By yourself

Here is some more information about going further by yourself with breathwork after an initial session. Enjoy!

Spotify playlists

You can find the playlists I use for the groups on my spotify account. These are made with music I like, don’t hesitate making your own!

Can you recap the breathing technique?

Yes! So it’s really simple, you breathe into the belly, then into the chest, and then you breathe out, all through the mouth (with relaxed lips!). If you place one hand on your belly and one on your chest, the hand on your belly should rise first, followed by the hand on your chest. The rhythm is quite quick. My advice is to not hold back and breathe in as deeply as possible. A long session would be 25-30 minutes of breathwork, followed by 5-10 minutes of relaxing (or more of course!), a short session can be anything between 7-20 minutes of breathwork, followed by 3-10 minutes of relaxing.

How often can you do breathwork?

You can do breathwork as often as you need it. When you might need it: when you feel emotional, down, stressed, disconnected, anxious,… You can do a longer session for deeper healing or a short session as a kind of reset of your emotional and energetic body. It can be really interesting to do breathwork daily for a certain period of time, in that case I’d suggest doing short sessions every day, with a longer session every few days/week. Approach these sessions as an exploration of your breath, your emotions, your body,…, every session will be different.

Resources to do breathwork at home

So, you could use a playlist on spotify to do the breathwork (see my spotify profile), or you could choose a longer upbeat song (3-4 minutes) to do the breathing, followed by a calmer song for relaxing, for a short session. Or make your own playlist!

If you think you need more holding, there are some free recordings on spotify made by my teacher David Elliott. I really like the cd Spiritual practice, where you can choose between a 7, 13, 21 and 28 minute session.

Is this the only type of breathwork you practice?

This is the only type of breathwork I hold space for. I like exploring other techniques and one technique that I really like to offer before starting ‘our’ breathwork was brought to me by my plant teacher Nathaniel Hughes. In short, breath in deep into the belly and hold, breath out fully and hold. Stay aware of any sensations in the body and what comes up for you during the pauses. 

More information about the breathwork/its lineage

Some of you asked me for more information about this type of breathwork. 

Jennifer Patterson, who introduced me to breathwork, has written an excellent book called The power of breathwork, simple practices to promote wellbeing. Jennifer is a queer herbalist, writer and breathwork practitioner with a strong background in social justice and trauma. She’s also the editor of the important anthology Queering sexual violence. If you want to explore the breath more, I’d recommend buying her breathwork book. She describes some somatic practices on top of breathwork and one chapter is specifically about ‘our’ type of breathwork.

So what about ‘our’ type of breathwork? I have to say its lineage is a bit hazy. It’s being taught by my teacher David Elliott who refuses to give it any other name than ‘breathwork’ and does not want to have it copyrighted so everyone can benefit. He has written two books, The reluctant healer and Healing (pdf for free on his website). These books do not go deeply into the breathwork techniques though and talk more of David’s view of healing.