Why Everyone Should Try Breathwork:
The Benefits of This Powerful Practice

1. Improved Well-Being

Breathwork is a powerful technique for accessing the body’s natural intelligence to heal itself. Breathwork, the conscious awareness of one’s breath, has been used for thousands of years. While there are many variations, styles, and names, they all provide a method for personal change through better mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual awareness.

We are all living beings that require breath to survive, but how often do we go through the day unconscious of our breathing patterns? Chronic shallow breathing keeps us anxious and filled with fear. It denies you of life force, which often leads you to feel tense and on edge.

Breathwork is a powerful technique that helps us move out of fight or flight mode and into the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for the body’s “rest and digest” response. This is the state in which we heal, repair, and regenerate.

When we are in a chronic state of tension, our bodies remain in fight or flight mode, even when there is no real danger. This can lead to digestive issues, headaches, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and a whole whack of other problems.

But the beauty of Breathwork is that it allows us to access the body’s natural intelligence to heal itself. By consciously breathing, we can move out of chronic stress and into a state of balance and well-being.

2. Reduced Depression, Stress, and Anxiety

Breathwork can help you manage stress by promoting relaxation. When you’re relaxed, your body can better heal and repair. It also helps to reduce anxiety by promoting feelings of calm and peace. It can also help clear your mind and give you a sense of perspective.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or stressed, breathwork can help you find relief. It does this by promoting the release of tension from your body and by allowing you to focus on the present moment.

From a scientific level, breathwork can help to regulate the nervous system. We also know that neuroscientists have discovered a connection between increasing alpha brain waves and seeing a decrease in depression. And breathwork can shift your brainwaves from beta to alpha (and even theta). Therefore breathwork also has the potential to decrease depression.

3. Better Emotional Stability

When you’re going through tough times and the world seems crazy, it can be hard to keep your emotions in check. As a result, you might feel angry, anxious, or depressed more often than usual.

Breathwork can help you balance your emotions and find a sense of calm. It’s a form of mindful breathing that allows you to focus on your breath and be in the present moment. This can help you feel more centered and grounded, leading to improved emotional stability.

4. Clears Trauma from the Body

Negative experiences, anxiety, and trauma can be stored in the body, creating energetic blocks that manifest into physical symptoms. While therapy can help us uncover these anxieties and traumas, it isn’t always successful in clearing them from the body. Traumas from our early years can linger in the body and prevent us from pursuing the life we desire. That is until we can let go of them.

Breathwork can help you clear the trauma from your body to move on from the past. It does so by releasing stuck energy and emotions without needing to go into the cognitive “story” or beliefs you created during the trauma.

As you practice breathwork to let go of what no longer serves you, you may start feeling more light and free and can deal with difficult situations in the present.

5. Increased physical energy

Breathwork increases the oxygen capacity in the blood, resulting in improved energy levels and more incredible stamina. The amount of oxygen we breathe through our noses affects how much energy is released into our cells.

The body might utilize this extra energy to benefit your immunity or provide you with the required energy if you didn’t get enough sleep or are having a stressful day (which also drains your vitality).

The increased circulation also allows you to take your physical exercise to a new level because you’re flooding your body with oxygen. In addition, you may learn to control your energy levels and immune system through breathwork practice daily.

6. Mental clarity

Breathwork also helps to improve mental clarity by increasing oxygen flow to the brain. This can help to improve cognitive function, memory, and concentration.

So if you’re looking for a way to boost your brainpower, breathwork is a great option!

7. Strengthened Immune System & Detoxification

When you do breathwork, you increase the oxygen flow to your cells. This helps cleanse and detoxify your body, flush out toxins, and improve your overall health. Additionally, the deep breathing involved in breathwork can also help to strengthen your respiratory system and reduce stress levels. All of these benefits together can help boost your immune system and keep you feeling healthy overall.

8. Increased Creativity and Intuition

When you’re in a relaxed state because of breathwork, your mind is free to wander and explore. This can lead to increased creativity and intuition. You may find yourself coming up with new ideas for projects or solutions to problems. You may also notice that you’re more tuned into your intuition and can trust your gut instinct more.

9. Improved Sleep Quality

If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, breathwork can help. There are so many things that simulate us throughout the day — from phones to caffeine, sugar, and social media. Plus, living in a modern, fast-paced society keeps many of us buzzing with constant low-grade stress and anxiety. Fortunately, the deep breathing we practice in breathwork helps relax the nervous system, chill us the eff out, and lower the impact of the stimulants we’re exposed to each day.

