What to Expect from Your First Breathwork Session (from my personal experience)

Find yourself thinking about signing up for a breath work session lately?

If you’re curious and wondering about what to expect, this blog post will be very helpful.

Lately, I’ve been exploring the wellness world. That’s how I ended up joining a wellness 9D Breathwork.

And let me tell you it was quite the experience.

It was such an intense experience that I knew I had to come back and report on my Wellness blog, the one you’re reading right now 🙂

What is breath work?

If you search online, you will find all sorts of definition for breath work.

But to keep this as simple as possible, breath work can be an all encompassing term for various forms of deep breathing practices.

The end goal is to release toxins and stress out of your body.

9D Breathwork

9D Breathwork is still breath work but with a multi sensory layer added to it.

This is often done with various sounds and music.

You are taken on a journey and various music is used for the build up and potential emotional release.

Meditation

Breathwork is a fragment of meditation.

Although breath work is very trendy lately in the world of wellness, it is nothing new.

It has been around for a very long time with roots in Yoga.

Benefits

People that are into breath work and promoting it will tell you a myriad of benefits.

Some of the most commonly advertised are potential to help you with relaxation, stress reliever and mood improvement.

How does it work?

The idea is pretty much forcing your body to go through the fight or flight response by breathing deeply.

Who should not do breathwork?

Breathword is not recommend for pregnant women and people with cardiovascular issues and other various health issues

Why is it so powerful?

It is powerful because of its deep abdominal breathing. And that is also the reason that you might feel like you are hyperventilating.

My experience

Now that I have done the whole introductory portion of breath work, now is the part where I tell you about my experience and what I really think about breath work.

I’ll be honest and say right away that I did not like it at all.

Whatsoever.

It’s a big fat NO for me.

I was so eager to do the 9D breath work.

Especially that I love music so much. But it don’t think it was a good fit for me.

My session was 2 hours, with about 30 min of briefing.

And 15 minutes in, I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

I was so done.

Why I did not like it

Breath work is not for me because I find that it just brings all the raw intense emotions at the surface.

Now that doesn’t sound too bad at first. But I fond myself stuck there. There was a lack of fitting way to release those aforementioned emotions. So I felt trapped.

I left the breath work session feeling so frustrated and annoyed.

Like there was no way for me to release these emotions.

I went back home feeling so annoyed and on edge, which I don’t usually struggle with.

It then took me many weeks of processing in order to really figure out the way I was feeling.

And finally, a good 2 months later, I realized that I did not like the experience at all. I would go as far as saying that every time I think about it, it brings back the frustration.

Alternatives

That’s when it dawned on me that breath work is just not for me and that is ok.

We don’t have to like every thing. I am still very proud of myself for giving it a try. I don’t like how we are brought to hyperventilate throughout the duration of the session.

So should you do it?

Now I think it’s so important to have discernment.

It’s not because I didn’t like something that it means that you won’t like it.

Albeit breath work is not for me, I still have friends asking me for advice about whether or not they should do it.

I always tell them to give it a try if they feel compelled to. I just tell them to keep an open mind and proceed with care.

For example, I still recommended it to a friend who ended up liking it.

Meanwhile another one was ambivalent.

So all this to say that we all like different things and that’s the beauty in life.

Active alternatives / Somatic/ Movement

I realized that I prefer things that allow me to move.

As a dancer, this didn’t actually surprise me at all. I started getting into yoga lately on top of my usual dancing.

When it comes to deep healing practices, I prefer ecstatic dance as it allows you to expel surplus of energy and feel a deep sense of relief after each session.

So all this to say play around and see what works best for you.

Wrap up

Lastly, know that you don’t have to partake in any grand healing telling you that you will heal in one session.

I urge you to see healing as a lifestyle and lifetime commitment.

I prefer the slow and steady approach where I incorporate tiny little actions to optimize my life on the daily.

Also if you are like me and prefer to use dance as a form of meditation, I do invite you to my upcoming dance retreat. Click here so you don’t miss out on this girlie.

Most importantly, stay awesome 🙂