From Struggling to Breathe to Teaching Others How to Heal

My journey with breathwork began out of necessity. Diagnosed with asthma at 7 after an emergency room visit. I managed my symptoms the way most people do: daily steroid inhalers, constant emergency inhalers, allergy meds. Never slept well, had chronic back pain, couldn't concentrate in school (little did I know these all came back to my breathing).

In my early 20s, things got really bad. I developed anxiety that made me feel like I was having a heart attack 24/7, but I couldn't even figure out what I was anxious about. It was all in my body. I was terrified to go to sleep because I genuinely thought I’d stop breathing and die in the night.

Taking Healing Into My Own Hands

Desperate for answers beyond medication, I decided to learn about breathing and asthma. I started breathing slower, nose-only, even taping my mouth shut at night. For the first time ever, I slept well because I wasn’t breathing through my mouth all night. My anxiety began to ease, confirming what I suspected: my breathing and mental health were deeply connected. I still had a lot to learn, but I was making progress.

A few years later, I started experiencing intense dissociation and everything felt heavy but again, I couldn’t logic my way out of it. Eventually, I discovered cathartic breathwork and after completing my yoga teacher training, I started studying to get my trauma-informed certificate in a conscious connected breathwork modality. Through that journey I finally broke through the dissociation and anxiety that had been sitting in my body for so long.

The Missing Piece

While breakthrough breathwork was life-changing, and I was thoroughly enjoying guiding others through this transformation, something was nagging at me. I wanted to help people breathe better, and I knew that wasn’t the point of this kind of breathwork. This lead me to find functional breathwork and I embarked on another teacher training. Through this approach, mixed with my movement and mindfulness practices, I’m able to stay off inhaled steroids, rarely need my emergency inhaler, and I am able to tune into my body’s cues quickly and address breathing triggers by breathing, not medicating. With regulated breathing patterns, I am able to safely continue my breakthrough breathwork practice, and no longer experience dissociation or daily anxiety.