What is Breathwork?

Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to breathe.

Not the automatic kind. The body takes care of that. Around 20,000 times a day, without asking permission. I mean the conscious kind. The kind where you actually arrive in your breath, feel it, use it. 

The kind that changes things.

I have been on this path for over 20 years. I became a breathwork trainer at the end of 2018. And still, every time I guide a session, something surprises me. Not what happens in my body. I know that territory well by now. What surprises me is how quickly people arrive. How fast the breath cuts through the noise. The monkey mind quiets. The hamster wheel slows. Something underneath all of that begins to speak.

That is breathwork.

Breathwork is the practice of using conscious, intentional breathing to influence your physical, mental, and emotional state. It is not new. Breathing practices have been part of yoga traditions, indigenous ceremonies, and healing cultures for thousands of years. What is new is the science catching up to what practitioners have always known: the breath is one of the most powerful tools we have access to.

And unlike most healing tools, it costs nothing. It is always with you.

In a breathwork session, you sit or lie down, close your eyes, and follow a guided breathing pattern. Just show up. Breathe. And allow whatever needs to move, to move.

Some people cry. Some laugh. Some feel the body vibrate with an energy they did not know was there. Some simply fall into the deepest rest they have had in years. Every session is different. Every person's experience is their own.

It is important to distinguish between two things that are often confused.

Pranayama comes from the yoga tradition. A controlled, measured, timed approach. Counted breaths, retentions, precise patterns. A science developed over thousands of years.

Breathwork as we practise it today comes from a different lineage. In the 1960s and 70s, Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist and researcher, was working with LSD to explore altered states of consciousness. When LSD was made illegal, he searched for a natural way to access those same states. This is how holotropic breathing was born. And with it, an entire family of practices: rebirthing, transformational breathwork, and others.

Where pranayama is precise and controlled, breathwork is organic, free, wild. The body leads. The breath opens.

Some yoga practices, bastrika and kapalabhati among them, when sustained over a long period, can reach similar states to what happens in breathwork or kundalini practices. But the approach is fundamentally different.

Two different doors. Leading to different spaces.

The breath is the only function in our body that is both automatic and conscious. We breathe without thinking, but we can also choose to breathe differently. And when we do, we speak directly to the nervous system.

When the body is in a stress state, shallow breathing, tight chest, a mind that will not stop, the breath is already trying to tell you something. Slow it down. Deepen it. Give the nervous system a different signal. And it listens.

Slower, deeper breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system. The rest state. The heart rate slows. The muscles release their grip. The mind follows.

More rhythmic, connected breathing patterns increase oxygen flow to the brain and body, create altered states of awareness, and allow the body to release what it has been holding. Not through thinking or talking. Through the body itself.

This is what I find most extraordinary about the breath. It bypasses the mind. It goes straight to the source.

I hear the same things from people who practise breathwork consistently. Not because I tell them what to expect. I rarely do. Because the breath seems to move toward what the body most needs.

They sleep better. The kind of sleep where you actually wake up rested.

They carry less. Less tension in the shoulders, the jaw, the chest. Less of that unnamed weight that follows you through the week.

They feel more present. In their body, in their relationships, in their day. Not because they tried harder, but because something was released.

They breathe more. Even outside of sessions, they notice their breath. They use it. It becomes a tool they always have available.

This is what a regular breathwork practice can offer. Not a quick fix. A gradual, deep, real shift.

I did not come to breathwork through a book or training.

I came to it at the Bali Spirit Festival, in 2015.

At that time, I had been practising yoga for a long time. But I felt something was missing. I could see that many people in yoga practice seemed stuck, still carrying their traumas, their tensions, their unresolved emotions. Yoga helped, but something remained untouched.

That is when I heard the sounds.

Screams. Cries. Laughter. Sounds I had never heard in a practice space before. I walked toward a tent. Inside, Antonio from Alchemy of Breath was guiding two hundred people with live musicians: didgeridoo, drums. People were shaking, opening, releasing. I had never seen anything like it. And I knew immediately that this was what I had been waiting for.

The next day, I attended a class by Giten, founder of BBTRS. I sat in the front row. My mind and my pride told me I would not feel anything.

I found myself crying. Pain, sadness and joy all at the same time. Feeling my body in a way I never had before. A deep connection with life. It was pure magic.

Right after the festival, I joined the Breath of Bliss course with Crystabel. Then I began a two-year intensive training with Giten. At the end of 2018, I became a breathwork trainer and joined the BBTRS institute.

The breath had found its way to me. And since then, I have been passing it on.

Every month, I offer a free online breathwork class. Open to anyone who is curious, whether you have never tried breathwork before or you have a practice you want to deepen.

No experience needed. No special equipment. Just you, your breath, and one hour.

If something in these words resonated with you, I invite you to join us.

→ Register for the free monthly breathwork class