Welcome to Mo Chuisle Healing Breath and All Things Breathwork

Written by Dara Bradley, Breathwork Facilitator & Coach

Dara Bradley, based in Cork Ireland, is the founder of Mo Chuisle Healing Breath, an experiential sanctuary she created to encourage healing and growth through the power of the breath. She has guided hundreds of individuals on their paths to self-discovery and deep transformation through her unique Mo Chuisle Healing Breathwork Journeys.

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Welcome to Mo Chuisle Healing Breath, where the power of the breath meets ancient wisdom and modern science. In this collaboration with Brainz Magazine, Dara shares her lived experience and expertise from over six years in the holistic and psychological space, guiding you through the origins, science, and transformative potential of breathwork. Whether you're new to conscious breathing or curious to deepen your practice, this is your invitation to reconnect with the most underrated superpower of the human body, your breath.

Origins of breathwork

Breathing has been an essential part of human health and spiritual wellness for thousands of years and has a much deeper function than just survival. The ancients and yogis had all this figured out thousands of years ago, connecting the mind, body, and spirit through ancient Pranayama, Qi Gong, and Taoist breathing techniques and meditation practices. But somewhere along the way, we lost a focus on this ancient wisdom and insight, that enables a deep connection to self, through the power of the breath.

Conscious Connected Breathwork, as we know it today, began to take shape in the 1960s and 70s with the emergence of two influential methods. The first was Rebirthing Breathwork, developed by Leonard Orr, who discovered that conscious, continuous breathing could unlock emotional blockages and release repressed trauma in the body.

Around the same time, Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist and researcher of altered states of consciousness (who previously gave LSD to his clients during a therapy session, to help them reach these altered states, but then it was banned in the US and he needed to find another way), co-developed Holotropic Breathwork with his wife Christina Grof, a method combining deep, rhythmic breathing, evocative music, and bodywork, designed to access altered states of consciousness, similar to that of LSD, to facilitate deep psychological healing.

These pioneering practices, built upon ancient wisdom, laid the foundations for the modern breathwork movement, inspiring the diverse range of breathing techniques used today, ranging from gentle, mindfulness-based breathwork techniques to intense, cathartic, and transformational sessions—all grounded in the simple yet profound power of the breath.

The Breath is the most underrated superpower of the human body

Breathwork is changing lives rapidly. It is the practice that has taken the Health and Wellness world by storm because it is instant, it’s effective, and it’s free! Breathing is so simple, yet so deep, and we are still only scratching the surface with what is possible with the breath. As the speed of consciousness is growing, more and more people are awakening, healing, and turning their focus inwards to discover this raw force inside, that we all have access to!

What breathwork does so effortlessly is reconnect you with your body and your felt experience of life. It gets you out of your head and helps to quieten the mind chatter (that we all have), reconnecting to yourself in a different way. It’s a science backed, drug free method that helps release the body’s natural ‘’happy chemicals’’ (Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, Endorphins) thus changing how people feel and relate to themselves and others.

It can have massive implications on your mental health and fitness if you are not breathing optimally. Most of us have picked up unhealthy breathing habits that constrict our breathing. It’s almost impossible for you to feel good, sleep well, or train well if your breathing isn’t healthy. The good news though, is that once you become aware of any unconscious breathing patterns that you have developed, you can then retrain the body and the muscles over time to breathe in a more supportive way.

It can sometimes be overlooked by medical professionals when patients present with varying symptoms, i.e., stress, anxiety, low mood/energy, poor sleep, or digestion. 

You can’t charge for a prescription using the breath, it’s not conducive to the pharmaceutical agenda! But thankfully, there has been a massive shift, as more doctors and consultants are now recognising the influence of breathing in how we think and feel, and are recommending breathwork as an effective tool for managing one's mental and physical health, to bring balance naturally. Ultimately, it empowers and helps people feel better in themselves (some of the many benefits), rather than medication being the first and/or only solution.

Breathwork is now being recognised as an incredible self-care tool to improve students' well-being as well. It warms my heart to hear more schools introducing mindful breathing exercises to lesson plans and classes. It’s a tool they will have for their lifetime. I wish I knew about all of this when I was younger.

Learn young, breathe well, live well

We have a societal pandemic of exhaustion, stress, anxiety, and burnout, but a revolution is slowly but surely taking place in our general health and well-being, supported by modern science, as more people are seeking mental health support and relief, which is at a record high. More people are now understanding and experiencing how transformative and effective the breath can really be (the list is endless). And more importantly, it’s helping them to feel better, to bring safety and regulation back into their bodies. Our breath is the fastest and the simplest way to regulate how we respond, how we feel, and how we experience life.

