By Amanda | Deeply Rooted Balance
I didn’t go looking for breathwork. I was just a burned-out mom searching for something — anything — that could help. What I found was that breathwork can genuinely heal your nervous system in ways I never expected — and I almost missed it entirely.
I had signed up for a “raise your vibrations” challenge — the kind of thing you stumble across when you’re quietly desperate for something to shift but you’re not sure what that something is. A somatic breathwork session was included in the challenge. I almost skipped it.
I didn’t skip it.
And nothing has been the same since.
I Had No Idea What Was About to Happen
I want to be honest with you about my first session — because I think it will help you understand what breathwork actually is.
I was shaking.
My body was trembling and I thought — okay, this must be what I’m supposed to do. This is how you “feel it.” I leaned into it. I cried. But I always cry, so that part didn’t surprise me.
What surprised me was what came after.
When the session ended, I felt clear. Light. Like I had just done a plant medicine journey without the plant medicine. Something had moved through me that I didn’t even know was stuck. The air felt still. The silence felt even more silent than silence usually does.
I had a moment — I can only describe it as magical — where I felt like I had talked to God.
I wanted to just sit. Be quiet. Stay in it longer. Preserve it somehow.
That was my first breathwork session.
I was hooked. I wanted to do it all the time.
So Can Breathwork Really Heal Your Nervous System?
It’s a fair question. And I understand the skepticism.
Breathing is something your body does automatically, every single day, roughly 20,000 times. How could that be the thing that changes everything?
Here’s what I’ve come to understand — both through my own experience and through my training as a certified SOMA IQ breathwork practitioner:
Your breath is the only function in your body that is both automatic and conscious.
Your heart beats without your permission. Your digestion happens without your input. But your breath? You can take over at any time. You can slow it down. Deepen it. Change it.
And when you do — you send a direct signal to your nervous system.
You are safe. You can rest now.
That signal travels through your vagus nerve — the long, wandering nerve that connects your brain to your heart, your lungs, your gut. When you breathe intentionally, you are literally speaking the language your nervous system understands.
You are not just calming down in the moment.
You are teaching your body what safe feels like.
How Breathwork Heals Your Nervous System — What’s Actually Happening in Your Body
When your nervous system is dysregulated — stuck in fight or flight, running on cortisol and survival — your breathing changes. It becomes shallow. Fast. Chest-based.
And here’s the part that most people don’t realize:
That shallow breathing also feeds the dysregulation.
It becomes a loop. Stress shortens your breath. Shortened breath signals more stress. And on it goes — sometimes for years — until your body forgets what it ever felt like to be truly at rest.
Intentional breathwork interrupts that loop.
It activates your parasympathetic nervous system — the rest and digest state — and begins to shift your body out of survival mode. Over time, with consistent practice, your nervous system learns a new baseline.
Not just calm in the moment.
Calm as a default.
What I Wish I Had Known Before My First Session
Here’s the thing I didn’t fully understand until I went through my training:
That shaking? It wasn’t me doing it wrong.
It was my body doing exactly what it needed to do.
The trembling, the emotion, the intensity — that was stored stress and emotion finally finding a way out. My body had been holding things I hadn’t consciously processed. Things I hadn’t felt safe enough to feel. And the breathwork created enough safety for my body to begin releasing them.
I wish someone had told me to slow down. To feel more. To relax into it rather than perform it.
Because breathwork is not something you do at yourself.
It is something you surrender to.
The Part Nobody Talks About — Integration
After years of practice and training, this is the thing I believe most deeply:
The breathwork session is just the door that opens.
What happens after — the integration — is where the real work lives.
Integration is the quiet after the session. The journal entry you write. The walk you take. The conversation you finally feel ready to have. The pattern you suddenly see clearly. The decision that feels obvious now when it felt impossible before.
Breathwork gives you access to yourself. Integration is what you do with that access.
This is why I built my program, Calm Your Storm, the way I did. The breathwork session comes first — not as an add-on, not as a bonus — but as the opening experience. Because I want you to feel something before I ask you to understand anything.
Feel first. Understand second. That’s how real change happens.
What Changed for Me Over Time
I came back to myself.
That’s the simplest way I know how to say it.
After years of feeling lost — overwhelmed, reactive, disconnected, running on empty — breathwork brought me back. Not to who I used to be. To something deeper than that.
I found calmness. Steadiness. A knowingness of who I am and what I’m here to do.
My purpose became clear. My reactions softened. I felt more relaxed inside my own skin — maybe for the first time in a very long time.
That’s what I want for you.
Ready to Start?
Your body has been sending you signals. Maybe for years. This is your invitation to finally listen.
Download my free guide: “Why Your Body Won’t Calm Down” — and begin to understand what your body has been carrying, and what it’s been waiting for you to hear.
Want to experience breathwork for yourself? Sometimes the fastest way to understand what your nervous system needs is to feel it. Book a breathwork session and let your body show you what words never could.
[Schedule a Breathwork Session →]
Or if you’re ready to go deeper — Calm Your Storm is coming soon. An online program to help you see where you need to shift, where you don’t feel safe, and how to begin finding your way back to yourself.
[Join the Waitlist →]
Amanda is a certified SOMA IQ breathwork practitioner and founder of Deeply Rooted Balance — a space for women who are ready to stop surviving and start coming home to themselves.