The relaxation response induced by breathwork can help ease racing thoughts and worry that can keep you up at night. Breathwork can also help improve the quality of your sleep so that you wake feeling rested and refreshed.

10. Improved Digestion

One of the benefits of breathwork is improved digestion. When you’re stressed, your digestive system goes into overdrive, leading to problems like indigestion, diarrhea, and constipation. Breathwork can help to relax your digestive system and improve your overall gut health.

Breathwork can aid the digestive process by stimulating and increasing blood flow throughout the digestive tract and enhancing intestinal activity. Breathwork can also help to alleviate bloating and gas pains.

Furthermore, breathwork has a positive feedback loop by lowering stress, which reduces cortisol and inflammation in the gut.

Finally, on an emotional level, breathwork can help you make better food choices because you’re no longer feeling stressed and anxious, leading to emotional eating.

11. Increased Self-Love

Focusing on your breath can help to quiet the critical voice in your head that is always pointing out your flaws. Instead, you will start to focus on the present moment and what is going well in your life. This can lead to a boost in self-esteem and acceptance. This may not be measurable through the scientific method, but many people claim to feel it. So why not give breathwork a go and see what happens?

12. Pain Reduction

If you suffer from chronic pain, you’ve undoubtedly tried to detach yourself from your body to ignore the discomfort. But by distancing yourself from your body, you’re actually removing yourself from your body’s natural capacity to heal itself. Breathwork allows you to reconnect with your body, which aids in the healing process by itself.

Deep breathing also produces endorphins, which decrease pain sensitivity and increase pleasure, resulting in a feeling of well-being. Deep breathing also aids in the reduction of pain since it alters the acidity level of the body, making it more alkaline.

Breathwork lowers cortisol, which reduces stress and pain. In addition, deep abdominal breathing has a therapeutic effect on chronic pain since it relaxes the muscles that would otherwise tense up due to pain.

13. Increased Self-Awareness, Presence & Joy

When doing specific breath patterns, it shuts off overthinking. It gives you a sense of deep presence and self-awareness by allowing you to go within, where time feels like it doesn’t exist.

In this expanded state of consciousness, our brains have a chance to slow down from the Beta and Alpha (thinking and action states) to a more dreamlike Theta state of consciousness. People frequently report feelings of happiness and peace washing over them during such experiences as they move up to a new level of awareness.

14. Experience Altered States of Consciousness Naturally

Altered states of consciousness are something we all experience in our lives, whether we realize it or not. For example, daydreaming, being in a trance, sleep, and even meditation are all altered states of consciousness.

Or some people choose to go the plant medicine or illegal drugs route to have psychedelic and out-of-body experiences. What if there was a way to experience an altered state of consciousness without relying on drugs, psychedelics, or alcohol?

Breathwork is one way to naturally experience an altered state of consciousness, where YOU are the drug.

You are essentially breathing differently from your normal breathing pattern when you do breathwork. As a result, Breathwork can alter how our conscious and subconscious minds interact, allowing us to access our creativity in new and more profound ways. Which leads to more significant insights and ideas that give us more immediate access to the present movement from which we may create a new reality.

It’s not uncommon for people to have plant medicine-like experiences with breathwork. People have reported feeling a sense of oneness with the Universe, having spiritual awakenings, and gaining insights into their life purpose.

When in these altered states of consciousness, you may experience a deep connection with your Higher Self or Source. Feelings of peace, love, joy, bliss, safety, and surrender can wash over you, and you can feel a sense of clarity about your life and what you came here to do.

You may find that you can see things from a different perspective, one that is not clouded by the ego-mind. You may have insights into areas of your life that you’ve been struggling with and see them in a new light.

Breathwork can be a powerful tool to help you heal old traumas and patterns that no longer serve you. When we can access the subconscious mind, we can release old programming that keeps us stuck in behaviors and patterns that are no longer serving us. This can lead to lasting change in our lives as we are finally free from the chains of our past.

If you’re looking to naturally experience an altered state of consciousness, breathwork may be the answer for you. So give it a try and see what insights and clarity you can gain about your life and what you came here to do.

No matter your reason for wanting to try breathwork, know that there are benefits for everyone.

And while some benefits may be more immediate, others may take longer to experience. The most important thing is to be patient and consistent with your practice. Like with any new skill, the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it and the more benefits you’ll reap.

If you’re interested in trying breathwork, download a free 14-day trial of the Pause Breathwork App.

With this app, you’ll have everything you need to get started with breathwork, including guidance from certified breathwork facilitators and various breathing exercises to try. Progress tracking so you can see how far you’ve come.

With love,
Sam & The Pause Family