Breathwork 101: A Beginner’s Guide To Finding The Right Practice For Your Nervous System

Breathwork Doesn’t Have to Be Intense Work

When people hear “breathwork”, they often picture something intense: crying on a mat, dramatic emotional release, maybe even a little frightening. That version exists, but it’s one small slice of a much bigger picture. Most of the breathwork I use with clients, especially in a first session, is quiet, simple, and almost boring in the best possible way. That’s by design.

Start Here: Belly Breathing

If you try nothing else from this post, try this. Sit or lie down comfortably. Put one hand on your chest and one on your belly. Inhale slowly through your nose for a count of four, letting your belly rise more than your chest. Exhale through your mouth for a count of six, letting the exhale be longer than the inhale. That’s it. This single pattern, sometimes called diaphragmatic or belly breathing, is one of the fastest ways to signal safety to your nervous system, and it’s appropriate for nearly everyone, with almost no risk.

Matching The Practice To The Need

Different breathwork styles do different things, and part of what I help clients with is matching the practice to what they’re actually feeling, rather than reaching for whatever’s trending. If you’re anxious or can’t settle, a slow, steady rhythm of about five to six breaths per minute, sometimes called coherent or resonant breathing, tends to be more effective than trying to force calm through willpower alone. If your mind won’t stop racing at bedtime, a soft humming exhale (bee breath or Bhramari) can be a surprisingly effective closing practice. If you’re navigating menopause-related overwhelm specifically, pairing breath with gentle body awareness, what’s called somatic breathwork, tends to address both the physical and emotional layers at once.

When to Go Gentler, Not Stronger

A general rule I give every new client: start gentler than you think you need. You can always build intensity later, once trust and safety are established. You can rarely walk back to a session that moved too fast for your body. If you have a history of heart conditions, seizures, severe panic disorder, or you’re pregnant, stick to the gentlest practices, like belly breathing or box breathing, and loop in your coach or medical provider before trying anything more active.

You’re Always In Control

The most important thing to know before you start: you are never required to push through discomfort in breathwork. Every practice can be paused, slowed, or stopped. Some sensations, tingling, warmth, a little lightheadedness, are normal and temporary. If something feels like too much, that’s information, not failure.

If you’re curious what a guided version of this feels like with real support behind it, that’s exactly what a Breathwork session or Mini Session is built for. You don’t need any experience, special equipment, or a particular level of flexibility. You just need to be willing to notice your breath, and let it do what it already knows how to do.

What Perimenopause Actually Feels Like (And Why So Many Women Are Told It’s Something Else)

The Question I Hear Most Often

“Is this normal, or is something wrong with me?” I hear some version of this question in almost every first conversation I have with a new client. She’s been feeling off for months, sometimes years, and no one has offered her a name for it. So she starts naming it herself: Stress, burnout, anxiety, a bad year. Sometimes those labels are accurate. Often, they’re missing the bigger picture: Perimenopause.

What Perimenopause Symptoms Actually Look Like

Perimenopause is the transitional years leading up to menopause, and it can start in your late 30’s or 40’s, well before periods stop. The symptom list is longer and stranger than most women expect. It’s not just hot flashes. It’s waking at 3 AM with your heart racing for no clear reason. It’s a wave of irritability that feels disproportionate to what triggered it. It’s forgetting a word mid-sentence, or walking into a room and losing the thread of why you’re there. It’s a new kind of anxiety that shows up even on days that are objectively fine.

These symptoms are real, physiological, and driven by fluctuating estrogen and progesterone, not personal failure or sudden personality change. But because they show up gradually and unevenly, they’re easy to explain away, one symptom at a time, instead of recognizing the pattern.

Why the Misdiagnosis Happens So Often

Many women bring these symptoms to a doctor and walk out with a prescription for anxiety or depression, with no mention of hormones at all. That’s not necessarily bad care; anxiety and depression are real and treatable. But when perimenopause is the root and it’s never named, women end up medicated for the symptom while the underlying transition goes unaddressed and unexplained. That gap, between what a woman is experiencing and what she’s being told about it, is where so much suffering occurs.

I understand this gap personally, not just professionally. It’s part of why I do this work the way I do: naming what’s happening, not diagnosing or or treating it clinically, but helping women recognize the pattern so they can have better, more informed conversations with their medical provides, and stop assuming something is wrong with their character when it’s actually their hormones.

What to Do With This Information

If any of this sounds familiar, the first impression isn’t panic, and it isn’t self-diagnosis either. It’s curiosity. Start tracking what you’re experiencing; mood, sleep, cycle changes, energy, focus. Bring that pattern to a healthcare provider who takes midlife women seriously. And give yourself permission to stop assuming the hardest explanation (that something is fundamentally wrong with you) when a much more common, much more human explanation is sitting right there: your body is transitioning, and it needs support, not judgment.

This is exactly the kind of pattern-recognition and grounded support I offer through Menopause Coaching Support sessions, paired with breathwork to help regulate the nervous system while you sort out the medical piece with your provider. You don’t have to figure this out alone, and you don’t have to have the right words for it yet. You just have to start paying attention.