Authors: Blaize & Megan
I recently had the pleasure of guest writing for Blaize’s Artist of Everything Substack for an exploration of the many ways we can work with the breath. Blaize begins by sharing how shorter breath practices can support us in the moment, before passing the proverbial pen to me to explore the deeper, altered state practice I’m most passionate about: Conscious Connected Breathwork.
I loved the way our perspectives came together, so I’m sharing the full piece here with permission. Enjoy!
Our Breath Guides Us To Our Wholeness
I’m so excited to share the writing of this article with Megan Ashton. She’s going to drop some wisdom in a few graphs, but first, a story…
It was a normal Tuesday. I was cozy, recovering from an incredible week at Shambala Music Festival. Then…womp womp (no not the wubby bass, I love. Cue the classic sad trombone as the day took a turn)
I opened my phone and my adam’s apple dropped into my stomach.
And it gurgled around in there for the next twenty minutes at least. You ever get one of those texts? We’ve all been there, right? Someone blindsides us, right when we thought we knew them, and throws our whole dang embodied day for a lurching boat ride through the choppety chops waters of …relational rupture.
Today, I’m not actually here to write to you about the rupture and repair cycle, though. The new episode of The Somatic Raver breaks down a fascinatingly functional model of REPAIR so go and listen after you finish this piece!
Today, I’m here, joined momentarily by Megan Ashton, to deep dive into breathwork.
What does this have to do with the text that pulled the rug out from under me a couple of months ago, you ask?
Well, here’s what I noticed about my BODY when that text hit. Besides the pit in my stomach (that is most likely not anatomically my adams apple), I noticed that my shoulders scrunched up, my fists clenched around the phone, my jaw tightened and my breath got super shallow.
Mhmm, when I took a moment to extricate my eyes from the phone screen and check in, I noticed I was barely breathing at all. And as I began to reconnect with my breath, not rushing a change, just inviting awareness, it got deeper, and I began to huff and puff, sending out big “attitudinal” breaths, even little growls. Slowly but surely, my hands gripped less tightly, my jaw began to open up, letting even greater breath in, and allowing my pre-frontal cortex engaged more, helping me delete the impulsive immediate rage response I had (definitely not) typed, so I could pause and respond later when I’d had some space to process.
(my view of taking space pictured above)
Our breath can guide us back into our wholeness.
When I was freaking out, the parts of my body were all disconnected through tension. I couldn’t feel my feet. I couldn’t hear my thoughts or formulate a response grounded in truth (just defense). It was all a blur of disjointed sensations, pounding heart, confusion and even mild dizziness as my levels of CO2 and Oxygen got all outta whack from the shallow breathing. As I began to shift my breath, my awareness also shifted. The “attitudinal” huffing I mentioned actually mimics what in NeuroSomatic Intelligence we call “burst breathing”. When the body is already naturally shallow breathing, this little NSI drill can help the body lean all the way into what it’s naturally doing to cope, yet intensify it to enact a release of endorphins (feel-good neurotransmitters). I leaned all the way into that mild CO2 drop in my brain to let that lightheadedness calm me, and let my body’s natural stress hormone of adrenaline bring me back to alertness. Sometimes the best way to regulate our bodies is not by fighting them but by playing with what they are already doing, maybe letting it intensify a bit until the cycle is complete.
As I felt the transition happening, I took some deep slow breaths, holding at the top of the inhale and bottom of the exhale (box breathing). This allowed for that vagal surge as my parasympathetic ns took back over and I could begin to calm down. Up next, my amygdala (threat detector) settled as it realized the experience of perceiving threat was now complete.
There are many other NSI drills like straw breathing, bag breathing, resistance breathing and more that can be employed in a situation like this.
This is a short-term, immediate way of playing with the breath to help the nervous system in crisis. It’s also helpful to use these drills throughout the day to decrease the overall threat load in your nervous system and therefore your somatic experience of life. If you want to learn more, scroll to the end for ways to connect.
Sometimes, life calls for longer, more deeply cathartic somatic practices to give us space to process. In my experience, that’s where breathwork classes like the kind Megan is going to talk about come in. Some of my most deeply transformative healing has happened in breathwork. I’ll pass the proverbial pen to Megan now!
When The Breath Becomes The Medicine
As you’ve just heard, our breath can be an incredible tool for meeting what’s happening in the moment. We can slow it down, lengthen it, deepen it, play with it, and use different breathing patterns to shift our state.
But what happens when, instead of using the breath to change how we feel, we give ourselves an hour to breathe consciously and allow whatever is underneath the surface to come up?
That’s where Conscious Connected Breathwork comes in.
And before I explain what that actually is, I want to tell you why I’m so wildly passionate about it!
I found Conscious Connected Breathwork (or CCB for short) almost a decade ago while living in Bali, but by that point I had already been on what felt like a never ending healing quest for over 15 years.
I had struggled with bulimia since I was about 18, relied heavily on alcohol to numb myself and connect to joy, and carried a whole lot of unprocessed childhood wounding that I didn’t fully understand at the time. I had tried seemingly everything to heal. Talk therapy. Yoga. Meditation. Hypnotherapy. Energy medicine. Shamanic healing. Nutritional therapy. EFT. Plant medicine. I even became certified in several of these healing modalities along the way.
Some helped. Some definitely did not. But nothing seemed to get to the roots of what I was carrying.
Then a friend in Bali told me about this Breathwork class she had been going to and insisted I try it.
