I’ll start my personal story in 2007, when my then young mind and body reached a point of exhaustion. In retrospect, I can see how my mind had been figuratively dragging my heart and physical body forward.

By 2007 age 22, I had built a 6-figure personal training business while still engaged in a full-time college course load. I’d also been sustaining what had become a pathological addiction to physical exercise; lifting weights at least an hour a day while running up to 70 miles per week and competing in all the road races I could on the weekends.

ROCK BOTTOM

In 2008, I hit rock bottom.

My self-will was gone. My physical body was not only exhausted, it was also now failing me. After I began experiencing significant memory loss and Parkinson’s Disease-like symptoms, I was told by a neurologist that my head trauma, which resulted in a fractured skull and brain surgery, had caught up with me.

“You’ll be Michael J Fox by 30.” he said.

A crushing diagnosis and a breaking point for my spirit.

I’d been in the conventional medical system up to that point and this is when I gave up. I began spending my savings on all the alternative treatments I could find, attending over 100 appointments in 2008 alone.

Soon after, I quit life.

I packed a bag and moved to the Caribbean. I was physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually gone.

I began living like I was dying because in my mind, I was.

Then, after some time and quite by accident, I began feeling incredible.

With all that I know now about health, I can see the good I had been doing. I had quit hard exercise. Hell, for the most part, I quit wearing shoes. I was walking everywhere and spending the better part of each day on the beach. I hitched my way onto boats, visiting 11 different islands during my time there.

I eventually stumbled into a job teaching snorkeling. Snorkeling led to free diving and training myself for maximal breath retention. And, because I had been living off what was left of my savings, I was sustaining myself most days on black coffee for breakfast, a Heineken for lunch, and a pile of raw, “catch of the day” fish from the pier for dinner. 

Today, we call most of these things “biohacking” (except the Heineken).

I spent months immersed in nature, grounding my feet to the Earth, hearing the waves crashing on the shores nearly 24 hours a day. I completely rebooted my energetic system from all the sunlight. Spending my days swimming, snorkeling, diving in the ocean, I remember feeling the buoyancy healing my joints, neck and shoulders. And I dropped to about 150 pounds and was in a daily caloric deficit (fasting) for the better part of a year.

I became obsessed and fascinated with my breathing and respiration. At first it was about timing my dives and breath holds, but I soon discovered a sense of “no mind” during these holds. I couldn’t stress, worry, or let my mind wander. I had never read a single book on breathing, it never would have crossed my mind, but I found for myself that manipulating my respiration enabled me to regulate my autonomic nervous system and “get back home” to my heart and into my true self regardless of what was happening in my mind or outer worlds. I was letting go of my health concerns and finding the present moment, one breath at a time.

After several months I knew in my heart that I was going to cure myself. I emotionally tossed my diagnosis and prognosis out the window. And I soon moved back to the United States to start anew.

One day I was driving through Hudson, Massachusettes going to see one of my favorite doctors, Dr Peter Percuoco when my former college professor and mentor, Dr Jeff Godin called me on my phone telling me about something called the “Death Race”.

Given all I’d been fighting for, anything associated with “death” was not overly attractive to me. But I heard him out, and a few weeks later I found myself in the mountains of Vermont on my feet for over 24 hours with Dr Jeff planning our training for a type of endurance race the world had never seen before.

SPARTAN RACE

The Death Race gave birth to the Spartan Race, a 5K race through deep nature complete with all the skills an ancestral human would have had to master; running, hiking, climbing, crawling, carrying, throwing—even battling muscle-bound armed warriors (an original “obstacle” that was retired after the first few events for obvious reasons.)

The Spartan endurance race experience was perhaps the first time I’d run a race completely free from my mind and fully connected with my heart. The performance felt effortless. Like I had a new, internal fuel source that was far superior to the carbohydrate gels and Gatorade I’d spent years relying on. I don’t even think I thought to seek a sip of water the entire race.

I’d found abundant free energy from somewhere inside of me, and I had to share the experience with others. I spent the next eight years helping millions of people conquer their inner obstacles by overcoming physical ones.

With Spartan Race, I lectured and taught audiences in dozens of countries around the world about overcoming obstacles and the benefits of deliberate suffering, delaying gratification, and escaping our comfort zones.

I later aided Spartan Founder, Joe Desena, in researching what became his New York Times Best-Selling book, Spartan Fit, a project that unexpectedly took my fascination with breathing and respiration to a whole new level.

During my research for the book, I stumbled upon an account from an Ancient Spartan tradition of having elite warriors-in-training run an annual 10-mile barefoot footrace—with their mouths full of water. Warriors who did not spit out water at the finish line would be punished severely.

Operating in true, predictable fashion, I began running this way. The first mile I ran around my Boston neighborhood was miserable. It was a cool, fall morning. “How on Earth did Spartans sustain this for 10 full miles in high heat?!” I thought to myself. Staying committed to the cause, the following year I completed my first 10 miles, celebrating the feat at Metropolis Cafe on Tremont Street in Boston with a pile of bacon and eggs.

