How we breathe reveals a lot about how we feel on the inside and how we show up on the outside. A traumatic event can take our breath away, leaving us feeling distressed, numb and disconnected. When we feel supported, we relax and can breathe easily. Our breath is agitated in anger, freezes in fear, gasps in amazement and sighs in relief. Our experiences determine how we breathe. Most of us go through life experiencing emotional or physical challenges at some level, from day-to-day stress to excruciating traumatic experiences. If we experience the same challenges repeatedly in our childhood or as we grow up, we start breathing in a certain way. These breath patterns take root simultaneously with habitually tensing specific parts of our body and our set patterns of thinking, they define who we are. They limit our capacity to feel, act and meaningfully connect to experiences and to other people. Breathwork modalities help us get out of our constricted breathing patterns, in turn releasing tensions in the body and an openness to undertake actions that we were uncomfortable or just fearful of taking on in the past.

If you google for breath work, you will find many kinds of breath work approaches. There are several published research papers and articles from the National Institute of Health demonstrating the efficacy of breath work. And then there are a lot of pseudo-scientific arguments around it as well. And we could debate each of them forever. From me there are two key criteria: First, is it safe? There are many breath work approaches I wouldn’t practice or recommend. Second, has it been effective for me and my clients in working through limiting patterns? Different approaches have different areas of focus, mine is limited to breaking through barriers that prevent leaders from moving forward.

In my work, I use an approach called the Bio-dynamic Breathwork and Trauma Release System. I learnt this approach through a period of rigorous training with one of my mentors, Giten Tonkov, the creator of this framework.