What Is Breathwork? Breathwork Explained (With Video)

0:00 What Is Breathwork?

What is Breathwork? That's what we're going to cover in this video today. What is Breathwork, what it is not, and how to do it. And then along with that, some of the benefits, mental, emotional, spiritual, energetic, all the good stuff.

So let's go ahead and dive in, just to answer that basic simple question. Should be a simple answer, right? Unfortunately not. So if you Google Breathwork, if you look up ChatGPT, hey, what's Breathwork, it's probably going to say something like Breathwork is the intentional use of conscious breathing, different patterns, different techniques, all used to change your physiological and mental emotional state, right, to shift your nervous system. Now breathing techniques can be used to do all that, but Breathwork and breathing techniques are very different. So I'm here to tell you what it is.

So number one, Breathwork, in my humble opinion, and based on my being in the space for eight plus years and diving into different programs, Breathwork is conscious hyperventilation. Hyper meaning more, more than usual ventilation, breathing, right? So we're breathing in excess of normal and in excess of what you need. And that's what it is, right? That's Breathwork.

And this comes from the history of Breathwork, from the Rebirthing Breathwork movement. We go deep down the lineage and talk about everything, but this comes from Leonard Orr, his community that came from this Rebirthing Breathwork, or conscious connected breathing was another one for it. That's kind of common now. But that community is who coined the term Breathwork. And it specifically meant this style of hyperventilation, conscious connected circular breathing. So that's what Breathwork really is.

And when somebody says, hey, what's Breathwork, I teach Breathwork classes, and at the beginning of the class I'll ask, hey, who's never done Breathwork before? Most people, you know, sometimes we get half the class who's never done it before. Often we get people who think they've done Breathwork, until after the class ends they come up to us and they say, hey, never mind, I've never done Breathwork before. This was very different from anything I've done.

2:22 What Breathwork Is NOT

So again, what it is not. It's not just breathing techniques. We're not talking about box breathing, the triangle breath. We're not talking about heart coherent breathing that comes from the HeartMath Institute. I have my man Kasper, shout out Kasper, talks about this box, kind of like this gradient or the spectrum, right? And anything in the middle of this spectrum is viewed as optimal breathing or strategic interventions, right? Like box breathing would be the strategic tool that we can use at a specific time for a specific purpose. You know, it's either going to regulate the nervous system in one way or the other, or help us get to sleep, help us calm down, and, you know, any of the above. Meditation and focusing on your breath, also not Breathwork, right?

Then there's hypoventilation, different techniques that maybe free divers use to train their breath hold times so they can dive longer underwater, or even just hypoventilation techniques used to optimize sports performance, or just improve breathing patterns overall. So you breathe less throughout the day and we improve health over time. So none of those things are what I would consider Breathwork. But again, if you search it, any and all the above, any and all that we've mentioned, can come up, because it's a buzzword.

And, you know, just like some other techniques you might find, the physiological sigh, maybe you've watched a Huberman podcast, he talks about this double inhale and then a physiological sigh of relief, great technique. And then, you know, even diaphragmatic breathing, belly breathing, two different things. You know, there's a thousand pranayama techniques. Now all those things are great, but I would not consider them all Breathwork. It's distinctly different.

4:16 How Does Breathwork Work?

Now what is it actually? You know, again, I kind of said it's conscious hyperventilation. The way it started was it's just hyperventilation for 20, 30, 45 minutes or longer, and there's no breath holds, no intermittent breaks where we stop hyperventilating and we go into a breath hold.

That's how a lot of Breathwork looks today. You hyperventilate for 30 breaths, or 50, or 100, or maybe it's timed, do a minute, five minutes, 10 minutes, and then you do a breath hold. And it's kind of like this way to reset the nervous system, also reset the biochemistry in the body, the gases, right, blood gas, oxygen, CO2. When we're hyperventilating, we're blowing off a lot of CO2. We're, you know, intaking a lot of oxygen, and we are increasing the blood oxygen saturation a little bit, not necessarily oxygen delivery to the cell. But that's another video for another day.

Anyway, so we do this cyclic hyperventilation, right? After maybe five minutes, after maybe 50 breaths, whatever technique you're doing, we're going to these breath holds. Two types of holds we usually do. We'll count down, three more breaths, two more, one more, all the way in, holding at the top, hold for like a minute, exhale, and then go into this next round of breathing, maybe breathe for 30 more breaths, and then, you know, or maybe three minutes, whatever it is, and then we go into this other type of hold.