Big Pharma is not too happy about this revolution. I wonder why!

Benefits of breathwork

Some of the many benefits of Breathwork (depending on which way you use the breath!)

• Regulate and tone the Nervous System – relax, balance, or energise

• Increase motivation and concentration

• Calm and relax

• Reduce stress, anxiety & overwhelm

• Boost immune system and lung capacity

• Improve the quality of sleep, rest, and digestion

• Physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual healing

• A greater sense of clarity, connecting more deeply to your sense of purpose and intuition

• A heightened sense of well-being, more self-acceptance, and self-love

• Emotional and trauma release

• Deep spiritual connection, accessing deeper states of consciousness

• And many more…

So, what is breathwork?

There are so many different approaches and styles of breathwork that it can be overwhelming at the start to get your head around it; it certainly was for me when I first discovered it. 

The word ‘Breathwork’ itself is an umbrella term, a bit like ‘’Fitness’’, and is used to describe various breathing exercises and techniques. Breathwork can be broken down into three main practices, each outlined and described in more detail below:

1. Breath Awareness (Passive)

2. Conscious Controlled Breathwork (Pranayama/Functional Breathwork)

3. Conscious Connected Breathwork (Healing /Therapeutic Breathwork)

Breathwork is learning how to use our breath effectively and more efficiently (Functional Breathwork), but it can also be used in a deeper way for personal growth, healing, and transformation (Healing Therapeutic Breathwork).

You decide!

Breathwork 101: Breath awareness

We breathe over 25,000 breaths in a single day, and do we even notice any of them? The first step and the first fundamental practice in Breathwork is developing breath awareness. Become a witness to your own breath, notice any unconscious breathing patterns you might have developed, which vary from person to person. Connecting with your breath, before making any changes to it. This can be done anywhere and at any time.

Being with, allowing, and accepting the breath as it is, without any judgement, helps you to connect to yourself and the present moment, in the here and now, without any external noise or influence. All your focus turns inwards, to your felt experience of the breath in the body – its quality, its flow, its speed. Every breathing pattern corresponds to how we think and feel and can reveal a lot about where we are within ourselves, in any given moment.

You can then decide to actively make changes to this pattern, as needed, once you bring it into your awareness first.

Let’s give it a go together…

Breath awareness exercise – How are you breathing?

• Sit in a comfortable position

• It can be helpful to put one hand on your belly and one hand on your chest.

• Close your eyes, putting all your attention inwards, and focus on your breath.

Breathing naturally, just as you normally would. It’s important not to control it or change it in any way yet and just watch the breath move in and out naturally, for about a minute or two, become a witness to your own breath.

A few simple breath awareness questions below to ask yourself, breathing normally at rest, without any control of the breath. Write down all that you notice:

Nose or Mouth: Are you breathing in and out through your nose or your mouth?

Speed & rhythm, chest or belly breather

• Is it fast, short & shallow, and do you just breathe into your chest? (Does the hand on your chest rise first when you breathe in?)

• Is it slow, long & deep, and does it travel down into your diaphragm/belly? (Does the hand on your belly rise first when you breathe in?)

• Count how many seconds you inhale? Count how many seconds it takes you to exhale.

• Are they the same length or different lengths?
  

Flow:

• Is it broken and jagged, or is it smooth and flowing?

• Do you hold your breath?

Posture

• Is it hunched and collapsed, or is it neutral or open?

Mind

• Is it busy and distracted, or is it focused and relaxed?

The good news is that once you notice and become aware of your breathing patterns, you can then choose to consciously change them. This is how you create a relationship with your breath. Keep a note of your answers and we will come back to them shortly.

Most of us weren’t taught in school how to use the most basic yet fundamental function of the human body, the breath!

Unfortunately, an elevated, fast, and shallow breathing pattern in the chest has become the “norm” in today’s busy world. Over 90% of people are chronic over breathers, breathing too fast and too shallow into the chest, only using 20% of their lung capacity – often breathing in using the mouth (which activates the stress response in the body), using the muscles in the upper body (shoulders, chest and neck) instead of the diaphragm (main breathing muscle) creating a poor oxygen environment and physical dysfunction in the body. It can affect the chemical balance in the body and disturb the PH. The body must then find a new normal and can get stuck in that fast-paced, shallow breathing rhythm.

