Breathwork
Breathwork is simply intentionally breathing. It can be used to calm yourself down or pump you up. You can use your breath to manipulate your body’s biological response to different situations.
People usually recognize one type of breathwork - lamaze. Which is used at one of the most important, critical, and often tramautic events you (or your mom) will experience - birth. If it is found to be helpful in that extreme environment, why are we not finding use cases for it in our daily life? Where else can it help?
In a nutshell, breathwork is a biohacking tool. One we often start doing naturally. We are quick to take big sighs or long exhales as a way to calm ourself. We naturally do it. Breathwork is just focusing on that natural ability to enhance the reaction. It enables you to change the biological response your body is having to an emotional or stressful situation. When you are stressed out, you go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses, which signals your body to produce different chemicals and hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
Changing your breathing pattern signals to your brain that you are not in danger, changing the biological response in your body, reducing the cortisol and adrenalin while increasing dopamine and serotonin.
Whether the stress is a real-time situation, you are ruminating over past events, or even worrying about the future, your brain/body doesn’t know the difference and will respond with the same stress hormones. These biological responses overtime can be very bad for your health. Being overly stressed can lead to heart attacks, panic attacks, strokes, ulcers, etc. This has long been known. What you may not have been aware of is you have a built in tool that can help reduce all of those things.
Completely naturally!
Breathwork could be as short as a 3 minute exercise, or multiple hours long in an extended breathing session, and everything in between. It can be used to stop an encroaching panic attack, get a quick respite from stress, and halt unhealthy ruminating. Or as form of deep meditation to enter altered states of consciousness to process emotions or past traumas. The best part is you are always in control. You can decide how deep you want to go, or if you just need to calm the mind.
I am a trained breathwork and meditation facilitator and offer guided breathwork sessions. This usually is an hour long appointment with a 30-45 minute breathing session included, with longer sessions available.
Click below to schedule your first session, or reach to me if you have any questions/concerns!