What is Breathwork?
Written by Jennifer Aldoretta, founder of Groove
There are lots of ways we could describe “breathwork”. Doing breathwork has tons of benefits, so depending on your goals, it can be a lot of different things and look a lot of different ways.
Breathwork might look like:
Belly breathing (diaphragmatic breathing)
Breath of fire
Wim Hof breathing
Square breathing
Circular breathing
Alternate nasal breathing
If those things I just mentioned mean nothing to you, that’s okay. Because that’s not what breathwork is really about, anyway.
The crux of breathwork — the most important definition of breathwork — is simply paying attention to the fact that you’re breathing right now.
As simple as it may sound, paying attention to your breathing — the fact that you’re currently doing it, what it feels like in your body when you breathe, and where your breath is being directed (into your chest or your belly) — pulls you out of worry about the past or the future (even for just a few minutes) and brings you into the present moment.
And the present moment is where your entire life is taking place. Are you missing it?
When you take a deep breath, does your chest puff up or does your belly (around your naval) puff out?
This question may seem insignificant, but how you answer this question makes a HUGE impact on the chemistry and physiology (and, ultimately, the health) of your body.
And, believe it or not, you can actually change the health of your body just by changing the way you breathe. So doing breathwork is ultimately breathing to heal your body. Pretty neat, huh?
You’re always breathing, so how is breathwork any different?
When breathing is on autopilot, our breathing pattern is going to look however our brain has been conditioned to breathe. Okay…what does that actually mean?
You may unconsciously breathe through your mouth and puff out your chest with each inhale.
Your breathing may unknowingly be shallow and quick.
You might have a habit of holding your breath without even realizing it.
I’ve seen each of these many times over, and each one is a less-than-ideal breathing pattern that lends its way to a plethora of issues arising in the body — contributing to stress, disease, inflammation, tension, pain, anxiety, and depression, among other things. Learn how to do breathwork here.
If you take away anything from this information, let it be this:
The way you breathe affects the health of your body, and that’s what breathwork is all about...breathing to optimize your health and bring more self-awareness to your life.
Breathwork is: breathing with awareness and intention (to bring healing to your body) instead of breathing however your brain has been conditioned to breathe (which is often based on a chronically stressful life).
As you’ll read in the next section Why Do Breathwork?, your conditioned breathing pattern changes the health of your body tremendously.
Read on to learn exactly how and why that’s the case...