is happening inside us first, as we move from the small self to the greater self, and from the false self to the true self.

You don't have to move to Tanzania or sit with healers in the Amazon to start. As he put it, it all begins within ourselves. Take a moment each day to drop in, breathe and recognise that, deep down, you already have everything you need.

Connect with Christopher

Visit Christopher August or try the Beats and Breath app.

Listen to the full episode

The full conversation is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, or press play at the top of this page.

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