The Life-Changing Magic Of Breathwork: 12 Ways It Transformed My Life
I used to be an insatiable personal development and inner work junkie for many years.
Always searching for the next practice or modality to help me find peace and “fix myself”.
Then I discovered Breathwork.
(Or Breathwork found me?)
Even though I had been a Yogi for many years, playing and dancing with breathing techniques (Pranayama) for a long time, I only truly discovered the deeper transformational power of the breath in early 2018.
It took another while until I deeply committed to the practice as a path to healing when I was going through a tough breakup in 2019.
Since then, my life has shifted and transformed in infinite ways.
Here is how.
Breathwork is the next big movement that will be changing the world.
— conni biesalski 🐋 (@connibie) November 11, 2020
It's the new Yoga, the new meditation, the new therapist.
Plus: It's like taking plant medicine without the side effects.
I came home to my body
The breath is the bridge mind and body, but up until I started doing yoga in 2013, I didn’t even know I had a breath.
For most of my life, I was totally disconnected from my body because of developmental trauma and other painful experiences. When we don’t feel safe to feel our emotions, we disconnect from them, which also means we disconnect from our bodies. It’s an unconscious way to protect ourselves from pain and suffering.
Not being in my body made my mind highly active and it was hard for me to feel grounded in the world.
Through Breathwork I was able to re-connect to my body and I learned to feel safe in it again.
Today, I feel deeply connected and at home in body, I am more present in the moment and my day to day life. It has made me more calm and connected to my intuition. Arriving back in my body helped me to re-connect to my emotions and actually feel them, process them.
2. My mind knows how to slow down and find clarity
Every time I do a Breathwork session, I come out with a new sense of clarity in mind. It’s like the breath puts all my thoughts in order and suddenly I can see and feel clearly again without the overwhelm.
As I drop into the breath during a session, my mind takes a back seat, it learns to relax and become calm.
3. I overcame a painful breakup
I re-discovered breathwork as I was in the middle of experiencing profound heartbreak and going through a repetitive cycle of my own personal definition of emotional hell.
During this time I went to every breathwork circle I could find and also booked a few private sessions. All of this helped me immensely in processing the pain and all the difficult emotions I had to face. I was able to find comfort in my Breathwork practice and move through this phase with a lot more dignity and calm.
4. I found forgiveness and made peace with people - and life
Through Breathwork I have experienced the ‘meta bird’s eye view’ on my life and challenging situations, which allowed me to put things in perspective and thus find greater, more compassionate understanding for myself and others. It’s as though I get to connect the dots and find peace with experiences that didn’t make sense for a long time.
5. I became my own guru and healer
Every breathwork session shows me that I have infinite healing resources within and that I can trust to my inner guiding intelligence.
Since integrating the practice into my life, I don’t feel the need to search and seek for answers and healing outside of myself as much as I used to.
One of the best things about Breathwork is that it empowers us to be less dependent on outside sources. The breath is mine and costs nothing. It is my teacher, my guru, my healer and I carry it with me at all times. I now trust my self-healing powers more than ever.
6. I regularly receive amazing insights, epic creative ideas and answers to big questions
There is nothing quite like the last bit of a session where our system is integrating the experience, the mind is still and the body relaxed. That’s when, almost out of nowhere, unexpected information enters my mental space: new ideas for projects I’m working on or clear insights to complex issues in my life. Often times, I receive important messages to do something and reach out to someone. It’s as though intuition uses this space to speak right through to me.
7. I integrated and healed old trauma
Through breathwork, the body and psyche get to release stuck trauma energies and tension that we have carried for a long time. It’s like letting go of the left brain dominance in our life and taking a deep dive into the unchartered waters of your subconscious, where we hold old woundings and painful shadows.
My body has been able to go through a process of discharging: shaking, tremoring, sweating, shivering, crying, laughing, shouting, myofascial unwinding (the body moving by itself).
Emotions that I had never acknowledged were finally able to rise up to the surface, be felt and released. Muscular tension that has been holding the ‘frozen energy’ in place was finally able to relax and create a feeling of spaciousness inside my body.
I have released endless amounts of sadness and anger that was dormant but alive in me for so long.
Plus, my inner child and I have become great buddies
I have had some absolutely life-changing sessions in which I sat, healed and reparented my inner child. Those were some of the most impactful experiences that helped me integrate some old wounding in the most loving and beautiful way.
8. I now feel safe to process big emotions that I would otherwise deny and that would pull me into depression
I used to get easily overwhelmed with and consequently be afraid of feeling my emotions. This led to depression and anxiety as I wouldn’t discharge all this energy in my body.
Breathwork allows me to safely enter a space where all my emotions can come to the surface and expand their energies to complete the emotional stress cycle. They get the opportunity to be fully seen and felt without any distraction.
As my body breathes me, I have learned to trust its ability to process big emotions without getting stuck.
I now trust that I have to feel it to heal it and that the only way beyond the pain is through. I am confident that I will always reach the other side of sadness or anger.
9. I have made amazing friends
My breath has connected me to a worldwide network of other breathers and so many special humans have entered my life. I feel incredibly grateful for all the new meaningful friendships that have developed in the process. It is an honor to be connected with people who take responsibility for themselves and are willing to go deep with themselves and others.
10. I have learned a lot about our stress response and the nervous system, developmental trauma, somatic healing and the human psyche
The more I dove into Breathwork, the more I wanted to understand how the breath works. This then led me to explore psychology and Carl Jung, neuroscience and human physiology.
It’s been a fascinating journey of profound discoveries that opened up new fields of passion for me.
As I understand myself, I understand humanity. As I learn to heal myself, I learn how to help others heal themselves. This adventure has been incredibly eye-opening and I have found a new sense of purpose for my work and existence.
11. My life has a new calling
It didn’t take long until the practice called me in to share it with the world and I deeply love sharing it in all its simplicity.
I have a lot of ideas to help bring breathwork into more people’s lives and to empower them to heal themselves.
Lastly:
12. I met the love of my life and we are co-creating a conscious relationship
It took me many years of struggle and heartbreak to meet her. And then I did. My partner is also a breathwork practitioner and we both connected through our joint passion for the power of the breath.
We now breathe together and we use the breath to navigate challenging waters in our relationship.
If it wasn’t for Breathwork, we might have never met. The breath brought us together in the most beautiful way and for that I am incredibly grateful.
Today, my breath is my compass and Breathwork a way of living.
Beyond doing deep transformational sessions, I also have a strong daily morning breathing practice in place that is a full-on gamechanger.
Overall, diving into Breathwork has opened me up to explore the power of the breath in all its infinite ways. It’s been an amazing journey.
The gifts are numerous and continue to present themselves as I show up for the practice.
It doesn’t mean I don’t face challenges or that I don’t go through difficult emotions anymore. But Breathwork is my superpower that gives me the confidence and space of safety to deal with anything that presents itself.
Sometimes I still like to experiment with new practices + modalities (currently I’m playing with the Wim Hof method) and occasionally I go see my therapist, but I don’t do it from a place of wanting to “fix myself” anymore.
The breath taught me there is nothing wrong with me and thus, nothing to fix :)
I breathe to feel, to heal and to live life as consciously as possible.
Keep breathing.
Conni.
PS: If you feel called to experience breathwork, you can book a session with me here.