Your Facilitator

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Hello! My name is Christian Athanas, and I am a certified breathwork facilitator. While I just completed my teacher training in February of 2026, I’ve been practicing breathwork on my own for a little over three years.

I was born in Rockville, Maryland, where my family only stayed for about six months afterwards. My father worked for the state department, under a branch called the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). My dad’s position with USAID took my family and me around the world while I was growing up. We spent five years in Egypt, three years in Honduras, and one year each in Nepal, Ghana, and Nigeria. Once I turned 18 and was no longer a dependent, my dad dropped me off back in the United States and continued his tour around the world with his wife.

My mother was diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) when I was two years old, a disease that led to her death when I was 15 years old, and ultimately tore my family apart.

My dad was a Marine, I was raised to “be tough” and to “be a man”. This meant I had to be strong when my mom died. I don’t actually remember being all too upset when she died, as I buried those feelings to make sure people didn’t think I was weak for being sad about losing my mom.

I then spent the next 15 to 16 years obliviously numbing myself to the pain buried deep inside me. I was so consumed by trying to feel good, that I didn’t even realize I felt bad underneath.

Shortly after I turned 30, I once again found myself in a relationship I didn’t want to be in, but stayed in it just for the sake of being in a relationship, because the idea of being alone was so much worse.

When that relationship finally ended, I decided to make a change in my life, and I quit drinking. I started working out, eating healthy, and just feeling better all around. I thought I had figured it all out, and things would finally start coming around in my life.

That was until I found myself falling in love, once again, for someone emotionally unavailable to me, a cycle I had put myself through half a dozen times before leading up to this. The only difference this time, was that I didn’t have alcohol to fall back on. I had the sharp realization that maybe this cycle, this pattern I kept falling into, was something I was subconsciously doing.

My journey of healing began with self help books. These books talked about developing a meditation practice, learning gratitude, and just being nicer to yourself in general. Upon first reading these books, the idea of healing they spoke of sounded daunting. It sounded like it would take forever, and it sounded like a lot to commit to. These books talked about believing in God, and trusting in a higher power, an idea that I had become estranged to when my family fell apart when I was 15.

I kept reading the books though. I also downloaded a meditation app, and started trying to meditate as often as I could.

In this app, there were guided meditations, but also guided breathwork practices. I had never heard of breathwork up until this point, and didn’t understand the claims the app was making: It spoke of resetting my nervous system, talking about parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, the difference between fight or flight and rest and digest. These were all new concepts to me, I didn’t even know my nervous system really was.

There was one day, I put on a guided breathwork practice in this app. I laid down on the carpet in my bedroom, and followed along to the recorded breath pattern. It was an “activating breath”: breathing at a much faster pace, and to the rhythm of a song to keep things on track. Suddenly there was electricity flowing through my arms down to my finger tips, it was also vibrating up my neck, and down to my toes. It actually felt like I was a tuning fork, my whole body was vibrating. The vigorous breathing was doubling in pace every 30 seconds, culminating in a vivacious panting for 30 more seconds, until I was told to take the deepest breath I’ve ever taken, and hold it.

Upon releasing this breath, my apartment disappeared around me. I felt like I was floating three floors above the surface of the earth, my floor and walls had vanished. I was in a blissful state of presence I had never experienced before. I had never felt so connected to my own body in my entire life.

From that day forward, I began practicing breathwork, some form or another, almost every single day.

I began digging up emotions that I had buried years before. I was finally able to mourn my mom’s death 16 years after it happened. I was able to forgive my dad for giving up on my family. I became able to experience my emotions, without letting them consume me and take control.

I also realized how hard I had always been on myself. I learned how to treat myself the same way I would treat a friend.

After almost two years, it was during another guided breathwork that I was suddenly struck with the idea that I needed to show this to people, I needed to guide people through it, and show people the innate power we all hold within ourselves, through our breath.

I found a master facilitator, and trained with her for 10 months, not only learning to guide people through the breath, but deepening my connection with my own, meeting myself on a deeper level than I ever even thought possible.

My mission is to share this power with you, with the world. The impact breathwork had on my life feels like a secret more people need to know about. Western medicine focuses so much on the body, and the mind, but as separate entities, fixing one or the other with surgeries, or medications. The source of so many peoples’ problems is just this disconnect between the mind and body. You think how you feel, you feel how you think.

The breath is the bridge between body and mind, and taking control of that bridge, and making it stronger, allows things to move freely between one and the other, putting you in touch with what’s really going on inside you.

Breath is life, yo.