It doesn't have to be in this order, but then maybe we go into an out breath hold, where we breathe three more breaths, two more, one more, all the way in, all the way out, exhale, and pause. And again, we've offloaded CO2, there's plenty of oxygen in the blood, so we don't need to breathe. Even with no air in the lungs, people can often go one, to even three minutes, sometimes longer, without needing to breathe.

And then this is doing a lot of different things. It's regulating, resetting the biochemistry, again, the blood gas in the body. So oxygen is coming down a little bit, CO2 is coming back up, so they're a little bit more regular. Gives us a little break from this hyperventilation, which is great in specific doses, right, we don't want it too much.

And it's also resetting the nervous system, right. So when we hyperventilate, we're ramping up the nervous system a little bit, pushing ourselves into fight or flight, sympathetic response. Then there's lots of different pieces and elements to this, but the breath hold, the out breath hold especially, is a great way to swing the pendulum of the nervous system to the more rest and relaxed side, parasympathetic. And not breathing for one, two or three minutes is a way to really swing that pendulum all the way the other way, right, because inhales are part of what stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight. So when we have a period of a pause with no inhales, then that allows us to sink deeper into relaxation, into rest mode, recovery.

And it's teaching our body, it's kind of biohacking, using our breath to have a positive response to stress, right. That hyperventilation, we've caused a little stress, and now we're going to teach safety. Okay, I can regulate myself, I can regulate my own nervous system. So self regulation, and using the breath to do that.

And that's the gist. There's periods of hyperventilation followed by holds. And you could do one round, you could do 10 rounds, and they can be x amount of breaths or x amount of minutes each. You can time them, you don't have to, there's no right or wrong. You could breathe in through the nose, you could breathe in through the mouth. You know, and I'll have more videos coming out about benefits of this, that, the other. We do have a full course on this, if you're interested.

8:40 Is It Just Hyperventilation?

And now, the question is, is it just hyperventilation? What's the difference? Hyperventilation can be unconscious, or it can be uncontrolled, right, not done on purpose, it's involuntary. And that would be an unregulated nervous system. We're not able to regulate it ourselves, right? I'm not able to control this involuntary response, right? And if it's not done consciously, it's probably not a feeling of safety associated with it. And so it's really those two things, and maybe some more, but that's just off the top of my head, right? So the conscious hyperventilation is much different than if I'm doing it because I'm in panic mode, I'm having a panic attack and I'm hyperventilating. That's a little different than doing Breathwork.

9:29 Why Stress You Control Is Good For You

And so you might ask, why are we doing this? What's the purpose of doing this? You know, I talked about it a little bit with the nervous system, right? You know, stress is good in small doses. We call it eustress, E-U stress, and eustress can create this hormetic response, right, which is like, if I go work out and I lift weights, then I am tearing my muscles. That's stress on the muscles, it's eustress, this hormetic response, my muscles will grow in size, from the hypertrophy and whatnot.

Right, now Breathwork kind of works a similar way, where we're stressing the nervous system a little bit, we're stressing different systems in the body that regulate our hormones, that regulate our blood gas, the pH levels, so all these different things that regulate the pH levels.

And then on top of that, there's, you know, there's so many different perspectives with Breathwork. One is the nervous system, right, all the physiological benefits. It's good for our heart. We can talk about some of the really cool benefits from these out breath holds that I talked about, going into intermittent hypoxia. So short periods with low oxygen, really good for us.

10:52 Emotions, Trauma, and the Nervous System

But then, so the physiological benefits, a lot of great cool stuff there. Mental, emotional, Breathwork is extremely powerful for helping process unprocessed emotions, right, working through those things. And trauma that gets stored in the body, trauma that's wired into our nervous system, right.

Now I have this experience when I'm 10 years old, and now anytime this specific trigger happens, it triggers this traumatic response inside of me where I feel fear, I feel anxiety, right. So Breathwork can help kind of rewire and recondition the nervous system, so I don't have the same response to this trigger, to this stressor, whatever it is. I can recondition my nervous system to respond differently.

And then, you know, also we have emotions that happen all throughout our lives, and they're ongoing. There's stuff happening all the time, stress, anxiety pile up. And we often hold emotions. There's different patterns.

