Breathwork, Serotonin, and the Science of Self-Transformation
- Brainz Magazine
- Nov 26
- 9 min read
Written by Justin Edgar, Coach
Justin Edgar is a life and breathwork coach and creator of The Art of Creative Flow, blending entrepreneurship, education, and mindful somatic practice to help individuals, leaders, and teams move beyond struggle and burnout to reconnect with clarity, vitality, and purpose.
Breathwork sits at the foundation of nearly every contemplative tradition on Earth. Long before we spoke about “mindfulness” or “inner work”, humans understood that the breath is the simplest and most direct gateway into stillness. Stillness is where awareness sharpens, where emotional turbulence settles, and where the deeper work of self-realisation begins. What modern science now reveals is that breathwork is not merely a relaxation technique. It is a profound biological bridge between the brain, the heart, and the gut that influences the very neurochemical fabric through which we experience identity, meaning, and possibility.
The gut, often called the “second brain”, may in fact be our first, the original seat of instinct, emotion, and personal power. Evolutionarily, instinct precedes intellect. Emotion ripples through us before thought assembles it into language. The dense neural network of the enteric nervous system, comprised of some 500 million neurons, more than in the spinal cord, is the original interpreter of reality. It is the seat of instinct, the ground of emotion, and the somatic landscape in which truth first becomes felt. Breath has a remarkable ability to shape this landscape. A change in breathing changes the gut. A change in the gut changes the brain. And a change in brain networks changes the story we live by. It is here, at the meeting point of breath, biology, and belief, that self-transformation truly begins.
Breathwork reconnects us to the body’s original intelligence, the instinctive clarity that sits beneath layers of conditioning, social expectation, and unexamined assumptions.
Esteem: The psychological ground of transformation
Before any change can take root in the body, it must first take root in the mind, not in the cognitive, analytical sense, but in the deeper sense of how we perceive ourselves. Esteem is the psychological ground upon which all transformation is built. It is not superficial confidence; it is the embodied sense of agency, the knowing that our choices matter, that our presence has influence, and that life responds to us as much as we respond to it.
Esteem arises through a trinity of capacities: faith, courage, and vulnerability. Faith is the visioning faculty, the ability to imagine a life beyond present limitations and to believe in possibility before evidence appears. Courage is the animating principle, the willingness to step into the unknown and allow potential to become reality through action. Vulnerability is the softening principle, the willingness to feel, to reveal, and to be touched by experience rather than armoured against it.
When these three capacities work in harmony, the solar plexus, the energetic centre of personal will and creative power, steadies. The emotional body loosens. The psyche begins to trust itself. And the physiological body follows. This is the psychological architecture through which breathwork begins to exert its deeper effect.
The gut: The original brain
Once esteem opens the internal landscape, the gut becomes its first responder. The gut is not merely an organ of digestion; it is the ground of instinct and emotion. Around 80% of the information travelling along the vagus nerve flows from the body up to the brain, making the gut the primary influencer of our moment-to-moment emotional experience.
When breath becomes slow, smooth, silent, and deep, the diaphragm moves in rhythmic waves that gently massage the gut and stimulate the vagus nerve. This upward signalling tells the brain: I am safe. The body’s defensive vigilance loosens. A healthy gut then regulates motility, reduces inflammation, and stabilises serotonin production.
A calm, healthy gut is not simply a sign of ease; it is the biological foundation of presence. When the gut is unsettled, the mind becomes unsettled. Thought tightens around fear. Rumination begins to dominate. Old self-protective beliefs regain their grip on our minds.
But when the gut is calm and healthy, interoceptive awareness, our ability to sense the inner state of the body, strengthens. The emotional body becomes more open. The heart becomes more receptive. And the mind becomes more willing to see beyond old presumptions, those default interpretations informed by past rather than present experience.
Serotonin: The chemistry of coherence
Serotonin is often trivialised as a “feel-good chemical”, yet its function is far more profound. Serotonin does not create euphoria; it creates coherence. It is the biochemical foundation of emotional steadiness, cognitive flexibility, and the sense of inner alignment that makes insight possible. These become the conditions through which feelings of happiness and joy emerge.
