Breathwork is a guided process that uses conscious, connected breathing to release stored stress, emotional blockages, and limiting patterns. It invites you into a deeper relationship with your body, your breath, and your inner truth. This practice can be transformative—helping you feel more grounded, more open, and more alive.

Breathwork is an umbrella term for lots of different types of breathing practices where we consciously take over breathing in the body. Our respiratory system is the only system in the body which is under conscious and subconscious control. It seems to be that
when we consciously take over breathing, it allows our subconscious to process.

Breathwork techniques are practised worldwide and have historical roots. More and more now Breathwork is a modality which is widely ‘prescribed’ by the wellness industry. My interest is in integrating Breathwork into the health sector and as such I work with
General Practices and Specialist Centres throughout Canberra in doing this. I believe that it is a powerful tool in transforming the lives of patients as well as helping support health care providers in keeping their cup full.

Our breath is a portal to the connection with our ‘self’. It helps us to turn inward and gain a better understanding of our inner world – also known as interoception. As well as helping us to connect with our inner landscape, it also helps to shift and move emotions through the body. Through controlling the breath, I believe we are more able to gain autonomy over our bodies and our minds.

I have categorised my Breathwork practice into two headings: Functional Breathing and Conscious Connected Breathing.

Functional Breathing
Functional Breathing techniques include breathing lighter, slower and deeper. They help us to feel more relaxed by activating the parasympathetic (rest and digest) part of the nervous system and re-calibrating our sensors to carbon dioxide, and the breathing centre in the brain. There are a number of different techniques which come under this category including box breath and coherent breath. It can also helps healthy people improve their overall health & heart rate variability, as well as helping elite athletes perform better by mimicking high altitude training and developing better oxygen efficiency in the body.

Conscious Connected Breathing
Conscious connected breathing comes from the lineage of pranayama techniques that was taught to Leonard Orr and Sondar Ray from Rebirthing. This then later sparked Stanislav and Christina Grof to develop Holotropic Breathwork which are longer conscious connected breathwork sessions. Leonard Orr was looking for alternative ways to achieve altered states of consciousness after the war on drugs prevented further ongoing research in to the use of psychedelics, and after researching different cultures found that breathing fast and deep led people into altered states of consciousness where they could process emotion, memories and trauma. Breathing can be through the nose or the mouth over a period of 30mins – to a few hours but generally about 1 hour. It is both profound and insightful as a means of living a happier life.