12:02 The Letting Go Method and Surrender

This book that I read called Letting Go by David Hawkins, he created the Map of Consciousness, and amazing book, Letting Go. I read this book and I was just like, this is it. This is exactly what Liquid Breathwork is all about.

And he talks about how there's different modes of coping. I think he uses a different term, but we have suppression and repression. Suppression is conscious, repression is unconscious. And then we have avoidance and escapism. And then we have expression, right? But then this other framework, this maybe more advanced way, is called the letting go method. And it's awareness, it's starting with awareness, and it's accepting what's coming up, accepting it fully, not wanting, not trying to get rid of it, not judging that part of ourselves. It's full acceptance, and then allowing ourselves to feel whatever we need to feel fully, and then letting it go through surrender, right?

And it's this simple, but also complex approach, right? It's like, well, how do I actually surrender? What is that? You know, and it takes time, it takes practice. But surrender is probably the biggest key that makes Liquid Breathwork a little bit different than a lot of other styles out there. You know, then I'll maybe just touch on this here.

13:28 Types of Breathwork and How Intense They Get

Breathwork has a wide range of intensity, even if we're just talking about that conscious hyperventilation, right? There's very intense conscious hyperventilation, and then there's much less intense conscious hyperventilation. So more intense and less intense Breathwork.

Some types of Breathwork are very expression oriented, where it's encouraging the breathers, the participants, to, you know, activate the nervous system as much as possible. We want to really stimulate the sympathetic response to the point where you feel like you want to scream, and then let it out, start screaming, start yelling, pounding your fists on the ground.

It's like if you have a lot of pressure built up in this tank inside you. Imagine like an oxygen tank with pressure of all your anxiety, all your emotions all stuffed in there, and it's like the pressure is building up so much. Getting a little bit of relief from that, letting out a yell, a scream, can probably feel good and give you some relief, give you some benefit. But now that's the coping mechanism. Okay, when I get a lot of energy built up, a lot of emotions built up, all I have to do is go yell and go scream.

It's like, do you want to do that multiple times a week? Do you want to do it every month? I know when I guide Breathwork classes, I don't want to have that session every time I do Breathwork. And then not every type of Breathwork is that. There's so many different, it goes deep. And again, ours is much more relaxation, surrender based. It's an inward journey rather than an outward journey.

And then coming back to the emotions, why did these emotions come up? Why did they happen? You know, it's like a lot of things can happen throughout our life, and if we're suppressing, repressing, that emotion is stuck in our body. And then Breathwork can start to kind of activate the nervous system, that conditioned response we have, those trapped emotions that we're allowing ourselves to finally feel. We're bringing it up, we're stimulating our nervous system enough where it's like, can't suppress this anymore. So now I accept it, and I feel it. And what makes Liquid Breathwork different, we incorporate that sigh of relief that I kind of mentioned. It's one breathing technique that we incorporate into our hyperventilation.

16:03 Give Breathwork an Honest Try

If you want to just try something on YouTube, like short recordings, short guided Breathwork audios isn't really my thing. But I'll give you an invitation to go check out Breathwork Beats on YouTube. That's my homie Dan Vadney. He makes awesome tracks, a lot of great guided audios. Sometimes it can be a faster pace. So I would just invite people, go at your own pace, don't feel like you have to keep up at a certain thing. You know your experience, you know your body, you know what you need, if it's less or more. So just listen to yourself, and enjoy.

You know, I know this happened for me, my fiancee Shelby, who also guides Breathwork with me, so many people we've talked to that have come to our classes, that have come into our Breathwork certification program. Breathwork can be addicting. You try it and it's like, holy crap, how have I never heard about this? How does the entire world not know about this? And why isn't this taught in schools? You know, it's like sending you down this rabbit hole. And it's literally changed my life. And I hear so many people share that exact same sentiment.

Breathwork is such a powerful tool. It's our breath. It's here with us all the time. It's our direct remote control to the nervous system. So play with your breath, do some Breathwork, or as I also like to call it, breath play, and try different things.

17:30 What a Session Actually Feels Like

But the longer we go into the hyperventilation, whether it's 50 breaths, 100, five minutes, 10 minutes, it's actually causing less oxygen delivery. And our brain, there's a few different things happening. I'm not going to get into all the science of it in this video, because I want to keep this one a little bit short. And, story short, the parts of the brain that have to do with emotion are activated a little bit more during Breathwork, they're inhibited less during Breathwork, which is part of the reason why we might experience an emotional release during Breathwork, be more in tune with our emotions.

