I experienced a blissful feeling of joy I hadn’t felt since I was a kid

How did you first discover breathwork?

During my late teens and early 20s, I experienced anxiety, depression and panic attacks and was trying everything to tackle it – meditation, yoga, exercise and everything in between. Eventually I tried breathwork and it opened my mind and got me back into my body. I went from feeling like a passenger to feeling as though I had a level of control and influence over how I experienced my life, my nervous system and my mind.

For two years I explored it as a personal practice, going down rabbit holes within the world of breathwork and there was one particular session that really shifted something in me. I experienced a blissful feeling of joy I hadn't felt since I was a kid. I’d become numb through depression and anxiety and had accepted my life would always be quite grey. That session blasted open my perspective of what I could feel.

After the session I asked the teacher how I could go about sharing this with other people. I didn't really know at that point if there was a career to be found, but just felt a pull and I’ve been pulled along ever since.

There's so much that falls under the broad spectrum of breathwork and I’m fascinated by all of it. I started teaching at the beginning of 2020 and went full-time a year later. My last job prior to this was running a sales team for a software business, so a little bit different.

Focused breathwork is easy to learn and acts on both mind and body / ShutterstocK / Cultura Creative

 What happened in that session to evoke such a profound response?

It was a style of breathwork called conscious connected breathing that can bring about altered states of consciousness. There's a lot of crossover between the types of experiences we can have with conscious connected breathing and psychedelic-assisted therapy.

When we work with the breath in that form, we change blood flow to certain areas of the brain which changes brain activity and gives access to the unconscious. It also increases activity in the areas associated with emotional processing and being able to connect to suppressed emotions or memories.

There's a lot of interesting work being done in relation to how we work with past experiences, past memories and the charge we hold in the body to process and integrate it, but it needs a well-trained therapist to be able to hold the space.

Why is breathing so important?

It's a core fundament of life and being. In the western world, it’s really one of the forgotten pillars of health. Breathwork is so simple and that simplicity is its power and also its limitation, because our brains are wired to associate impact with complexity and underestimate the power of simplicity.

If you look at the core pillars of health – movement, hydration, nutrition – breath comes before all of them. The faster life moves and the more advanced the world becomes, the more we crave the basics. In indigenous cultures breath is still fundamental to how they operate. It's not something they have to practice, it's just really ingrained.

I'm excited to see more research coming out about the impact of spirituality on mental health and the importance of having a connection to something bigger than ourselves. I view breath as a bit of a gateway into that because it connects you to yourself, others and nature.

Does it extend beyond the individual?

I'm a huge advocate of group experiences because of where we are in society with people struggling with loneliness and lack of proper community. When we have healing experiences in a group, people feel connected to each other.

Breath is also a powerful tool to directly influence the state of the nervous system and how we feel.

At a time when stress, anxiety and over stimulation are so rife, it's one of our most accessible tools to take back a level of control. Bringing the nervous system into balance can also help a number of other health issues, such as stress, anxiety, inflammation, poor sleep and high blood pressure. When we restore a level of balance to the nervous system, we can see a reduction in a lot of those symptoms.

Also breathwork can help with emotional health and root cause issues – adverse experiences from the past, trauma resolution and emotional expression.

When we suppress our emotions, that charge gets held in the body and can cause an imbalance. A lot of adults are struggling with the long-term effects of a past experience. It's almost a case of your mind keeping you safe from something that as an adult you no longer need to be kept safe from.

When you bring that back to the surface, it can be challenging and uncomfortable for people, but it also presents an opportunity to meet it through a different lens.

Do you have a favourite technique?

The technique that I use the most is very simple and great for stress and anxiety. It's just extended exhale breathing, in through the nose and then blow the exhale out through the mouth, which sends signals of calm and safety to the nervous system.

What are the common mistakes that we all tend to make?

The number one mistake that the breathwork industry makes is telling people that they're breathing wrong, because that causes stress and hyperfixation. I just want to help everyone relax a little bit.

It’s a good idea to move away from mouth breathing as this leads to shallow and faster breathing and it’s also very dehydrating and can create brain fog.

Jamie Clements /  Des Iles Photography

We wanted to create something that was simple but effective and give people the opportunity to slow things down and balance the scales

In an ideal world, people would be able to exercise at low to medium intensity through their nose. It's a case of adaptation and tends to take months rather than weeks, so it requires patience.

Shallow breathing when we’re working can make our nervous systems feel overstimulated, so it's important to check in with ourselves throughout the day and make a point of relaxing our shoulders and jaws and take a few deep breaths.

The more advanced my practice has become, the more simple it's become. It really does come down to more awareness of how I'm breathing. Can I start to slow things down in those moments just to take the edge off, to reduce the noise a little bit?

When we work with the breath we are able to more easily calm the nervous system and as we calm the nervous system, the body relaxes, and the mind gets a bit quieter. That’s what we all need now – those moments of rest.

Is breathwork having its moment yet?

The initial moment was about six years ago, when it started to feature in yoga and Pilates classes and in boutique studios, but it was definitely on the fringes. Now I feel as though we're entering more of the proper moment. Everyone Active is an amazing example of that. Five years ago I would never have expected a nationwide chain to be putting breathwork on their class timetable. It's such a vote of confidence for the work.

Breath is a powerful tool to help balance the nervous system / Shutterstock / PeopleImages 

How did your partnership with Everyone Active come about?

I’d worked with Oli Patrick for both Pillar Wellbeing and Future Practice and he approached me as part of the work that he was doing with Everyone Active. Initially I was pleasantly surprised that it was even a conversation, but when I got to know the team at Everyone Active I realised they’re incredibly progressive in terms of what they're trying to provide for their members.

We wanted to create something that was simple but effective and give people the opportunity to slow things down and balance the scales. Gyms have a lot of activity but less of an offering around rest and recovery – the supportive elements that make the active things more effective.

I created three-minute sessions for three different areas – the nervous system, health and stress management and visited a number of the sites to train staff. I created scripts and trained them in the science and application of those particular techniques.

The next project is to create some recorded classes for the Everyone Active app, so members can engage with breathwork at home.

How can operators engage with you?

I’m doing a lot more project-based work similar to what I've done with Everyone Active – consulting and advising on the role that breath can play within the broader ecosystem of wellbeing. That's something that really excites me. I also run a 12 month, hybrid teacher training programme for anyone wanting to work in this area, and for operators that want to upskill their teams.

Breathwork classes are becoming more popular in health clubs / Shutterstock / fizkes