The nasal breathing, mouth-full-of-water obsession reached its peak in August of 2016 when I completed a 34-mile Spartan Ultra Marathon in Hawaii, running for 28 miles and 8+ hours through rugged, mountainous, muddy terrain with my mouth full of water. Of course, my goal was to complete the entire 34 miles in this way, yet shortly after completing a full marathon, 26.2-miles, I noticed my hands had swollen to double their normal size and had turned blue.

As other racers began to notice and suggest I seek medical attention, I negotiated with myself to spit the water out and breathe without restriction for the remainder of the race. I finished in around 11 hours.

RUNGA

At the end of 2014, I decided to host a health retreat in Costa Rica. I had an idea for a “digital detox” given the rapid growth of Spartan had me glued to my cell phone and computer near-permanently. I capped the event at 30 people. Upon arrival people had their cell phones put into a safe and began 8-days of yoga, kettlebell training, plant-based meals, and off-site adventures like white water rafting and zip-lining through the jungle.

The following year, I decided to do the event again, calling it RUNGA, a name I dreamed up using inspiration from the yoga pose, Chaturanga.

As fate would have it, my solopreneur-caliber tech skills failed me and I sold the first RUNGA event out twice in 72 hours.

I hadn’t set limits on my website’s backend inventory and sold 60 spots rather than the 30 I had in mind. Thankfully, I called the retreat center and we were able to find means of accommodating everyone.

RUNGA continued to sell out events over the coming years and expanded to hosting weekend immersions, daylong retreats, and workshops around the country. Today it has evolved into one of the top brands in the wellness space, now specializing in corporate wellness experiences and hosting a limited number of highly sought-after events each year.

In 2015, I was invited to speak on the TEDx stage in Lugano Switzerland on my work specific to Heart Rate Variability and how I had been using the breath to improve the arthrokinematics and fluidity of the physical body.

SPIRITUAL GROWTH

In 2017, I met and immediately fell head-over-heels in love with my now wife, Emilía, a glowing, angelic kundalini yogi and plant-based chef.

In the same year, my father passed away. I also moved across the country from Boston to California with little more than a suitcase, to be near and marry Emilía, which we did the following year. My good friend and RUNGA community member, Eric Remensperger, married us in our front yard one Sunday afternoon.

For the next three years, I practiced kundalini yoga with my wife with our teacher Tej Kaur Khalsa. I experienced altered states and new realms of consciousness I’d never tapped into before. I also became aware of a very deep wound that I could not penetrate or shift which had created a massive block in my lived experience.

In 2019, at the recommendation of a trusted friend, I decided to try Ketamine-Assisted Therapy for the first time with Dr Katelyn Kalstein. The experience was deeply profound but no part of me wanted to do it a second time.

In 2020, my son Leon Thor was born. I’d always wanted to be a father and it was clear my life was changed forever on that day. Shortly thereafter, without warning, I began to experience intrusive thoughts, intense spells of fear and anger, and debilitating panic attacks.

Despite large gaps in memory, it was clear that the birth of my son had brought up my own deeply repressed trauma from early in my childhood.

The next three years of my life were largely invested in making sense of, healing from, and moving beyond this deep childhood wounding. This was the most challenging feat I have ever taken on by far, never mind while juggling the responsibilities of a new family and a growing business.

I began to feel the truth of a lesson Tej once shared with us in yoga, “If you want to fully transform your mind, you need a thunderbolt.”

She was referring to the healing power of sound broadly, but also the method many have used to fully embody their full commitment to the spiritual path: a name change.

I knew I needed to return to the strength and stability of my full name, Joseph. This had been consistently suggested to me by my other spiritual guide and male mentor, Arnold Patent. Yet, to commit myself fully to my brightest possible future, while providing my sons with a living permission slip to never fear change or rebirth, I decided to legally change my last name to Anew at the same time.

Joseph Anew was born.

As I continued on this healing journey, I stepped back into working with psychedelics. First, in highly-supervised medical settings and later, without. The healing and transformation I achieved from these experiences were profound. Yet, I also grew a very strong reverence for plant medicines: having experienced the intense goodness and the frighteningly dark experiences they can bring forward.

THE AFTERMATH

I am grateful to be where I am today, and to have been shaped by these experiences. How we navigate our challenges can define our destiny, and I am certain that my years of mind-body practices allowed the transformation that occurred over the last season of my life to be so powerful.

My heart-focused work today brings together my 20+ years of experience in health and fitness, with my profound learnings on the path I have taken to wholeness. I bring a tailored, unique approach to every client, as every person has unique needs, desires, and a path that is right for them.

I feel it is important to share that I do not recommend psychedelic medicines blindly or without a significant degree of research, thought, professional council, and deliberate premeditation, followed by highly intentional preparation for the specific experience to be undertaken.

However, I believe that given the dire need for healing in today’s world, and The Heart Problem, the final step for many once a certain level of mind-body-spirit alignment and growth has been achieved, will be altered states of consciousness using both breathwork, such as kundalini yoga, and intentional low-dose and high-dose psychedelic medicine work.

Thank you for reading my story.

I hope to serve you or somebody you know!

With gratitude,

Joseph