When mindset isn’t enough: The hidden door breathwork opens

As an NLP trainer, I often coach ambitious, self-aware people - the ones who set goals, identify blocks, and do the inner work to rewire limiting beliefs.

They come to me with questions like:

-How can I stop procrastinating?

-Why do I always attract emotionally unavailable partners?

-What’s the belief keeping me from charging what I’m worth?

And with the right tools, we find the answers… But something interesting happens on that journey.

Once the obvious surface-level goals are met or cleared… a deeper layer emerges.

Suddenly, the client who came to “double their income” is wondering:

-Do I even want to work in this field?

-Was that goal ever really mine… or my father’s?

-Do I actually care about having the most beautiful body, or is that my mother’s unhealed shame?

-Do I want a family because I genuinely desire it, or because society taught me that’s what a good  man/woman does?

This is the turning point - when the work moves from achievement… to authenticity.

And while NLP is powerful in tracing belief systems and reframing them, there’s one question it doesn’t always answer clearly:

“What does my soul really want?”

  Breathwork: The gateway to inner knowing

Carl Jung once wrote:

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside- dreams; who looks inside - awakes.”

In my own journey and in the journeys of many my clients, there comes a moment when mindset tools reach their limit. You can think, analyze, and journal your way through many patterns - but some answers don’t live in the mind. They live in the body…

And the way to access them… is to breathe.

Transformational breathwork is a conscious, connected breathing practice that helps you access expanded states of awareness - not by thinking more, but by feeling more deeply.

This is not the same as relaxing breathwork or pranayama. It’s not a breath pattern to calm your nervous system before bed. It’s an active, intentional journey inward - one that opens emotional release, repressed memories, intuitive clarity, and often, a sense of divine connection.

How Breathwork is reclaiming its place in modern healing

Pioneering psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, one of the early researchers in psychedelic therapy, created a method known as Holotropic Breathwork after LSD therapy was banned in the 1970s. Through breath alone, his clients began accessing the same expansive states of consciousness, sometimes even deeper ones.

Grof believed that these non-ordinary states weren’t just therapeutic - they were also spiritual. He saw how trauma, repression, and ancestral imprints lived in the body and psyche, and how breath could access and integrate them.

Today, modern psychiatrists and somatic researchers like Dr. Bessel van der Kolk echo this wisdom. His groundbreaking book The Body Keeps the Score confirms what ancient traditions always knew intuitively: trauma is not just a story in the mind - it's an imprint in the nervous system, the fascia, the posture and the breath.

Similarly, Dr. Gabor Maté has brought global attention to the connection between trauma, addiction, and chronic illness. Through his work,  including trauma-informed psychedelic therapy,  he highlights how emotional repression and early childhood stress shape the very biology of our being. Like van der Kolk, he reminds us that true healing isn’t found in suppressing symptoms, but in creating the safety and space for the body to finally release what it’s been carrying.Yoga, somatic therapy, psychedelics and now breathwork are being validated as powerful tools to restore regulation and heal the body.

Why it works? The neuroscience of breathwork

From a neuroscience perspective, conscious connected breath bypasses the default mode network - the part of your brain responsible for ego identity and overthinking. In other words, it quiets the mental chatter and allows you to access deeper emotional material often stored in the subconscious and limbic brain.

This is where suppressed emotions, childhood imprints and inherited beliefs live.
This is where the soul whispers… when the mind finally gets quiet.

Breathwork also stimulates the vagus nerve, increasing parasympathetic (rest and digest) activation. This helps regulate the nervous system, allowing your body to feel safe enough to let go - physically, emotionally and spiritually.

What happens in a session?

Every session is different - but the flow is often the same.

You lie down, eyes closed and begin a guided breath pattern that keeps your inhale and exhale connected. Music supports the journey and emotions may surface. You may cry, laugh, shake, release… Or you may feel waves of peace, love and insights.

Some people meet younger versions of themselves… Some reconnect with passed loved ones… Some hear inner guidance that cuts through years of confusion… Some just feel their body - truly - for the first time in years…

There is no right or wrong experience. Only what your subconscious is ready to show you and what your body is ready to release.

 My experience: Peace I didn’t know was possible

I still remember my first breathwork journey.

I went in expecting… honestly, not much. I’d done years of mindset work, reflection and therapy and I thought I knew myself.

But about halfway through the session, something shifted. I felt a wave of joy and peace unlike anything I’d ever experienced - not even during the happiest moments of my life. It wasn’t tied to a person, an accomplishment or a story... It was just me, fully present in my body and held by my own breath.

And in that stillness, a quiet truth arose: This is how life is meant to feel…
Not rushed - Not disconnected - Not constantly striving.
But anchored, alive and deeply at home within ourselves.

Somewhere along the way, humanity let the mind take the wheel - driven by fear, shaped by expectations, conditioned by generations before us... We began to trust thoughts more than feelings, logic more than intuition, control more than connection.

But the body never forgot...

In that breathwork session, I didn’t just remember something personal -  I touched a deeper knowing: The body has always held the map back home.
To presence, to peace and to who we were before the world told us who to be.

It was like I met myself for the first time - beyond all the stories, goals, and identities.

And in that moment, I knew that this is something I wanted to share with others...

If you’ve been doing the mindset work but still feel stuck…
If your goals feel hollow or your body feels heavy…
If you’re seeking clarity, but words just aren’t enough anymore…

Then maybe it’s not time to figure things out...Maybe it’s time to breathe them out.