I Tried Everything to Feel at Peace
When the kids were young, life was a lot.
We were trying to build a business, the kids needed everything, and then COVID hit on top of it all. I had this picture in my mind of what inner peace was supposed to look like.
I knew what I needed to be. I just couldn't get there.
So I tried everything.
Burning sage. Essential oils. Candles. Calming music.
Organizing the house so there was less to think about.
Reading Buddhism for Mothers.
Prayer. Hot baths.
If someone said it would help, I tried it.
And nothing felt like enough. I was still frustrated.
Still snappy with the kids, still irritable with Shane.
Still a mess on the inside no matter how peaceful things looked on the outside.
I couldn't figure out why I was working so hard at being peaceful.
That's the part that took me the longest to understand.
I wasn't allowing peace. I was trying to manufacture it.
And underneath all of it, without realizing it, I was also trying to control my breath.
Circular breathing, box breathing, technique after technique.
My body felt like my gut was permanently bracing for impact.
Holding everything together. Waiting for something to go wrong.
It didn't work. It never really works that way.
Here's something you probably don't know about me.
My dad was a pastor. I grew up in the church and a private Christian school.
And like a lot of people do, I went through a season where I questioned everything. Life got overwhelming and uncertain, and I tried so hard to have faith.
There were plenty of times I lost it.
What I didn't know then is that the word breath and the word spirit come from the same root. Spiritus in Latin. Prana in Sanskrit. Qi in Chinese tradition. Ruach in Hebrew.
Across so many different traditions and cultures, breath has never just been air moving in and out. It has always been connected to something larger. To life itself.
And what I've learned, through the science and through living it, is that the breath doesn't need a technique.
The body already knows what to do.
What the mind needs is to trust it.
To have faith in it.
That shift, from trying to control everything to learning to trust the body, sits right at the center of this week's newsletter.
Grateful to have you a part of our community,
Featured Insight of the Week...
Why do breathing techniques sometimes backfire?
Here is what is actually happening.
The body has a breathing reflex.
It runs automatically, all day, without any help from us.
It adjusts to what the body needs in real time, moment to moment.
When we layer a technique on top of that reflex,
we are essentially telling the body we don't trust it.
And the body responds to that interference.
Dr. Peter Litchfield's behavioral breathing science helps us understand why.
Deliberate control of the breath can override the reflex,
which disrupts the body's ability to regulate its own chemistry.
The very thing we're doing to feel better can be the thing keeping us from it.
This is why so many people find that breathing techniques
work in the moment but don't change anything long term.
The habit of interfering with the breath keeps running underneath the technique.
There's a significant difference between observing the breath and controlling it.
One builds trust in the body's own intelligence.
The other reinforces the habit of overriding it.
The body doesn't need more techniques.
It needs the conditions that allow the reflex to do what it does best.
To automatically regulate body chemistry.
That's what we call self-regulation.
That's what behavioral breathwork is actually about.
If you want to explore the science behind this,
I expand on it in this week's blog.
This week in Behavioral Breathwork
We hear a version of this story a lot.
Rachael came to us after years of doing breathwork.
She'd done SOMA, attended sessions, tried different approaches.
But she left one session with a headache so bad she could barely make it home.
Tunnel vision. Couldn't talk. Had to go straight to bed.
She didn't know at the time that her CO2 had dropped so low her body was starting to shut down. Nobody had explained to her what was actually happening in her body.
Rachael's words: "It's all just come so crystal clear after doing your course, because it's exactly what I needed. I needed to understand why my body was reacting like this."
That understanding changed everything for her.
Not a new technique.
Not a better method.
Understanding.
That's what Behavioral Breathwork Training teaches.
Not how to breathe…
How to understand what's actually happening in the body when people breathe.
The Behavioral Breathwork Training teaches you the foundations of behavioral breathwork and how to work with clients.
We know that not everyone wants to work with others. So we now offer the Foundations Training as a standalone option.
In the Foundations Training, you'll learn how your own unconscious breathing behaviors affect your health and wellbeing. How your breathing responds to stress, emotion, and daily life. And how to develop self-regulation you can apply in a session and in real life.
The full Certification takes it further into working with clients. You'll learn how to guide clients through their own discoveries. How to support people to develop their own self-regulation strategies. How to run one-to-one and group sessions using our framework. And how to attract your ideal clients and present breathwork with credibility alongside other health professionals.
We are only running one live cohort this year.
We don't know yet if there will be one next year.
If doing this work live matters to you...
Asking questions in real time.
Hearing other people's experiences as they move through the course.
Being part of a community.
Then get on the waitlist now.
Early bird pricing opens next week.
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Begin your personal journey
🔗 Start the Free 7-Day Experience
If you’d prefer to begin with a simple personal experience, you can start with our free 7-Day Reflexive Breathing Experience.
It’s a short guided exploration to help you notice how your own breathing patterns respond to stress and settling.
KEYNOTES, WORKSHOPS, & PODCASTS
🔗 Book Shane and/or Angie For Your Next Event
We offer workplace keynotes and trainings grounded in behavioral science and breathwork, helping teams understand how stress develops as a learned response and build practical regulation skills they can use immediately.
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