How we work...

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Prior to first session

In advance of your first session, you will be emailed a client questionnaire to complete. This will ask questions about your medical history that may impact upon our sessions, as well as a series of diagnostic questions to help when framing your first session. Please bring this with you to our first session.

First session

At your first session, we will review your completed questionnaire and discuss any questions or concerns you may have. We will start our breathwork practice with a 'go to' exercise that can be used any time to quickly and efficiently regulate your nervous system. We will then move through a series of breathwork exercises designed to promote optimal functional breathing that you will need to practice at home in between sessions. Throughout the session, we will discuss breathwork tips, the effect of breathwork on our cognitive and physical well-being and why breathwork is so important to regulate our autonomic nervous system.

Subsequent sessions

In additional sessions, we will check in with how you found your 'homework' exercises and any changes you have noticed. We will recap previously taught exercises and build on these by practising further exercises that will best help you to build and manage your functional breathing pattern.

Generally, three sessions will give you a solid basis from which you can continue to develop your functional breathing pattern with daily home practice. Five sessions is optimal to ensure that the breathwork exercises are consolidated in memory, correctly and consistently applied and to ensure appropriate progress has been made to create a solid and sufficient base from which ongoing daily breathwork practices can continue at home.

Contraindications

If you are in your first trimester of pregnancy, please do not book a session. No breath holds should be performed during this trimester - breath holds are used to create a sense of 'air hunger' to increase the level of carbon dioxide in your lungs to balance your body's biochemistry and influence your autonomic nervous system. However, a regular and consistent breath pattern is fundamental during the first trimester because we do not wish to place any stress on the mother or developing baby. This is why breath holds should not be performed. If you are in your second or third trimester, a session can be designed that focuses on promoting relaxation and wellbeing to include gentle breathwork exercises to calm the mind and body and, potentially gentle and limited breath holds. You may prefer to simply wait until after your baby has arrived.

If you have pulmonary hypertension, a serious respiratory illness, severe asthma, severe anxiety or panic attacks,  epilepsy, type 1 diabetes, kidney disease, depression, cancer or any cardiology issues, please do not book a session unless you have been advised, in writing, by your GP or consultant that it is safe to do so. Please also speak to us first, before making a booking so we can offer further guidance. For all the above conditions, the practising of daily or twice daily breath holds to optimise day-to-day functional breathing may place inappropriate strain on your body. It is advisable to practise only nasal breathing, and potentially, depending on the individual case, gentle reduced breathing.

If you or your child use an epi-pen, inhaler or any other medication in an emergency, please bring these with you to a session. If you or your child has type 2 diabetes, please bring an appropriate snack and / or drink to the session.