My Mission is to guide caregivers, nurses & healthcare workers back towards their own vibrancy & wellness
As a caregiver, when do you draw the line with stress and decide to implement changes? When the results of tension bleed into your personal life and affects you daily, that's when. Personally, I paid attention when my various chronic stress symptoms kept increasing in numbers and intensity. I couldn't continue to ignore them. Traditional medicine and talk therapy didn't improve my gut issues, anxiety levels nor insomnia.
So, here is your 2025 check point...
HUDDLE:
Do you experience in our line of work or personal life...
- High stress environments?
- Compassion fatigue?
- Insomnia, foggy brain?
- Overthinking or new anxiety?
- Violence in the workplace either verbal or physical?
- New auto-immune illnesses or gut health issues?
Have you considered how those are intertwined, and taking its toll on you?
We give and serve daily out of duty and care. As humans looking after humans, body and mental exhaustion makes it harder to give wholeheartedly.
Caregivers and healthcare professionals deserve wellness, peace and vibrancy in their lives so they can serve others with empathy and heart.
I have done it all... the sarcasm to patients at my triage desk, cried before a shift (or after), stayed up all night ruminating, reassessing, planning. When my then 13 year old heard me sob in the shower after a traumatic long shift at work and offered to cook dinner for me, I knew it was time to look at my life square in the eyes and do the inner work.
WHY Breathwork and not meditation?
Breathwork is gentle yet a powerful medicine. As we use our lungs, we focus gently to control rate, depth, volume of respirations, we are dropping into the body and we get out of our heads. By comparison, meditation is a mental technique, whilst breathwork is a somatic technique, or bottom's up approach.
Ultimately, breathwork was the one modality that has the biggest impact on my daily life and created profound healing for me. It is very soothing for the nervous system and here is the science:
Breath awareness and other simple techniques significantly impact heart rate variability (HRV), even brain waves, shifting you from a stress response to parasympathetic responses of safety, relaxation, grounding.
Breathwork for Maintenance & Resilience Building
Breathwork is truly powerful when used for maintenance. Regular practice expands your capacity to hold more in your body.
This means building resilience for everyday life; breathers start by feeling safe in their body whilst experiencing and holding strong emotions during breathwork. Every time they use the breath to sit with sensations, process and release, this expands body and mind's capacity. Next time, the brain allows to go a little deeper and withdraw back to safety as required. This is called pendulation or titration, as seen in the Polyvagal theory, from Steven Porges' trauma studies.
Learning a variety of breathwork techniques - from strong to gentle, to breath awareness and breath holds, enables people to tap into the breath when needed, in whatever situation. Like a toolbox. Those are building blocks of a healthy & regulated nervous system.
Safety, not pushy
During breath flows, breathers are encouraged to choose their own pace, depth, and expression of the breath. A breath session should initially focus on functional breath and corrective techniques, to ensure participants improve lung capacity and will progress to more advanced techniques over time (no point breathing fast if you're breathing wrong.)
Before any transformational technique such as Conscious Connected Breath, it is essential to provide participants with anchoring and resourcing. This preparatory step prevents re-traumatisation of the participants and stems from trauma-informed breathwork (see specialised trainings and credentials here).
Certain breathwork schools will push participants to breathe faster in order to obtain a cathartic release, as sometimes portrayed in social media. Whilst an emotional release can be the outcome of breathwork, it is not the goal. Soft and significant emotional releases can be experienced during gentle breathwork too, when the participant surrenders to physical resistance, or letting go of the story running in their mind at the time.
As an instructor I trust that each breather will get exactly what they need from the session, as they themselves learn to trust the breath medicine, track the sensations in their bodies and surrender in safety.
Lastly, environment matters in a breathwork session! The space should be intimate, quiet and secure to give each participant a unique experience. Serene and private locations assist breathers to surrender.
Breathwork is Transformative and Powerful
- Strong breathing techniques create a charge in the nervous system, followed by a discharge. In this process, the breather surrenders, letting go of trapped emotions, sensations or old patterns and beliefs.
- The therapeutic effects of very slow techniques is demonstrated by altering brain waves and improvement of HRV.
- By practicing breathwork, healthcare professionals and caregivers can release tension and stress, making space for calmness, new expansion of the mind, clarity and focus.
Breathwork was THE holistic modality that liberated me as a depleted nurse and mother. Finally I was able to sit quietly with myself, instead of trying to meditate through my grocery list.
I found a new flow to life, calmness, clarity and more creativity. I released heavy emotional burdens, processed old baggage, gained spiritual insights, all through breath.
Science, Research and Consciousness
Want more science? check out the biologic, anthropologic and spiritual findings of James Nestor in his book "Breathe, The new science of a lost art". It explains the scientific evidence behind benefits of nasal breathing vs mouth breathing, how simple breathing techniques can be as healing as prayer, performance enhancement from implementing functional (corrective) breathing methods, and more.
Want expansion of consciousness? Just so you are aware, there are spiritual benefits and byproducts of breathwork too. As you find yourself in the flow state, your awareness & consciousness explode! People find focus, clarity like never before, experience perspective shifts, bliss... accessing joy, peace and so much more.
So, if you are ready to...
- get out of chronic stress mode & switch to a life of FLOW,
- wanting to work with trauma-sensitive methods that are science-driven,
- wanting to be empowered with body & mind self-healing tools,
Then breathwork is the holistic modality that's both gentle yet powerful enough to transform your life.
Curious to try? I have in-person, online session & retreats that awaits you. Check out my sessions page.
Can't wait until the next Breath Lab?
Join me for a free breathwork video session, covering the basics of breathwork and a 15 minutes breath flow, by dropping your email below this post to practice breathwork today.
This blog is managed by individuals to open conversations about the wellbeing of healthcare workers, and is not monitored 24/7. We are not a psychology service nor urgent care for mental health emergencies. The information is only suggestive, it does not constitute formal expert advice. Please contact your general physician or your emergency department if you require immediate assistance. If you experience feelings or emotional distress you cannot manage alone, please seek help immediately, either call 000 or LifeLine 13 11 14 (in Australia).
Join me for a free online Breathwork session.
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