Why Breathwork Isn’t Enough
I’ve had some of the biggest breakthroughs of my life through breathwork.
Insights that dropped in so clearly they couldn’t be denied. Emotions that finally moved after years of being held in. But here’s the truth I’ve come to: Breathwork, on its own, isn’t enough.
Let me explain.
A while ago, my husband and I were trying to decide whether to move our son to a new school. On paper, there wasn’t anything wrong with the school he was at — we actually loved it. But something in my gut kept whispering that it was time for a change. I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) to trust my intuitive hits. Most of my life-changing decisions have come from that place. So when the knowing became clear, we followed it.
The decision felt aligned. Until it didn’t.
After we told the new school yes, I sat down with my son’s current teacher to share the news — and I burst into tears. It shocked me.
Yes, I was sad about leaving the teacher, the friendships, the familiarity. But this felt deeper. Heavier. More confusing. And it didn’t stop there. For the next week, I found myself crying at random moments — waking up with tears in my eyes, breaking down at work, crying before bed.
It didn’t make sense. I knew we made the right choice… so why did my body feel like it was unraveling?
So I did the only thing I know to do when the mind can’t make sense of what the body is holding. I went to my breath. I dropped in. I got still.
And in that space, I heard her — my inner child. Not my son’s voice, not his fear or resistance. Mine.
My six-year-old self had been screaming inside me for days, begging me to understand that this decision — though it had nothing to do with her — was touching everything she never got to process.
She wasn’t just sad about a school change. She was being pulled right back into the instability she experienced as a child:
The back-and-forth between divorced parents
The abrupt move in middle school
The disorienting move in high school
The time I spent away from my mom and lived full-time with my dad
The deep, quiet ache of never quite feeling safe and stable
That little girl was reliving it all. And until I acknowledged her, I was going to keep carrying emotions that weren’t mine to process as an adult.
As soon as I saw it clearly, everything softened.
And then I took the next step. In my mind and heart, my inner child and I met in a valley in Montana, by the stream where we always go together when she needs me. I held her. I told her she was safe. That I wasn’t pulling her out of stability. I told her I’m here now. I’ll always be here. And that she doesn’t have to do this alone anymore.
The wave of emotion calmed. The tears stopped. My body released what it had been holding. I felt grounded again.
What the breath gave me was: awareness, access, clarity. It cracked the door wide open.
But here’s the part I don’t think enough people talk about:
The awareness alone wasn’t enough.
Yes, it changed everything — but only because I did something with it.
I sat with my inner child. I comforted her. I integrated the insight. And I kept showing up — not just in that moment, but in the days that followed — to remind her she is safe now.
That’s the missing piece.
You can attend all the breathwork sessions you want — and they’ll likely bring release, movement, clarity, and even breakthrough moments.
But if there’s no integration, no next step, no action to match the awareness, the transformation often fades.
The real work isn’t just the realization. It’s what you do with it.
It’s meeting your triggers in real time. It’s having tools to move through them.
It’s choosing a different response. Over and over again — until the old story starts to lose its power.
This is why I combine breathwork with inner child healing, energy work, and journaling. Not the fluffy kind — but targeted prompts that dig beneath the surface and help you meet what’s actually there.
It’s why I work with clearing belief systems and somatic tools to re-pattern what lives in the body.
Because the breath will take you to the root, but the rewiring happens when you stay with it — when you bring your awareness into action.
Breathwork has changed my life. But breathwork alone is not enough for long-lasting transformation.
The work is meeting the version of you that got frozen in time years ago —
…and gently helping her come home.