The utility of serotonin cannot be understood in isolation. Its power emerges through relationships with the vagus nerve, the enteric nervous system, the heart field, oxytocin pathways, carbon dioxide balance, and the Default Mode Network. These systems together determine whether we inhabit a state of contraction or openness, rigidity or flexibility, survival or self-expression.
Breathwork influences serotonin more elegantly than any pharmacological pathway because it works through the systems serotonin itself depends upon.
Breath and the serotonergic system
CO₂ is not just a waste gas; it is one of the body’s most important signalling molecules. The brain reads CO₂ levels as a real-time indicator of internal stability. Serotonergic neurons in the raphe nuclei respond directly to these changes. When CO₂ rises slightly, as it does during slow breathing or extended exhales, it shifts blood pH, improves oxygen delivery, and tells the brain that the body is steady and safe.
This mild increase in CO₂ stabilises serotonergic firing, creating a sense of grounded clarity. The mind becomes less reactive, less tangled in its own loops of interpretation. Emotional tolerance increases. The nervous system gains the capacity to stay with the sensation of feeling rather than flee into the narrative of thought.
Conversely, when CO₂ drops too low, as it does with fast, shallow, anxious breathing, the brain becomes unstable. Cerebral blood flow constricts, anxiety rises, and the mind loses its ability to process complexity as we lose access to higher-order cognitive functions like imagination and curiosity. Breath, therefore, becomes the most direct lever for influencing serotonin tone.
But the breath’s reach extends even further. As the diaphragm moves, it regulates gut motility, the wave-like contractions that move material through the digestive system. Serotonin governs these contractions when breath calms the gut, motility steadies. When motility steadies, serotonin production becomes more predictable. This creates a virtuous cycle:
Healthy gut → steady serotonin → calm mind → deeper breath → healthier gut.
The breath is both the entry point and the integrator of this cycle.
Oxytocin: The emotional opening
If serotonin is the chemistry of coherence, oxytocin is the chemistry of openness. It is oxytocin that allows the emotional body to soften, to trust, to feel connected, and to let buried experiences rise to awareness. Oxytocin is released through slow, rhythmic breathing, heart-breath synchrony, group resonance, and the deep stillness that follows emotional catharsis.
One of the most remarkable discoveries in this field is the dynamic play between oxytocin and serotonin. Oxytocin stimulates serotonergic firing in the dorsal raphe nucleus. Serotonin increases the sensitivity of oxytocin receptors throughout the brain. Together, they create a biological space in which healing becomes possible.
There exists a truism that only what you feel is real. The truth of all thought and ideation, the narratives we construct, is contingent upon our capacity to believe that particular narrative. Feelings, by contrast, are direct. They live in the body. We cannot heal emotionally from what we are unwilling to feel.
Oxytocin creates that felt sense of safety through which we become open to deeper feeling. This sequence, reveal, feel, reinterpret, is the neurobiological shape of transformation.
The default mode network: Where the story lives
At the centre of our mental life lies the Default Mode Network, the DMN. You can think of it as the internal narrator, the aspect of mind that is always explaining, predicting, remembering, comparing, and telling us who we are, as well as running all the internal processes that keep us alive, like breathing and pumping blood.
The DMN is responsible for our autobiographical sense of self. It links past experience with present interpretation, then uses that to forecast the future. In small doses, this is helpful; it keeps us oriented in our own lives.
But the DMN has a bias; it prefers the familiar over the possible. When we carry unprocessed emotional pain, long-standing fear, shame, or unresolved grief, the DMN folds these into our default interpretations. It repeats the same inner commentary. It recycles the same beliefs. It imagines the same outcomes. And over time, that story can become a cage.
Here is where your personal truth comes in. Feeling is real. Story is optional.
A feeling arises in the body, tightness in the chest, butterflies in the tummy, heat in the throat. Then the DMN rushes in with interpretation: This means I’m not enough. This means people leave. This means I can’t trust anyone. The belief attaches itself to the feeling like a label. Over time, that label becomes a limitation.