Two-thirds of all our energy comes from the air that we breathe, and over 70% of the toxins in our body are expelled through the lungs, through our breath. So, if you are not breathing properly, your body must work overtime to release the toxins. In turn, the brain, organs, and cells are not getting enough fuel they need for optimal functioning to create energy, and so it can have massive implications on your overall health.

Chronic over-breathing can lead to:

• Chronic stress & anxiety

• Nasal congestion/Rhinitis

• Asthma & Allergies

• Migraines

• Fatigue

• Poor sleep/Insomnia/Sleep Apnea

• Poor blood circulation

• Poor digestion/tummy problems

• Under oxygenation of blood and muscles

• Poor health and fitness

Our breath is like a remote control to our nervous system

Breathing is the only part of the autonomic nervous system that is both automatic and within our control, which is no coincidence – It is an invitation and an opportunity to take part in our own nature!

If you consider your heart rate, your blood pressure, your digestion – all those functions happen automatically, without any conscious effort. But with our respiratory system, our breath is two-fold and is one of the few vital bodily functions that is controlled by both the conscious and the unconscious parts of our minds. It happens automatically (by the unconscious mind), we breathe in and out throughout the day, often without noticing it. However, we can also choose to control it and direct its flow (conscious mind).

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is divided into two main components:

• Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS): Responsible for initiating the "fight-flight-freeze" response, it raises heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol production.

• Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS): Facilitates the "rest-and-digest" state, encouraging rest, relaxation, recovery, and efficient digestion.
  

Breathing techniques affect the body in multiple ways:

• Gas Exchange Optimization: Conscious healthy breathing maintains carbon dioxide and oxygen balance, preventing over-breathing and improving oxygen delivery to the cells and tissues.

• Heart Rate Variability (HRV): Slow, deliberate breathing increases HRV, which improves nervous system regulation and adaptability to stress

• Vagal Stimulation: Certain breathing practices activate the vagus nerve, reducing stress responses and lowering inflammation in the body.

The dual nature of the breath provides a direct link to the ANS. When you consciously control and slow down your breath, you can then control the other nervous system functions – you can slow down your heart rate and blood pressure, optimise your digestion, by calming and transitioning your nervous system into the Parasympathetic Nervous System state.

You can also do the opposite with the breath and consciously activate the Sympathetic Nervous System, to energise the body, increase the heart rate and blood flow in the body, to be used in moderation as appropriate. (Problems arise when we activate it unconsciously and consistently over time-see more on this below).

However, it’s important to note that we need both sides of the Autonomic Nervous System for healthy functioning and balance. The Sympathetic Nervous System is often cast as the villain and gets a bad rap for being the ‘’stress response ‘’ but the reality is that we need to be in the Sympathetic state at certain points throughout the day – to be alert and focused, energised, for presenting at work, for exercising at the gym etc. The focus shouldn’t always be in this zen and relaxed parasympathetic state all day, every day, or we would get nothing done. So it’s about finding a balance between the two.

The breath can be used as a tool to regulate and bring you back to balance, back to a state of calm in any given moment. When you are heightened or triggered, pause and put your focus on your breath, which can anchor you, no matter what is happening in your external world. 

And vice versa, we can use the breath as a tool to energise when needed, cand onnect back to the breath.

We transition naturally between the two nervous system states throughout the day, but problems can arise when we get stuck on one side or the other, for long periods of time (highly activated/heightened/can’t relax or low energy/mood/depressed).

The root cause of many diseases today is a chronic imbalance in the autonomic nervous system, so understanding your nervous system is a great way to understand yourself and what your body might be communicating to you.

So, what is healthy everyday breathing?

So, let's come back to your own breath awareness practice and see what you noticed about your own breathing patterns.

• Nasal Breathing (Day and night) - Using the nose helps regulate the nervous system, keeping the mind and body calm and relaxed. When you breathe in through the nose, the sinuses release Nitric Oxide gas (which is a vasodilator and bronchodilator), so it opens everything up. There are also nervous system receptors in the nostrils that create a completely different response in the body than if you are breathing through your mouth.

• LSD: Low Slow Deep breaths down into your diaphragm, your main breathing muscle, with a relaxed open posture.

• The nose and the diaphragm muscle are key when it comes to breathing. The diaphragm is our primary breathing muscl,e and like every other muscle in our body, we need to exercise it. If we don’t use it or consciously engage our diaphragm in a way that will strengthen and support it, it can become weak and stiff, so it can take practice and some effort to re-engage it. Your chest, shoulders, and secondary muscles have a small role to play as they expand and contract, but they are secondary and should be less active, especially when breathing at rest.

