Have you ever felt just utterly overwhelmed and exhausted by all that is happening in your life? You may be perfectly fine one day, and then suddenly, everything changes and becomes too much for you. Sadness crests over you in waves, making your heart heavy with the weight.

Love, we’ve all been there. How freeing it is. To allow yourself to really feel the sadness and then let it go. A short time of experiencing sadness can make you feel like there is no turning back to who you once were. That you are forever damaged by whatever has happened.

The good news is there is a way to experience this breakthrough with breathwork.

The Benefits of Breathwork That Do More Than Boost Your Mood

Breathwork is a powerful practice everyone has available at any time for immediate relief in your well-being. A source to soothe uneasy emotions, reduce stress and cultivate feelings of openness, love, peace, gratitude, clarity, communication, and connection. It is also useful for releasing trauma or mental, physical, and emotional blocks and anxiety, depression, fear, grief, and anger.

Many use breathwork to uplift their mood and build their self-esteem, self-image, and self-love. Those struggling with negative thoughts and feelings, especially self-directed ones, can use breathing techniques to help ground them in the present moment. Breathing can help you exchange feeling upset, sadness, and disappointment for feeling happiness, joy, and gratitude. As a result, you feel better about the way you see yourself. 

Including breathwork exercises into your daily rituals is highly beneficial to your well-being in more ways than one. Along with combating anxiety, calming the mind, and boosting energy, there are many other benefits of making breathwork a daily practice. Here’s 13 of them:

The 13 Powerful Benefits of Practicing Breathwork For Holistic Healing

Breathwork soothes emotions.
Deep breaths from the abdomen can help you feel calmer, centered, grounded, and energized. Breathwork can help ground you in the present moment, connect you to your emotions and provide balance. It promotes self-awareness of the feelings you are channeling, like anger, anxiousness, fear, or frustration. It also reduces PTSD and feelings of trauma.

Breathwork boosts the immune system.
The beneficial side effects of breathwork that boost your immune system are energy circulation, releasing toxins, balancing blood pressure, improving natural breathing, and oxygenating the bloodstream. When appropriately practiced, breathwork leads to a stronger immune system. Additionally, it positively impacts the central nervous system by slowing down your heart rate and lowering your blood pressure—creating a sense of calm in the body. By activating your parasympathetic nervous system, slowing down your heart rate, lowering your blood pressure, and fueling cells by energizing them, breathwork can help reduce your overall stress. 

Breathwork is a spiritual channel.
Through breathwork, you are aligning yourself energetically to connect with your spirit. This connection is possible by creating the space for your mind and higher self to interact and facilitate inner healing and clearer communication.

Breathwork builds resilience.
Be able to withstand stress and anxiety with breathing exercises. Research by The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology justifies that breathwork exercises are useful coping strategies in stressful situations and circumstances that cause distress.

Breathwork optimizes oxygen in the blood.
Another benefit of breathwork exercises is that it improves the oxygen capacity in the blood. This improvement leads to better energy levels and stronger stamina by increasing the amount of energy released into your cells, providing a better quality of oxygen. 

Breathwork is a bridge to self-awareness.
While doing breathwork, the Beta and Alpha brainwaves slow down from the thinking and doing state to a more dreamlike state of being, the Theta brainwave. This transition from thinking and doing to feeling and being is the bridge to your self-awareness. 

Breathwork improves sleep.
Having a consistent breathwork exercise can calm the nervous system, reducing stimulants, calming stress, and quieting the mind allowing you to fall asleep faster and deeper. 

Breathwork breaks through energetic blocks.
Energetic blocks such as unprocessed negative emotions, fear, and trauma can get trapped and stored in the body. But a solution that serves the body beneficially by releasing them is through breathwork.

Breathwork eliminates toxins.
Deep breathing detoxifies your body, boosts your lung efficiency, and promotes a healthy heart—ideally, over 50% of the toxins your body stores are expelled through breathing. The main toxin that is being expelled through the breath is carbon dioxide. Through deep rhythmic breathing, you expand your diaphragm by relaxing the body and massaging your lymphatic system, helping eliminate these toxins. 

Breathwork stimulates the digestive system.
Breathwork can help the digestion process by stimulating and increasing blood flow throughout the digestive tract and improving intestinal activity. This stimulation provides a positive feedback loop of reducing stress, cortisol, and gut inflammation. Emotionally, because you reduce your overall stress and anxiety levels when you practice breathwork, you set yourself up to make better food choices. Thus, you are less likely to overeat or eat the wrong foods that trigger digestion issues in the first place.

Breathwork manages pain.
Some breathing techniques help manage pain and discomfort. Particular breathing techniques trigger the feeling of relaxation in stressful or uncomfortable situations and provide a means of distraction. This breathwork method contributes to a positive change in mood, which is beneficial for those experiencing physical pain.

Breathwork is a relaxant.
Breathwork can relax the muscles and dilates blood vessels. As your muscles relax through deep breathing exercises, your blood vessels can broaden. This improves circulation and lowers blood pressure and heart rate. 

Breathwork strengthens the lungs.
Healthcare professionals often recommend breathwork for those wanting to improve their lung health. Everyone—from athletes to the elderly—can integrate these exercises into their daily rituals and see improvements in their breathing capabilities. Those with chronic lung conditions like COPD and asthma will significantly benefit from practicing breathwork.

Bottom Line: The Benefits of Breathwork Can Help You Breakthrough the Blocks and Barriers to Healing

I remember very vividly the first time I got to experience this fantastic breathwork session. It was during a day retreat with my friend. I was in tears when I came out, thanks to Kurtis Lee Thomas, a certified life coach and breathwork facilitator whose solid presence I love and remember most. Click here to listen in as I talk with Kurtis about his journey to discovering breathwork, its science, and its power as a healing modality.

I believe that breathwork is a powerful tool in one’s self-development repertoire that could help every one of us in our journey to self-care and wellness. The key is to remember that no matter what you are enduring, it all begins with the breath and the breath is something you can always come back to calm you and center you. 

You can now learn the proper breathing techniques and start incorporating them into your daily rituals by watching any of my breathwork lessons here. Practice them live along with me and other health enthusiasts in the Get Loved Up Community during our monthly group sessions.

Do you practice breathwork? What breakthroughs were revealed to you from practicing breathwork? Share with us in the comments any of the benefits you received from breathwork exercises.