Megan Ashton is the founder of Unity Breathwork and a leading advocate for raising safety standards in the breathwork industry. After fifteen years of trying to heal childhood trauma through hypnotherapy, yoga, talk therapy and six ayahuasca ceremonies, one conscious connected breathwork class in Bali gave her the breakthrough none of them had, and she has spent the decade since training trauma-informed facilitators and leading retreats in Sayulita, Mexico. In this conversation she explains what happens in the brain and nervous system when you remove the pause between inhale and exhale, why the first fifteen minutes feel like resistance, how to integrate a session so the change lasts, and where the real dangers lie. It is a grounded, honest guide to a practice that is growing fast and not always practiced well.

• Why connected breathing deliberately activates the sympathetic nervous system, and how that opens access to what the body has stored
• The one thing behind every hypoxic blackout Megan has seen: breath holds added to the end of a connected breathwork session
• How to find a safe facilitator: trauma-informed, at least 400 hours of training, no promises, no sensationalized social media
• Why one big breakthrough is not enough, and how often to practice for lasting change

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Connect with Megan:

https://unitybreathwork.com/breathwork-facilitator-training/
https://unitybreathwork.com/
https://www.instagram.com/unitybreathwork/

Connect with Brad:

https://www.instagram.com/bradhook
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleyhook
https://flame.live
https://bradleyhook.com
https://values.institute

Does your immune system have more say over your thoughts than you realize? Dr. Aoife O’Donovan, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF and director of the THRIVE Lab, has spent nearly two decades studying how psychological stress gets under the skin and into the brain. In this conversation, she explains why humans mount a full stress response to events that are long past or may never happen, how inflammation sharpens the brain’s threat detector while loosening its brakes, and why trauma can leave the body on alert for years. She also shares early findings from the UCSF Translational Psychedelic Research Program, where psilocybin therapy was linked to lower inflammation and mitochondrial stress in patients with Parkinson’s disease, and research showing that biological aging in immune cells can move in reverse. A candid, hopeful guide to working with a nervous system that evolved for short-term survival rather than long-term flourishing.

In this episode:

• Why the stress response protects you today at the expense of your long-term health, and why that isn’t your fault
• Inflammation and threat sensitivity feed each other: what happens between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex under stress
• Pessimism and perceived threat predict shorter telomeres, yet immune cell aging turns out to be reversible
• “Figure out what kind of nervous system you have, then build your environment around it,” plus why starting absurdly small works

Aoife’s lab (THRIVE Lab, UCSF): https://odonovanlab.ucsf.edu
Aoife’s UCSF profile: https://profiles.ucsf.edu/aoife.odonovan

Connect with Brad:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradhook
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleyhook
• Attend a live experience: https://flame.live
• Discover Brad’s work: https://bradleyhook.com
• Values Institute: https://values.institute

Dr. Chloe West is a psychedelic neuroscientist who studies how psychedelics change the way the brain processes information and updates its beliefs about the world. Her path began at age ten, when her family moved from a small town in Georgia's Bible Belt to Kawakawa in New Zealand's Northland, and she encountered atheism, evolution and ayahuasca in the same disorienting year. Brad and Chloe explore why beliefs absorbed in childhood are so hard to shift, how psychedelics raise neural entropy and soften the brain's certainty in its own predictions, and why the weeks after an experience matter as much as the experience itself. They also consider mystical states reached without substances, the risks of a challenging trip, and whether psychedelics helped shape the world's religions.

• Psychedelics act like fresh snow on a sledding hill, letting the mind carve new paths beyond the rigid grooves of PTSD, depression and addiction.
• Perception is a "controlled hallucination," and psychedelics temporarily loosen the brain's predictions so old beliefs can update.
• Chloe's research suggests a window of openness in the weeks after an experience, when setting and support shape what takes hold.
• Breathwork, meditation and flicker light can open similar states without any substance at all.

Dr. Chloe's Links

• Born Again Again (Substack): https://drchloewest.substack.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chloewestjacobs
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HGfgbJMAAAAJ&hl=en

Brad's Links

• Brad Hook on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradhook
• Brad Hook on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleyhook
• Attend a live experience: https://flame.live
• Discover Brad's work: https://bradleyhook.com
• Values Institute: https://values.institute