People have been practicing breathwork for thousands of years, and it has roots in yoga practice. The basic idea of breathwork is to release toxins and stress when you breathe out and nourish your mind and body when you breathe in.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by stress and feel out of control. When you focus on breathing, you allow your body the chance to reset and recover from the negative side effects of stress.

Physical health benefits of breathwork may include:

• Balanced blood pressure
• More time in deep sleep
• Reduction of PTSD and feelings of trauma
• Stronger respiratory function
• Better immune system
• Release of stress hormones from your body

In general, breathwork is a perfectly safe activity that almost anyone can do with limited risk. It’s been scientifically proven to offer many benefits for physical and mental health, and has even been recommended by medical professionals to help patients improve their breathing.

Anyone feeling uneasy about trying breathwork can seek out private sessions, workshops, and retreats where they’ll be able to learn and experience breathwork under the guidance of trained facilitators.

• Wear comfortable clothes. Yoga style clothing is perfect.
• Don’t eat 2 hours before. All breathwork techniques should be done on an empty stomach, either in the morning before breakfast after rehydrating with water, or at least 2 hours after eating a full meal.
• Get comfortable. Begin the session by making sure you’re comfortable, in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed.
• Wear headphones. If you have headphones to use during an online session, you’ll have a better experience hearing the music and my voice.
• Intermittent hypoxic training (ITC)? Please be advised, there are some cases where holding the breath or even breathwork as a whole is not advised. Breathwork and Intermittent Hypoxic Training (IHT) is contraindicated.
• Acknowledge the liability waiver. Before scheduling a healing session, you’ll be asked to confirm you acknowledge the breathwork liability waiver.

Giving attention to integration offers the potential to enrich our life experience by allowing us to digest, embody, and apply to our daily lives the insights and lessons learned while doing in-depth exploratory work.

Integration helps you stabilize emotional turbulence. You may have rapid awakenings at a group event, then return home to an employer, friends and family who treat you as if you were the same person you were when you left.

There may be a sense of culture shock and separation from the life you had before and confusion about how to create a new life true to the “new you”. You may also face feelings of separation and aloneness after having spent such deep and meaningful time bonding with others and then leaving. Integration helps you bridge the gap and stay connected with the work you did.

Integration is the time you spend preparing for a breathwork experience, the downtime between activities and a transformation event when you metabolize insights and it’s also what happens after the event while adapting back to your daily life.

Integration is how you stabilize emotions, peak experiences, and transformation into grounded, practical wisdom. It’s about creating coherence in the nervous system so you can feel more whole, resilient, and connected. Integration asks you to get comfortable with discomfort, slow down, and bring your healing and lessons into daily life.

Integration asks you to be fully present with what arises with sensitivity, care, and gentle patience, and fully feel into what arises instead of avoidance. It means creating space to step back and look at your entire life from the bigger perspective and asking for support from those who understand what you are going through.