How to Get the Most Out of Your Active Breathwork Session
By now you may have experienced active breathwork as a dynamic, powerful, and sometimes emotional practice. Whether you are here to find clarity, heal old wounds, or to reconnect with yourself, I want you to know that you’re in the right place. Active breathwork often includes the expression of suppressed tension, emotions, traumas, and unconscious thought patterns from the body and nervous system to recreate balance. Our body’s main form of communication with us is through our sensations, feelings, emotions and symptoms. The release experienced in breathwork is usually felt as emotions and feelings, sometimes these are strong or intense and other times tender, gentle and kind. It is helpful to remember it is our body communicating with us and reconfiguring itself to wellbeing.
Below are a few gentle reminders to help you get the most out of our time together during your breathwork practice:
1. Let Go of Expectations
It’s completely natural to wonder what your session will feel like. Will you feel lighter? Have a breakthrough? Will you cry? The truth is, every experience is different, including additional sessions you have, so no two are the same. As hard as it is, try to let go of any expectations as they often lead to disappointment. When we simply breathe, allow, and receive we can then be open to the trust that whatever comes forward is exactly what your body is calling for. If you can come from a place of acceptance you are able to let go naturally, and surrender to the moment available to you.
2. It’s Okay If Your Mind Wanders
If you notice thoughts popping up, it’s perfectly normal. There’s no need to “empty” your mind, stay curious to what may come up next. Try to witness your thoughts without holding onto or attaching to them. Often our insights begin when we stop trying to analyze and figure out the messaging and surrender to what is occurring in the present moment, our breath.
3. Surrender
Your only focus is to stay connected to your breath because the mind follows the breath. As you surrender into the experience, allow the wisdom of your body, not your mind, to lead the way. Healing happens naturally when we soften our grip on control.
There’s no need to push or force anything during breathwork. Lean into the breath you are creating, into the sensations within your body. Ask yourself: Are you holding tension within your body? Is there resistance here? Stay curious and compassionate about whatever you find, as it is through the curiosity you create the space for natural releases to unwind. When we allow without judgment or opinion, we give the limbic brain and our brainstem, the oldest and wisest parts of our brain, the opportunity to complete its reflexes and trauma cycles that may have been interrupted long ago.
When we stay out of the way and simply breathe, we support this beautiful process.
In Western culture, we’re often taught that more effort = better results. We believe our mind should manage, fix, or force our healing. It’s just that when it comes to our nervous system, trauma, and emotional release, force isn’t the key, trust is. The limbic brain and your brainstem are responsible for your survival and emotional processing. They determine your subconscious patterns, defense mechanisms, repressed emotions, and deeply rooted beliefs. These parts of your brain know how to heal. They are constantly working beneath the surface when the conscious mind is unaware.
Even as you read this, these parts of you are working quietly, keeping you safe and managing your emotional world.
During breathwork, if we let the limbic brain and brainstem work without interruption, if we breathe and trust, they will do what they were designed to do: heal, complete, release, and restore.
4. Your Emotions Are Welcome
Tears, laughter, shaking, or even sounds you weren’t expecting are all healthy signs that your body is releasing stored energy. Please know that whatever emotions come up, you are safe to feel them. Breathwork invites what’s ready to be felt, healed, and cleared to the surface. Nothing you experience is too much. During your Revelation Breathwork session you will be invited to release a yell or scream. A deep long roar, where you let it all out, everything you have pushed down, all of it, because we’ll use your voice to release the energy that is being cultivated during your breathing. Here we can reclaim your power by expressing your emotions and voice in its fullness, while also releasing an old energetic pattern from your nervous system.
5. Distractions Are Part of Your Experience
If you feel restless during your session, it’s okay. Outside distractions may bring up inner responses that have valuable insight. Use the moment to gently come back to your breath and to stay present, to trust that everything happening is part of your experience. Stay curious, what if the distraction is allowing you to access greater intelligence within? What is it that triggers you? What are you trying to control? What are you feeling in your body? What emotion is this? Maybe there is a negative belief pattern attached to it and you have the opportunity to recognize it and release it. Remember to stay with your breath and not the story that is replaying in your mind.
6. Trust Your Body’s Wisdom
During active breathwork you may feel sensations like shaking, tingling, temperature shifts, or tightness and release. Rather than analyzing, simply allow them to be without meaning. These sensations are your body’s way of moving and releasing energy. Your body knows exactly what it’s doing, stay curious about the experience and see if you can track the sensations as they process through your meridian system.
7. Honor the Integration
Breathwork integration doesn’t end when the session closes. Take time afterward to reflect, journal, walk in nature, to rest or other grounding activities you enjoy. Allow space to integrate everything that was stirred and shifted. Your entire body has taken part in a release and recalibration to include your nervous system, glandular functions, emotions and mental state.
It is helpful to remember that emotions typically last for about 60-90 seconds (on average) and at most 3 minutes. If you sense an emotion for longer durations it is likely the emotion is trapped within our body, unable to move and flow through freely. Maybe it is stuck in an out dated story, rumination, trauma, or in a defense mechanism preventing you from fully accessing your emotion. Either way there is no shame and it is not bad that this halt occurred, it was for your protection at the time. Allowing yourself to fully feel the emotion will grant you some wisdom and healing, stay gentle, curious and compassionate.
Returning to nature, eating a meal, hydrating or journaling are all helpful tools to process and work through your experience. Journaling is an excellent practice to purge the mind of confusion, rumination, heaviness, grief, or other difficult emotions and make sense of them.
8. Make Breathwork Part of Your Life
Every session builds on the last, acting as an accumulation of releases as you continue with consistent breathwork. You are releasing something in every session, and over time this results in a relaxed nervous system. The more you work with your breath, the more your nervous system, mind, and spirit will align with the healing you are cultivating. Even a few minutes of conscious breathing each day can shift your entire being.
If at any point you feel overwhelmed, emotional, or unsure, know that you are not alone. As your facilitator, I am here to support, guide, and hold a nourishing, tender, sacred space for you. Revelation Breathwork can be activating at times but it is also liberating. Your courage to show up for yourself is what makes all the difference. If you feel you need additional support after your session please reach out for a Theta session which can help integrate unresolved traumas or other misunderstood bodily or emotional responses.
Every breath you take in a session is an invitation to come closer to your true self. Some days the breath will bring peace. Some days it may bring release. Both are sacred. Both are healing. And through it all, you will be held with compassion, care, and the deepest respect.
When you are ready to breathe, I am here to meet you exactly where you are.
In Compassion,
Melyssa
📱 IG: @compass.of.compassion
Disclaimer: The information shared by Compass of Compassion is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the guidance of your physician or qualified health provider with any questions about your health or before trying new practices.