If I’m honest, I actually hated breath practices at the time. Pranayama had been my least favourite part of yoga teacher training. Sitting there focusing on my breath? No thank you (not knocking the practice here and simply saying my nervous system and monkey mind could not experience its benefits at the time).
But she told me Breathwork had made her bulimia just disappear…there was no daily battle, no gravitation pull left for her! So I was obviously sold.
Within about 12 minutes of my first Conscious Connected Breathwork session, I was in a profound altered state of consciousness, accessing emotions from early childhood that I hadn’t consciously connected with in years. I cried and shook and released what felt like a lifetime of grief. The next morning, I woke up feeling, and I know this sounds dramatic, reborn.
That session changed the trajectory of my entire life!
I signed up for a 400 hour facilitator training almost immediately, and eventually founded Unity Breathwork with a mission that still drives me today: to help make Conscious Connected Breathwork as accessible and widely practiced as yoga. More recently that mission has evolved to also help increase safety standards so people can experience this powerful practice without risk.
So, what exactly is Conscious Connected Breathwork?
This is where terminology gets a little confusing because these days, pretty much anything involving intentional breathing gets called “breathwork.”
Box breathing? Breathwork.
Slow breathing? Breathwork.
Pranayama? Breathwork.
Breathing into a paper bag? Apparently also breathwork.
Functional breathing (such as taping your mouth shut)? Also breathwork!
But these practices can have completely different intentions and effects.
Conscious Connected Breathwork, or CCB, is generally practiced lying down with your eyes closed while breathing in a continuous circular rhythm, meaning there are no pauses between the inhale and exhale. These sessions are typically supported with a curated playlist and ideally held by a trauma informed breathwork facilitator.
Rather than taking a few strategic breaths to regulate or change your immediate state, we intentionally stay with this breathing pattern for an extended period of time. In the sessions I facilitate, the active breathing portion is usually around 50 to 60 minutes and the entire workshop is about 2 hours.
And this is where things can get pretty interesting.
Sustained connected breathing creates significant physiological shifts and can induce a non ordinary or altered state of consciousness. People sometimes compare the experience to psychedelics or plant medicine, except there is no external substance involved. The breath itself becomes the catalyst.
And this isn’t just theory. Brain imaging studies are beginning to show us what’s actually happening beneath the surface. During Conscious Connected Breathwork, researchers have observed shifts in brain activity as well as changes in blood flow and oxygenation across different regions of the brain. Activity changes in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain heavily involved in our usual thinking, planning, and sense of control, while patterns associated with the Default Mode Network also shift. In simple terms, some of our usual mental grip can begin to loosen.
At the same time, regions involved in emotion and memory, including the amygdala and hippocampus, show changes in activity. This may help us understand why Breathwork can bring such vivid emotions, memories, imagery, insights, and deeply felt experiences to the surface.
And every journey is different.
You might cry. You might laugh hysterically. You might connect to repressed anger. You might shake, move, make sounds, experience vivid imagery or memories, feel waves of grief, experience profound love or bliss, gain insight into something you’ve been struggling with, feel a connection to something larger than yourself or have an incredibly quiet internal journey that nobody watching from the outside would even know was happening.
You may also experience none of those things. One of the things I love most about this work is that we aren’t trying to manufacture a particular experience. In fact, I believe the less we try to control where the journey goes, the more powerful this practice can become!
You don’t need to know what needs healing
For years, I approached healing largely through my conscious mind. I was constantly trying to understand myself, fix myself, figure out what was wrong, and find the thing that would finally make me feel better.
Conscious Connected Breathwork gave me a very different experience.
I didn’t have to know exactly what I needed to work on before I began. I didn’t need to construct the perfect intention or intellectually understand every wound I carried.
I could breathe, feel, and simply allow whatever wanted to unfold in the moment and that is what most of us need the most.
That’s why I often tell people that in Conscious Connected Breathwork, the breath is the medicine and your inner wisdom is the guide.**
Our role as facilitators isn’t to decide what somebody needs to experience, force an emotional release, or push them toward some giant cathartic breakthrough. It is to create a safe enough container for them to explore what is already there.
Sometimes that means a huge cathartic release.
Sometimes it means meeting a younger part of yourself that desperately needed compassion.
Sometimes it means finally feeling anger you’ve spent your whole life swallowing.
Sometimes it means joy, pleasure, clarity, connection or a sense of coming home to yourself.
And sometimes the most profound thing that can happen is simply realizing that you can stay present with yourself through whatever arises.
That, to me, is where the real magic of this work lives.
We spend so much of our lives trying to think our way through our pain, distract ourselves from it, numb it, analyze it, or make it disappear.
Conscious Connected Breathwork offers another possibility:
What if, for a little while, we stopped trying so hard to control the experience and let the breath lead?
Creator Corner Collective
Our highlight this time is on Megan and her amazing work that you’ve just read all about!
Curious to experience Conscious Connected Breathwork?
If all of this has you curious to experience Conscious Connected Breathwork for yourself, I encourage you to choose your facilitator wisely. This can be a powerful practice, and the person holding the space matters. Look for someone trained through a GPBA certified school (it’s the closest thing we currently have to a regulating body in the industry), who is trauma informed, understands contraindications and proper screening, and prioritizes consent, autonomy, and safety over pushing for a big emotional release.
And if you’d like to breathe with me, you can explore my upcoming online sessions (I offer four free sessions a year), Breathwork retreats in Mexico, or one of the industry’s most comprehensive trauma informed facilitator trainings through Unity Breathwork…
Want to be highlighted in Artist of Everything? Reach out and tell me more about your work.
More creative stuff from Blaize
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And more to come!