• Diaphragmatic (Belly) Breathing: Very simply, at rest when you breathe in engaging the diaphragm, your belly should slowly rise, expanding like a balloon, a natural or slight expansion of the ribcage is normal here too. When you breathe out, your belly should slowly relax back in.

• For a full yogic breath, 3-part breathing: Your belly should slowly rise first on the inhale, then your side ribs and mid-section expand, as the breath flows upwards to the heart space with the chest gently rising last as your lungs expand fully. It’s smooth and relaxed. On the exhale, the chest gently releases first, then the ribs, and then finally the belly relaxes back in. 

  This is a great training tool for exercising the different chambers of the breath (belly, ribs and chest), to help expand the lungs, increase lung capacity and get some full, deep and calming breaths .At rest, the optimal rate of breathing is between 5 and 6 breaths per minute. Each breath in should ideally be 5-6 seconds, and each breath out should be 5-6 seconds. However, as mentioned above, the average person is chronically over-breathing, breathing a lot faster than this. The first step is noticing and becoming aware and then training your body over time to slow down and breathe less, not more.

• Daily Breathing exercises (see below): choose which breath technique to use (after you practice your breath awareness,) depending on how you are feeling and what you need at any given moment. It can affect your nervous system response and make a noticeable difference in how you think and feel in a matter of minutes, simply by noticing first and then changing your breath pattern.
  

 What are the effects of healthy breathing?

 

• Balances the Nervous System

• Improves mood and stabilizes emotions

• Regulate heart rate & blood pressure

• Supports digestion

• Increases O2 absorption in the brain and body

Conscious controlled breathwork (functional)

As mentioned above, most modern breathwork techniques are found in pranayama, in which you actively control the breath, giving it a certain pattern, flow, quality and speed.

This allows you to regulate your nervous system and transition between states to:

1. Upregulate - to energise the Nervous System – Breathing faster will make your blood slightly more alkaline and slightly less acidic- 20+ breaths in a minute

2. Balance the Nervous System in any given moment- Inhale the same length as the exhale. 4-6 breaths per minute

3. Downregulate – to calm or relax the Nervous System by slowing down the pace and extending your exhales. Breathing slowly makes your blood less alkaline and slightly more acidic. >4 breaths per minute.

The way you breathe is like a reflection of the way you live. Are you connected and present, allowing yourself to flow with life, or are you disconnected and absent, with ongoing resistance to what is? If you calm and slow the breath, the mind will follow.

Breathwork is also very effective in optimising your health and fitness using various breathing techniques and methodologies to help with sports performance (See Patrick Mc Keown’s Oxygen Advantage) or by using the Buteyko Method, a scientifically proven and extremely effective way to help with asthma, eczema, allergies, high blood pressure, sleep issues, and other health issues. It’s very empowering to play an active role in your own health, fitness, healing, and growth.

At its core, breathwork is the practice of consciously influencing or manipulating the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the body. While oxygen often takes centre stage in conversations about breathing and health, carbon dioxide (CO₂) is frequently overlooked, being dismissed as just a waste gas. In reality, CO₂ plays a far more crucial role than most people realize.

The presence of CO₂ in the bloodstream is essential for effective oxygen delivery. According to the Bohr Effect, it is actually the levels of carbon dioxide that help your body release more oxygen from the blood into your cells. And so, it’s not just about how much oxygen you inhale that matters—it’s more about how much carbon dioxide you retain, which allows for the oxygen that is already in your blood to be properly used and infused into your cells. When we breathe too fast, we expel excessive amounts of CO₂. This reduces our body’s ability to absorb oxygen, even if there's plenty in the blood. CO₂ also acts as a natural bronchodilator and vasodilator, helping to keep airways open and blood vessels relaxed. So, when CO₂ levels drop too low, we may experience constriction in the blood vessels, bronchial passages, and even the digestive tract. This can create a sensation of breathlessness, anxiety or tension, tricking us into thinking we need to breathe more—when in fact, we need to breathe less! This vicious cycle of over-breathing and CO₂ depletion can contribute to a variety of physical and mental health challenges, as mentioned above.

Functional breathwork offers a solution by helping us to rebuild CO₂ tolerance and restore balance. Two of the most effective ways to do this is by breathing less, gently reducing the overall breathing volume, and incorporating conscious breath-holding practices, both of which help the body adapt to higher levels of carbon dioxide.

