Football Player Jordan Poyer Leads the Breath of Life Tour

The first heat wave of the season has descended on Portland, Oregon, and the Hawthorne Theater has no air conditioning. Nonetheless, a crowd adorned in tie dye shirts, yoga pants, and beaded jewelry fills the space, and at least one man seems comfortable and calm as he makes his way through the crowd, shaking hands and doling out hugs to friends and strangers alike. 

The man is Jordan Poyer, the 35-year-old NFL Safety who just completed his 13th year in the league and is currently a free agent. While football may have brought Poyer his success and fame, his life’s mission – at least since the COVID-19 lockdowns, when Poyer decided to give up alcohol – has been personal healing. Poyer has embraced the use of non-traditional methods for healing from trauma and managing the daily stress of life as a professional athlete. 

Some of these tools, such as breathwork and sitting meditation, though unconventional, are uncontroversial. But Poyer has also embraced the therapeutic use of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew that has been used by indigenous healers in the Amazon for centuries. In 2024, Poyer founded a company called Luminate to bring this type of healing to a wider audience. The company is now embarking on a performance tour called Breath of Life with the goal of scaling this mission.

The crowd at the Hawthorne Theater has gathered to experience the first stop of this tour, which Luminate’s press release describes as a “modern-day ceremonial concert blending breathwork, sound healing, movement, and live music into one immersive, transformative experience.” Some attendees spread yoga mats and meditation cushions while they wait for the experience to begin. Others peruse an array of vendor stands selling everything from CBD seltzers and teas to hand-made goat milk soaps and “rose infused beef tallow moisturizer.” At a stand in one corner, volunteers from MAPS – the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a “founding sponsor” of Breath of Life – hand out brochures for next year’s Psychedelic Science conference. 

Poyer was introduced to MAPS’ work through superbowl champion and four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rogers. Rogers, who at the time played quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, has been outspoken about his use of psychedelics. At last year’s Psychedelic Science conference, Poyer shared a stage with former NFL players John Feliciano and Robert Gallery to talk about how psychedelic medicines have transformed their lives.

Eventually, the crowd settles, the lights dim, and Poyer takes the stage, speaking charismatically about his struggles with alcohol and how it nearly destroyed his relationship with his wife and daughter. While Alcoholics Anonymous helped him quit drinking, the constant temptation remained – until he began a deeper healing journey, first with breathwork, then with ayahuasca. 

Poyer only speaks for a few minutes before other performers take the stage. Volunteers hand out mugs of ceremonial cacao for the audience to drink while the musician and self-described spiritual guide Kat Carter plays guitar and sings a song in the Shanenawa language of the Brazilian Amazon. Carter then leads the audience in an “ecstatic dance” practice while a suite of other musicians continue to play onstage. 

During the longest stretch of the show, the audience is instructed to lie down on their mats while Christopher August, founder of the breathwork app Beats & Breath, leads a guided meditation for around an hour. While August encourages the audience to rhythmically inhale and exhale, a “sound bath” of harps, singing bowls, synthesizers and ethereal vocals fills the room. To close out the show, Poyer brings Philadelphia-born and San Diego-based rapper Fr33Sol to the stage, who encourages the audience to “be yourself, king” while they dance in the purple glow. 

The Breath of Life Tour

The Breath of Life tour has many of the hallmarks of a new-age spiritual movement, blending religious and spiritual traditions from around the world into a neosyncretic and eclectic vision. 

“It’s beautiful because it’s non-dogmatic, there’s no religion tied to it. It’s accessible to everybody,” explains August. 

Many of the performers, particularly Poyer and August, speak of an impending global energetic shift. When asked whether this shift is cultural or political, Poyer says neither, explaining that his movement is not political. On stage, he declares that “red vs blue is a meaningless distinction.” Despite this, Poyer has spoken publicly on several issues that are widely perceived as political, beyond his inherently political advocacy for psychedelic medicine.

He has criticized New York’s tax laws, gone on the record to say that he’s never had a vaccine, and has made multiple comments about disagreeing with the liberal politics of the state where he has played for most of his career. His wife, the model and influencer Rachel Bush, remains a vocal supporter of Donald Trump’s presidency. 

While Poyer’s stage presence is charismatic to the point of bombastic, he is much quieter and soft-spoken in one-on-one conversation. His brain seems to jump from topic to topic faster than his sentences can keep up, and he talks about the divinity of Christ with the same ease he talks about protecting the indigenous people of the Amazon. His affect, when he’s not in the spotlight at least, is humble. 

“I don’t see myself as the leader,” he says of Breath of Life. “I see myself as a piece of this movement, where I get to go and be myself and show up as myself and that’s all I need to do.” 
Poyer began his breathwork journey in 2020, but didn’t experience ayahuasca until a 2023 trip to Costa Rica. Carter, who performs in the Breath of Life tour and has been central in its development, sang during his first ayahuasca experience and helped facilitate integration sessions in the days that followed.

The core group behind Breath of Life, which includes Poyer, Carter, August, Fr33sol, and others, are tight-knit, particularly those who have done ceremonies together. When you take ayahuasca in a group setting, “you kind of become medicine family,” explains Carter, who declined to say at which retreat center she first met Poyer.

While the show’s supporting line-up will vary from location to location, Poyer plans to reach out to local talent as the tour continues. At the Portland stop, local ambient musician Ben Ruch plays harp and flute. “I only found out I’d be playing here a couple weeks ago,” Ruch tells me.

Poyer says he hopes that his work can also impact the world of professional sports. Most recently, Poyer played for the Buffalo Bills, where several of his teammates have been receptive to the work Poyer does off the field. “I actually did breath work sessions every Friday that a few of my teammates would come to each week,” he explains. 

“I do believe that my goal, at some point, is to have teams doing this. It would be incredible to have NFL teams sit with [ayahuasca].” Poyer describes this possibility with excitement, clarifying that this aspect of his vision would likely not take place any time soon. 

August, meanwhile, hopes that this show will grow in scale until it starts to resemble a sporting event of its own. “This movement that we have here, it’s gonna be in stadiums with 20,000 people,” he says. Calling the breath “the most powerful technology we have,” August sees his work as something that can revolutionize a movement for spiritual healing, in a way that’s more accessible than ayahuasca. “If you have a pair of lungs, you can partake.” 

The Breath of Life tour touched down in Boulder on May 8th and will be in Miami on May 13th. After these first three shows, Luminate plans to evaluate the success of the tour thus far, then announce more dates later in the year.