Your breath is always with you. It moves without you needing to think about it. Yet, when you bring your awareness to your breath and begin to guide it with intention, you open a doorway into one of the most direct ways to support your nervous system, your body, and your mind.

Breathwork is not about controlling your body. It is about learning to work with your body’s natural rhythms. With each intentional breath, you create signals that communicate to your brain and body: you are safe, you can settle, you can restore.

What Is Breathwork?

Breathwork is the intentional practice of using your breath to influence your physiology. Unlike most functions in the body, breathing is both automatic and voluntary. This means you can consciously guide your breathing, gently shifting your nervous system and supporting your body’s natural regulation.

Each breath sends information throughout your system, affecting your heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, immune system, emotional state, and cognitive clarity. By adjusting the way you breathe, you’re able to influence how your entire system responds, both in moments of stress and moments of rest.1 2

Why We Practice Breathwork

Your breath is directly connected to your autonomic nervous system, the system that determines whether your body is in a state of safety or threat.

When your body feels safe, your breath naturally slows. Exhales lengthen, your heart rate softens, digestion improves, and your system enters the parasympathetic state, what polyvagal theory calls the ventral vagal state, where connection, regulation, and healing happen.3 4

When your body perceives threat, your breath becomes faster, shallower, or held. This reflects protective responses from your sympathetic (fight or flight) or dorsal vagal (freeze or shut down) pathways. These are not wrong or bad; they are intelligent protective mechanisms.

Breathwork does not override these natural patterns. Instead, it gently helps you build awareness and flexibility, allowing your system to move between these states with greater ease and resilience.

With regular practice, breathwork supports:

  • Interoceptive awareness: your ability to sense your breath and body from the inside5
  • Greater capacity for stress and activation6
  • Strengthening of vagal tone and heart rate variability7 8
  • A deeper sense of embodiment and emotional regulation over time

Two Core Breathwork Pathways We Use in The Practice

While there are many forms of breathwork, two foundational approaches offer powerful ways to work with your nervous system:

1. Conscious Connected Breathwork

Conscious connected breathwork uses a continuous, circular breathing pattern without pauses between the inhale and exhale.

This style of breathwork can create shifts not only in your body, but also in your emotional and mental landscape. Research suggests that conscious connected breathing reduces activity in the default mode network, the brain network associated with rumination, self-referential thinking, and habitual thought patterns. 9 When this quiets, space opens for deeper emotional and somatic patterns to surface, allowing the body’s natural healing processes to complete unfinished survival responses.10 11

These sessions may feel more activating at times, as the body processes what it has stored. But as your system moves through these experiences, it creates space for greater ease and resilience.

2. Slow Flow Breathing (Functional Breathing)

Slow flow breathing includes practices such as diaphragmatic breathing, Buteyko, and oxygen advantage methods. These approaches focus on breathing slowly and softly through the nose, allowing for:

  • Improved carbon dioxide tolerance12
  • More efficient gas exchange (Bohr effect)
  • Balanced blood chemistry that supports nervous system stability
  • Strengthened vagal regulation through diaphragmatic movement13 14

This style of breathwork helps recalibrate the breath’s natural rhythm and restores your body’s baseline for long-term regulation. Over time, you may notice greater capacity for calm, steadiness, and flexibility, even in situations that once felt overwhelming.

Breath as the Bridge

Your breath sits at the intersection of your brain, body, and heart. It is constantly communicating with:

  • Your autonomic nervous system (signaling safety or threat)
  • Your vagus nerve (influencing heart rate, digestion, and inflammation)
  • Your brainstem, limbic system, and prefrontal cortex (balancing survival, emotion, and cognitive clarity)

Because of this, breathwork doesn’t force change. It allows change. You are creating safe, stable conditions for your system to reorganize itself from the inside out.15 16

Bringing the Practice Into Your Life

Breathwork supports your nervous system not by forcing change, but by offering your body repeated invitations to soften, stabilize, and come home to safety. Each time you guide your breath, whether slowing it down, gently holding it, or allowing it to flow continuously, you are working directly with your physiology. You’re helping your brain and body communicate safety, regulate emotional states, balance CO₂ and oxygen levels, and build resilience through vagus nerve activation.

There is no perfect breath. Some days your breathing may feel steady and easy. Other days you may notice tension or restlessness arise. Both are part of your practice. Each return to your breath is a small act of care that supports your nervous system’s flexibility over time.

You can integrate breathwork into your daily rhythm in simple ways. Begin your day with a few rounds of slow diaphragmatic breathing. Pause during moments of overwhelm to return to your breath. Practice conscious connected breathing when you feel ready to explore deeper emotional release. The breath will always meet you where you are.

The work is not to force calm. The work is to keep returning to your breath and allow your system to respond in its own time.

  1. Zaccaro A, Piarulli A, Laurino M, Garbella E, Menicucci D, Neri B, Gemignani A. How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing. Front Hum Neurosci. 2018 Sep 7;12:353. ↩︎
  2. Feldman JL, Del Negro CA. Looking for inspiration: new perspectives on respiratory rhythm. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2006 Mar;7(3):232-42. ↩︎
  3. Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company. ↩︎
  4. Dana, D. (2018). The polyvagal theory in therapy: engaging the rhythm of regulation. First edition. W.W. Norton & Company. ↩︎
  5. Paulus MP, Stein MB. Interoception in anxiety and depression. Brain Struct Funct. 2010 Jun;214(5-6):451-63. . ↩︎
  6. Lehrer PM, Gevirtz R. Heart rate variability biofeedback: how and why does it work? Front Psychol. 2014 Jul 21;5:756. ↩︎
  7. Zaccaro A, Piarulli A, Laurino M, Garbella E, Menicucci D, Neri B, Gemignani A. How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing. Front Hum Neurosci. 2018 Sep 7;12:353. ↩︎
  8. Laborde S, Mosley E, Thayer JF. Heart Rate Variability and Cardiac Vagal Tone in Psychophysiological Research – Recommendations for Experiment Planning, Data Analysis, and Data Reporting. Front Psychol. 2017 Feb 20;8:213. ↩︎
  9. Brewer JA, Worhunsky PD, Gray JR, Tang YY, Weber J, Kober H. Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Dec 13;108(50):20254-9.  ↩︎
  10. Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company. ↩︎
  11. Levine, P. A., & Frederick, A. (1997). Waking the tiger: healing trauma: the innate capacity to transform overwhelming experiences. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. ↩︎
  12. McKeown, P. (2021). The Breathing Cure: Develop New Habits for a Healthier, Happier, and Longer Life. Humanix Books. ↩︎
  13. McKeown, P. (2015). The oxygen advantage: the simple, scientifically proven breathing techniques for a healthier, slimmer, faster, and fitter you. First edition. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers. ↩︎
  14. Zaccaro A, Piarulli A, Laurino M, Garbella E, Menicucci D, Neri B, Gemignani A. How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing. Front Hum Neurosci. 2018 Sep 7;12:353.  ↩︎
  15. Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company. ↩︎
  16. Dana, D. (2018). The polyvagal theory in therapy: engaging the rhythm of regulation. First edition. W.W. Norton & Company. ↩︎

The Practice of Breathwork