So some people cry, some people feel angry, any unprocessed emotion. Some people laugh. I've found myself laughing hysterically. Sometimes I've found myself not knowing if I'm laughing or crying, or maybe just going back and forth between the two. So just know, a lot of emotion is normal.

Also feeling a lot of sensations in your body. You can feel tingly, very lightheaded, you can feel like you're floating out of your body. Some people have out of body experiences. You can feel very hot, very cold. Some people start sweating. There's what's also called tetany, where your hands will kind of cramp, and it's just muscle fibers firing. It's safe, it's normal. Once you regulate and slow down your breathing, it goes away. And it's fine as long as it's done consciously. You know, like in the hospital, there's different reasons for why people might experience tetany or respiratory alkalosis, much different than what we're doing here with conscious hyperventilation.

19:18 How to Try Breathwork

And now, you know, I mentioned you could go try a Breathwork audio on YouTube, throw some headphones on, listen to it. And I hope you love it, enjoy it. Just make sure you're seated or lying down. And lying down, you will be able to go a little bit deeper, because you'll be able to relax more.

And then also, something else you can try is going to an in person class, where a Breathwork facilitator will guide you through the experience. Just be aware, like I told you, there's different types of Breathwork. See how intense this is. Is this the screaming kind? Are you prepared for that? Are you okay with that? Cool, go experience it. Maybe you like it. Maybe you don't. Maybe you don't want to go do something like that, and you try to find the more relaxing style. And then hopefully you can find one, because in person classes are pretty cool. Being in a room with other people consciously hyperventilating, it's awesome. People have really powerful experiences. You get to hear about what other people went through. Loved ones that have passed away and feeling that connection, having realizations about themselves, about life, coming to clarity. There's so many different things.

And if you want to try to find a class, you can go to our website, liquidbreathwork.com. There's the Free Tools dropdown in the navigation menu, and then just click Breathwork Near Me, type in your city, and it should pull up a lot of the Breathwork classes near you. So that tool is just free for you. And you can even sign up to get notifications, so that when new classes are announced, you can get an email sent to you. So try that out. So I hope you use it and enjoy it.

21:04 Is Breathwork Dangerous? Who Should Not Do It

So the question is, is Breathwork dangerous? That's a question I've heard people ask, and who should not do it. So I'll cover some of the contraindications.

So number one, if you have a history of heart disease, any heart attacks, strokes, if you have a pacemaker, if you have high blood pressure that's not controlled by medication, if you are pregnant, you would not want to be on the more intense end. And you don't want to do the out breath holds, because that intermittent hypoxia, where we have less oxygen in the blood, we just don't know what that would do with your baby. So it's just better to avoid those. And then also, if you have asthma, you will want your inhaler with you.

But anything else I mentioned, you just want to check with your doctor first. You know, or really err on the side of less intense, slower nasal breathing. If you're worried at all, just use the nose and focus on slower breathing, and you can often achieve the same result. It just takes longer to get there if you're breathing through your nose and breathing slower. But you just really go into relaxation and surrender, and that's what can take you deeper in the experience.

I've been doing Breathwork for eight plus years. And I used to think it was all about huffing and puffing and breathing as hard as I could, and having the most wild peak experience, feels like I'm on a psychedelic. But then at some point, maybe six months in, maybe a year in or longer, it's like you just realize that's not the way. It feels like you're running into this brick wall of just kind of chasing an experience or whatnot. So I really do find it's all about the surrender.

And just remember that you are always in control. That's what's great about Breathwork. Once you start to slow down your breathing, slow down the exhales, you will begin to come down fairly quickly. And that's where it's pretty different than a psychedelic, where it's like you're on a four to 10 hour ride once you take something. Breathwork, you're always in control.

And yeah, that's about it for this video. A little bit longer than I intended for it to be, but I wanted to give you as much as I could, a nice little introduction. So enjoy, and try out our tool, try out some more Breathwork, and enjoy your journey. Reach out if we can support in any way. Just go to our website, you can find our phone number to text us, email us, and we're happy to hear. Or comment below if you enjoyed this video. Don't forget to like and subscribe, I should probably say that. And we'll see in the next video. Peace, love, and breath.