What REALLY Happens in Your Brain and Body During Deep Transformational Breathwork?

What actually happens in the body and brain when we are doing conscious connected breathing for 30-90 minutes?

When you breathe deeply and continuously without pause in a controlled manner it is similar to when you use plant medicine:

It slows down a structure of the brain called the default mode network (DMN) - meaning, there is a decrease blood flow and electrical activity in that area.

The DMN is a group of brain structures found in the frontal and pre-frontal cortex. According to research, the default mode network is primarily responsible for our ego or sense of self; it is responsible for the brain’s control mechanisms and a lot of our rigid, habitual thinking and obsessions. It's what's active when we recall memories, envision the future, monitor the environment, think about the intentions of others...basically, it's the parts that light up when we daydream or self-reflect.

It takes about 10-20 minutes of Breathwork until it affects the default mode network and we start to "bypass" our ego mind.

With the ego out of order, the boundaries between self and world, subject and object dissolve. It helps relax the part of the brain that leads us to obsess, which makes us calmer. This allows us to break free from typical thought patterns, we can experience a transcendence of time and space, a sense of unity and sacredness and a deeply felt positive mood.

Since fast breathing loosens psychological defenses and the ego temporarily vanishes, our brains are free to explore more unconscious material. Childhood memories and many others that were long forgotten can come up because our DMN doesn’t have any restrictions in place anymore.

In our day-to-day lives, we normally suppress a lot of emotions and memories, but during Breathwork, our subconscious and our bodies start to release them.

During a session, we welcome everything to come up and often the fast deep breathing creates physical and emotional symptoms that are intensified – giving us an opportunity to process and release them.

In a study on Holotropic Breathwork from 2007, they found that voluntary hyperventilation results in disinhibition of previously avoided or suppressed stimuli.

When you do Breathwork regularly, it strengthens the neuro-pathways to your inner intelligence and subconscious and allows for easier access to it on a day to day basis. It is a powerful way to support you in freeing yourself from your egoic mind and integrating this deep inner work into your everyday life.

Scientific research around Breathwork is still in its infancy, but it is slowly being explored more and more. I found a few studies, especially around Holotropic Breathwork that are supporting the claims of the potential healing effects (this article summarizes them well).

However, since there is not much money to be made with breath, cause breathing is free, not much money is invested in researching it.

The fact of the matter is that the breath has been known since ancient times to be used by humans for healing purposes.

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You can experience the effects of deep transformational Breathwork by joining one of my upcoming workshops. Register here.

(This is atomic essay #27, which is part of 30 Days of Writing #Ship30for30)