Co-Pilot Stories: A conversation with Finnian on our new Intentions series

Tell me a little bit about your wellness journey and what drew you to breathwork.

My wellness journey has been a life journey. I've always been very committed to it. It’s funny, one of my values, when I was younger, was: be better. Later I realized that that is not a very good value because it's almost not accepting yourself. That gives you an example of my evolution of that wellness journey. I definitely had my biggest transformation five and a half years ago, when I got divorced. That really set off a chain of events where I had to face everything inside of me that could have led to that situation.

What was really interesting was I was living a life with intentionality, but it was built on a foundation of fear. It was from subconscious programming, from a very young age. I didn't realize that. I had to accept that that path wasn't working for me. That I had to lean into a path of love. That has been the most decisive moment in my life. I'm either moving toward love or I'm moving toward fear. And that way of thinking has been the most imperative part of my wellness journey.

Meeting the breath was a really interesting journey as well. Two things happened. My first real experience with breathwork was at my first Burning Man in 2017. I'd done breathwork before, but this was my first altered-state-type breath. My friend and I went into the Camp Mystic tent and we were quickly instructed to get back to back with someone. You had your arms tied behind each other and you were just breathing rapidly. It was powerful. And then at the end, we all got in a circle and listened to this incredible music, and it was so uplifting for me. This is when I said to myself “Wow, this is something really special for me”, [a truly transformative state]. 

Then, fast forward five months or so and I was in Sedona. I was going through a challenging time in my relationship. By chance of fate, I met this woman who invited my partner and me to this little cabin in the woods. She had a sound journey set up. It was our first sound journey as well. I went on my journey, I was fully grounded. In the middle of it, I received this message, “The breath is going to really help you. It's going to help a lot of other people”. At that point, it came to me straight away, the exact formula – when it comes to the choice of love over fear, meet it with breath. Breathe with intentionality. Breathe with purpose. 

I tested it on myself the next week, and I was taken back. And then in the following couple of weeks, I got asked by our Burning Man Camp if I could do something for the Soul Series. I said, “yeah, I'll do this breath.” I had never guided it at all before. I asked my partner to support me with music and we pulled it together. I guided over 100 people. It was huge and felt transformative for everyone. I've never felt more alive. It was part of me. That started my journey. 

Since then, I've learned so many other breaths and I’ve guided other breaths. I’ve married breath with my keynotes on intentionality where I finish with the breath journey, and it's part of the performance. It helps people move from the intellect into the physiological state, so they actually go from a place of belief to knowing. It's that knowledge of wisdom. It's true transformation.

Can you speak to the content creation process that went into the new breathwork session for Otherhsip?

Yeah, it's a very different process from doing it live. Live, you get to work with your energy, you get to engage with the individuals, and you have more of an ability to effectively prime their subconscious because we can all imprint on that. When you're in a digital space, you get one crack at it. It's one go, mistakes and errors in language and pacing, they get remembered. Whereas in the live experience, you can get away with it. That in itself was a really interesting experience.

It also makes you get really precise, really thoughtful. “What is the impact that I want to be having? What's the transformation I want to be giving that other person?” That really helped curate what I am and what I create. I started with five core breaths. And I then said, well, if I only had five breaths, what would be the impact? And I related them to the five principles of intentionality found in my book.

What really stands out to me about the Othership Breathwork app is it's not about a massive amount of quantity. It's about getting the right quality and having the right impact - and that's what excites me. With other apps, it's just like, let's throw up anyone and anything. You can get lost in it.

The creation process itself was a really beautiful experience because I got to work with Harry. Harry's such an amazing creator. He's an artist, and he genuinely cares about his people.

Which of your five intentionality sessions should our journeyers look out for on the app?

That's a great question. I would have to say Choose Love Over Fear because it's the signature. It's the core breath, it's the intentionality breath. It's incredible.

However another one I really like is Discipline over Ridgity because it’s a really fun and playful one. I combine ecstatic dancing, breathing, breath of fire… and it's silly, and child-like. And it's got this beat that makes me laugh. That's probably one I'm most proud of because it was one I simply whipped up and spent the least amount of time on. But I trusted it. I heard it come through and I went, alright, let's go with this…. Life is supposed to be fun and playful.

What other tools are in your wellness kit, apart from breathwork?

Deep meditation. I'm a deep Vipassana practitioner…that usually looks like an hour to two hours a day of meditating. 

Lots of nature. Nature's my greatest healer. It's funny, nature and breath are very interchangeable. And naturally, when you just go into nature your breath changes. You start breathing deeper and slower and calmer. And connected to that, grounding.

Lots of exercise and movement. Integral.

Heaps of journaling and reflecting. I live by the intentionality principles and that really is the most important piece of wellness. It grounds me and pulls me back. It has me looking at everything differently.

What do you believe to be a problem within the world that you are hoping to change?

A big problem that I don't think people are aware of is they don't understand how their mind operates. They're not aware of how their subconscious programs are affecting their decision-making and what they want overall. I always say intentionality is really solving the problem.

I like to say there are three different types of people: the first is someone who doesn’t know what they want. If you don't know what you want, then you can't get what you want.

The second type of person is someone who knows what they want, but they don't believe it's possible or they're not willing to claim it. That comes from another negative subconscious programming. 

And the third type of person knows what they want, but their actions aren't in alignment with what they want. So for example, they want to be a better partner, but their actions aren’t reflecting that. And once again, that's because of subconscious programming. They want to be healthier, but they keep making bad decisions because of a faulty code inside of them.

So once you have this awareness of how the mind operates, and the actual ability to change, you can. You can now access the universal mind and consciousness. If everyone was shown that, they would be happy. And we wouldn't really need any of this wellness industry as much. 

That's my mission: to show people that there is a way, they have it inside of them, and they can get out of their current situation on their own. I don't want you to have to go to this horrible place where your relationships break down, your health breaks down, financial struggles hit, or someone dies. I don't believe you have to get there to wake up. You have to give people a pattern interrupter to be able to go, oh, maybe I can wake up right now and see that there's another opportunity. The breaths, and the intentionality principles are examples of pattern interupters .

If you had to gift one book to someone, what book would that be?

The Tao Te Ching. The Tao Te Ching is a wonderful ancient Chinese text, and it's a series of verses in which every verse can be read on its own, not in sequence. The magic is that it makes you really reflect on how you could apply this in your life.

It's all about the middle way, this middle way of doing things. It's not about the extremes. 

I read a verse every day. I resonate with it. There’s so much wisdom in that little book. If this book was handed to leaders and people around the world, we would be all working together. It'd be really, really amazing. It's truth. That's the great thing, it's all truths. Truths that have lasted the test of time.

Finnian emits conscious intentionality. If you get the chance to sit down and chat with him, you’ll feel it too. He preaches awareness, vulnerability, and the innate ability to face polarities such as love and fear. His breathwork sessions on the Othership Breathwork app will teach you how to lean into this deep work. With each recording, you feel his dedication to breathwork and his commitment to uplifting everyone that gets the pleasure to be guided by him. 

Breathe with Finnian, go deep, and tune into his intentionality breathwork series on the Othership Breathwork app.