Breathwork intervenes directly in this loop. As effective breathing increases our capacity for interoception and stabilises serotonin production, the nervous system gains the ability to feel a sensation without immediately collapsing into an old narrative. The body reveals what it has held. The mind does not rush to explain it. This creates a moment of grace, a quiet gap where reinterpretation becomes possible.
In this space, the DMN becomes pliant. Old presumptions loosen. Feeling is experienced directly rather than instantly filtered through an inherited script. The body’s deeper intelligence begins to recontextualise the feeling. What once meant “I am broken” may begin to mean “I am progressing”. What once meant “I am unworthy” may begin to mean “I am healing” or “I can do this”.
This is how breathwork supports genuine psychological transformation: by decoupling feeling from outdated belief and allowing truth to reorganise meaning.
Why breathwork makes us feel more whole
High-serotonin states and breathwork states share a distinctive signature:
Reduced DMN rigidity
Increased interoceptive awareness
Lower anxiety
Greater embodiment
More emotional clarity
An enhanced capacity to witness ourselves without immediate judgment
A deeper sense of connection to self, others, and life itself
Interoception is key here. It is the brain’s capacity to listen to the body, heartbeat, breath, gut sensation, muscular tone, subtle shifts in energy. Many of us spend years living almost entirely in the head, cut off from this inner listening. Breathwork reverses that. As we breathe with intention, the signal-to-noise ratio of the body’s internal messaging system improves. We start to feel ourselves more clearly from the inside out.
At first, this may bring forward discomfort, old grief, buried fear, long-held tension. But as oxytocin and serotonin rise, and as the DMN fills with more constructive, life-affirming beliefs, something else emerges, a capacity to hold those sensations with curiosity rather than self-criticism.
Over time, this process supports a profound identity shift:
from “I am broken.”
to “I am healing.”
to “I am whole.”
Wholeness, in this sense, is not perfection. It is the felt experience that all of who we are, our history, our wounds, our gifts, our contradictions, can be held within a single, coherent, compassionate awareness. Breathwork, by integrating gut, heart, and mind, gives us direct access to that wholeness.
Why breathwork changes identity
When we bring together the psychological ground of esteem, the biological ground of a healthy gut and calm enteric nervous system, the emotional opening of oxytocin, the cognitive flexibility engendered through optimised serotonin production, and the story-making power of the DMN, a coherent sequence appears. It is the anatomy of transformation.
Esteem strengthens agency. Agency calms the gut and steadies the enteric nervous system. Gut calm signals safety throughout the body. Safety and a felt sense of worthiness reveal themselves as inner calm that allows oxytocin production to open the emotional body. Openness allows hidden truths to be revealed. What is revealed can be felt. What is felt can be healed. As serotonin softens interpretation, meaning reorganises. The story shifts. Identity updates. We become more whole.
Breathwork is a powerful aid in accelerating each step in this sequence. It reunites instinct, emotion, and intellect. It dissolves the gap between body and story. It gives us back the capacity to feel without fear and to think without distortion. It is both ancient and immediate, both physiological and spiritual, both scientific and sublime.
Conclusion: The rhythm of knowing
Breathwork is not merely a wellness practice; it offers a direct pathway to the return of agency, presence, and creative potential, the quiet art of remembering who we are beneath the noise of thought and a pathway to a healthier relationship with our thoughts. When the breath calms the mind, opens the heart, and energises the gut, it allows us to uncover truths long buried and to reinterpret ourselves with greater compassion, clarity, and courage.
As Alan Watts so beautifully observed, “All the wisdom of the world is found in the rhythm of your own breathing, if only you are still enough to notice.”
In the rhythm of breath, we rediscover the source of coherence, clarity, and transformation that has always been within us.
“To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.” – Lao Tzu
Read more from Justin Edgar
Justin Edgar, Coach
Justin Edgar is a life and breathwork coach, speaker, and creator of The Art of Creative Flow, a transformational program helping individuals, leaders, and teams move beyond burnout and reconnect with purpose, creativity, and resilience. With a unique background spanning financial markets, Montessori education, wellness entrepreneurship, and somatic practice, Justin brings rare depth and insight to his coaching. His work empowers clients to harness clarity, intuition, and creative flow as tools for personal and professional breakthroughs.