As the saying goes … ‘’There’s an Oil for that’’

And now you know, there is also a Breath for that!

What is conscious connected breathwork? (healing breathwork)

Conscious Connected Breathwork (CCB) is a safe therapeutic breathing practice, a holistic approach to self-healing which can work on all levels, including our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It’s the only modality outside of plant medicine and hypnosis that allows us to access our subconscious mind and altered states of consciousness by consciously breathing deeply in a continuous, connected way. However, unlike plant medicine, you can choose to come out of the experience at any time.

 It is a practice in which the breather consciously controls the breath, for an extended period of time (usually between 30 mins-1.5 hours), breathing in and out through the mouth (can also be done with the nose for a gentler experience), connecting the inhale to the exhale, and connecting the exhale to the inhale, without any pauses, trusting their natural timing and creating an active circular pattern and flow with the breath. This changes the chemistry and PH levels in the body, making the blood slightly more alkaline (respiratory alkalosis) as they expel more CO2 with this active and dynamic way of breathing, which can create different physiological sensations in the body.

The breath is in control and can slow down the experience at any stage, by slowing down the breath, breathing in through the nose, and extending the exhale, with a slow breath out through the mouth. You will experience each session differently depending on what you need at that moment in time. The breath will meet you where you are and only give you what you are able to handle. It also depends on the breather’s ability to allow, trust in the process, fully surrender, and let go.

There are many styles of CCB (Holotropic, Rebirthing, Shamanic, Transformational, Wim Hoff, etc) and variations which also depend on the facilitator and how they deliver it (guided/non-guided, CCB technique, music style, adding meditations/visualisations/mandalas, breath holds or themed journeys).

Using breath in a deep and healing way

We each have our own somatic memory and truth. Our body is like an archive of all the experiences we have ever been through. The body remembers everything that the mind forgets, and if unprocessed, this energy gets stored in our cells, in our biological makeup. Any overwhelming experience that does not get digested or felt in the moment lodges in the nervous system and can get stuck in parts of the body as some form of tension or unease. Over time, the longer it is stored and unaddressed or ’unfelt’, it affects the physical tissues and can cause ‘dis-ease’ in the body.

Breathwork can help dissolve these core tensions in the nervous system and release any stuck energy in the body, physically and energetically, opening space in the mind, body, heart, and soul. 

Breath is the bridge between the body and mind. CCB is often described as ‘Meditation on Steroids’. It can help quieten the thoughts and a racing mind a little faster, helping you to reach a deep and profound meditative place of stillness, like you’ve never experienced before. It’s an incredibly powerful practice in meeting anxiety, stress, tension, and trauma in an embodied way.

Some people have powerful spiritual experiences, which can bring much comfort, healing, and awe in the ability that breath has to connect us energetically to our loved ones, who have passed over and are just vibrating at a different frequency.

‘’The answers you seek are within’’ we already have the answer, unique to us and our own journey — we are not separate from truth, we are connected to it – through our intuition, experiences, memories, beliefs, values, and self-awareness — and by looking inward, through stillness, reflection, meditation, breathwork or whatever works for you, we can find our authentic path and the answer that’s right for us.

There is no expert on you better than yourself! 

More delicious and juicy information on all of this in my upcoming articles, but this is the core of what breathwork is. If it resonates and if you feel called to, maybe give it a try!

Interested in exploring Breathwork further?

Join Dara for an upcoming in-person breathwork journey across Ireland or connect from anywhere in the world with a 1:1 online breathwork session.

To learn more or to book, email dara@mochuislehealingbreath.com, or please click here. 

Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info!

Read more from Dara Bradley

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Dara Bradley, Breathwork Facilitator & Coach

Dara Bradley, based in Cork Ireland, is an experienced and multi-certified Breathwork Facilitator & Breathwork Coach, complimented with an academic background in psychology. She has spent years deeply immersed in the study of the mind & body relationship, allowing her to integrate scientific understanding with holistic somatic practices and therapeutic breathwork experiences.

Dara first discovered breathwork during the height of the COVID pandemic, at a particularly stressful time in her life—and it completely transformed her world. From her very first experience, she knew she had stumbled upon something profoundly powerful: a self-care tool that’s available to all of us—our own breath. She was amazed by its impact and equally puzzled that so few people seemed to know about it.

Driven by a deep inner calling, she made the bold decision to leave her 'safe and pensionable' corporate career of 16 years to pursue this newfound purpose. In 2022, she founded Mo Chuisle Healing Breath—and the rest, as they say, is history.