Our breath is a necessity for survival, yet most people hardly ever think about their breathing in their daily life. What if I told you your breath is the key to healing stress, trauma, insomnia, relationship, and work issues and even chronic physical pain that is caused by tension. 

Trauma is really the root cause, and no trauma is too big or too small to address. The definition of trauma is something that occurred that was too much, too fast, too soon for our nervous system to process in the moment. 

I found my way to breathwork during the most challenging time of my life, losing my husband of 20 years and the father of my three daughters, suddenly, unexpectedly, traumatically. My world as I knew it fell apart. After a few months there was a moment where I knew I had to take healing into my own hands or as I was about to discover, my own breath. 

Conscious connected breathwork became the tool to clear a lot of the debilitating grief and trauma from my nervous system and actually begin to enjoy life again. Somatic breathwork is another name often used as this healing modality recognizes that our past lives in our body (Soma) and needs to be cleared from that place. 

Though I adored my talk therapist and benefited greatly from the support initially, what I realized was you cannot think your way out of a trauma response. Cognitive approaches alone don’t work for triggers that activate your amygdala and brain stem—the survival part of the brain. Triggers can show up as fight, flight (avoidance),  freeze (dissociation), or fawn (people pleasing), and many people feel unable to change any of these deeply ingrained patterns. Triggers are experiences that activate the past, that which was never resolved. 

In cases of PTSD, the nervous system is so activated that it’s impossible to down-regulate and feel safe; the person is essentially frozen or looping in the past. This happens when we’re carrying unprocessed stress, tension, and emotions—when we’ve been unable to fully digest past experiences. The energy and emotion that was meant to move through us gets frozen creating density, stagnation, and disconnection. We get disconnected from the free authentic, expressive version of ourselves. This is where our breath becomes the medicine we so desperately need. 

Our breath is the bridge between our conscious and subconscious mind. During breathwork we get access to the subconscious to clear out these old energies and emotions and can begin to rewrite the story. We can start to feel safe in our body again.

Part of the healing occurs in the coregulation of nervous systems because most trauma (if not all) is created between humans beings— what was done or at times what wasn’t provided for someone to feel safe and seen. 

Good facilitation is about witnessing and listening and giving up the need to control or fix the outcome. Holding space is allowing somebody else to take up space and to allow for the energetic release to be completed and essentially close the trauma loop. We say the session begins when the session ends, during the breathwork session we oftentimes experience insights and revelations that we need to integrate after. It can bring clarity to how we want to move forward in our lives and live in a more aligned way.

Over time as we integrate these breathwork experiences our lives can shift in a new, more fulfilling direction, and we can see ourselves as creators and no longer victims of our circumstances. We become liberated through our own breath. 

When healed, our greatest challenges can be what propel us forward and into our purpose, if we get access to the right modality to heal our core wounds. I’m so incredibly grateful to have found the healing power of conscious connected breath and to share it with others. This is why I recently created Somawave breathwork school, a heart centered, somatic breathwork method for modern healers, coaches, therapists, and wellness practitioners, to help support facilitators who want to learn to guide other humans back to themselves. 

Healing happens in the presence of an empathetic witness.

—Bessel Van Der Kolk

Learn more at breathewithjulia.com.