As part of the 400-hour breathwork certification course I am currently working through, I participate in weekly longer breathwork sessions of 30 minutes or more. At first, they were amazing, inspiring, and life altering. Every. Single. Time. And then they weren’t.
I would lie on the mat, and breathe, listening to my critical voice. It was endless and tedious. The music could be better. The facilitator used the wrong words at the wrong time. I couldn’t get comfortable. And why couldn’t I sip water and use a pillow? Seriously, was it that big of a deal?
It was hard to get inspired. These sessions felt flat, useless, meaningless.
Unproductive.
I had come to expect and anticipate something intense and meaningful, and I wasn’t getting it. I started to wonder if the benefits of breathwork had worn off. For a brief, highly egoic moment, I wondered if perhaps I had worked through “everything,” and was moving beyond what breathwork could offer into a new phase [you can pause to laugh here].
When Breathwork Stops Feeling Cathartic: My Experience
I wanted to stop but trucked on. It was part of the certification after all, and I had made a commitment. I journaled dutifully after each session. Sometimes just a list of complaints.
A very wise yoga teacher once told me, “be grateful for the tough sessions that don’t go well, because the next one will be better. You are breaking through an unknown plateau to the next level.”
It turns out that breathwork was no different, and those boring, frustrating breathwork sessions weren’t so unproductive after all. I realized that this WAS my resistance; it was my tender edge. I needed those session to surface resistance I didn’t even know I had.
The thing I needed to face before I could go deeper.
This critical voice had kept me safe and boundaried from anything that might sweep me away for a very long time. The idea of letting it go felt disorienting. So, what if I breathed into that?
Why Am I Not Having Emotional Releases During Breathwork Anymore?
Resistance Is Normal
I started to wonder if other breathers had encountered something similar.
Some basic online searching produced results that discussed levels of resistance, especially when starting a regular practice or during the first few minutes of a session. There were also some mentions that “nothing” might happen during a session, and presence was full participation.
However, there didn’t seem to be much around the topic of resistance plateaus surfacing over time and setting expectations for seemingly unproductive sessions. Granted, this was not an exhaustive search, so any exploration you do may return different results.
Taking a very brief dip into the scientific literature, I was excited to see so many studies on the effects and impact of breathwork, and their neurobiological underpinnings (see 1-3 in references for examples). However, I didn’t find much on practice plateaus.
Turning to yogic and meditative traditions, we find the idea of sitting with discomfort as part of the practice. These traditions normalize resistance because life is suffering, suffering is temporary, and embracing resistance can lead to transcendence.
In other words, those sessions where “nothing is happening” except resistance might actually have a whole lot happening below the surface.
Has Your Breathwork Practice Hit a Plateau?
Learning Plateaus Are Real
Not finding much in the discussion around breathwork itself, I started thinking in terms of skills acquisition and learning.
Research on skill acquisition shows that progress doesn’t follow a straight line. Instead, it typically follows a power-function learning curve with initial rapid gains, then a plateau phase where improvement seems to stall (see ref. 4).
A framework published in Cognitive Science titled “Plateaus, Dips, and Leaps” specifically highlights these periods as times when individuals may be “inventing new methods of skilled performance,” (see ref. 5). The dip precedes the breakthrough. The boredom precedes the insight.
The growth mindset perspective (based on the work by Carol Dweck) adds another layer. Here, we can reframe failure and resistance as, “not yet,” rather than never. When we hit resistance, we are not failing – we are preparing for the leap that is coming.
Applied to breathwork, this means those unproductive sessions are likely building capacity beneath the conscious awareness. The next session might unlock a depth you couldn’t reach before. Not because the previous session did nothing, but because it did exactly what was necessary.
In other words, that yoga teacher was right. That plateau isn’t stagnation; it’s integration and preparation.
What to Do When Breathwork Feels Like It’s Not Working Anymore
Embrace the Stuck
Here is my invitation to you. Next time you have a breathwork session where nothing seems to happen, lean in. Keep breathing and invite the discomfort. It might literally be your system releasing what it’s been holding. You are making room for magic to happen.
Trust the process. Trust the plateau. And trust that your “unproductive” sessions are doing their quiet, essential work.
Want to Understand Your Breathwork Plateau More Deeply?
While resistance and integration may be part of the picture, they aren’t the only reasons breathwork can start to feel less powerful over time. Set and setting, how you’re breathing, live versus prerecorded sessions, group energy, and the attunement of your facilitator can all influence your experience too.
If you’ve hit a plateau in breathwork, read our companion article, Why Does Breathwork Stop Feeling as Powerful? Understanding the Breathwork Plateau, for a deeper look at why this happens and some practical ways to reignite your breathwork practice.
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References:
1. Kartar, A. A., Horinouchi, T., Örzsik, B., Anderson, B., Hall, L., Bailey, D., Samuel, S., Beltran, N., Bouyagoub, S., Racey, C., Nagai, Y., Asllani, I., Critchley, H., & Colasanti, A. (2025). Neurobiological substrates of altered states of consciousness induced by high ventilation breathwork accompanied by music. PloS one, 20(8), e0329411. https://doi.org/10.
2. Fincham, G. W., Kartar, A., Uthaug, M. V., Anderson, B., Hall, L., Nagai, Y., Critchley, H., & Colasanti, A. (2023). High ventilation breathwork practices: An overview of their effects, mechanisms, and considerations for clinical applications. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 155, 105453. https://doi.org/10.
3. Bayley PJ, Schulz-Heik RJ, Tang JS, et al. Randomised clinical non-inferiority trial of breathing-based meditation and cognitive processing therapy for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in military veterans. BMJ Open 2022;12:e056609. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056609
4. Tenison, C., Fincham, J. M., & Anderson, J. R. (2016). Phases of learning: How skill acquisition impacts cognitive processing. Cognitive psychology, 87, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/
5. Gray, W. D., & Lindstedt, J. K. (2017). Plateaus, Dips, and Leaps: Where to Look for Inventions and Discoveries During Skilled Performance. Cognitive science, 41(7), 1838–1870. https://doi.org/10.