Your Body Holds the Map – How Alchemical Breathwork Guides Transitions Logic Can't Solve
- Brainz Magazine
- Oct 9
- 7 min read
Written by Ada Garza, The Transition Alchemist
Ada Garza is the founder of Love.Alchemy.Life, guiding individuals and corporate leaders through life transitions using emotional alchemy, breathwork, and energy healing. She helps transmute emotional chaos into clarity, enabling clients to embody resilience, reconnect with their soul, and lead with presence and purpose.
I was floating in the middle of space, somewhere beyond this planet, and the only thing I could feel was infinite love coursing through my veins. This wasn't meditation, visualization, or guided imagery. It was my first holotropic breathwork session, and all I did was breathe in and out through my mouth for an hour. As I took in more oxygen, the experience became more real in my body. My limbs tightened, my hands curled into what facilitators call lobster claws, and energy moved through me in waves I couldn't control or explain. And then, space. Infinite love. A knowing that pierced through every doubt I'd ever carried about why we're here. We are all here on this planet to experience love and joy. That was five years ago. That was my introduction to breathwork as a portal, not just a practice.
The journey from pranayama to surrender
My relationship with breathwork didn't begin with cosmic insights. It began with pranayama, the gentle and controlled breathing techniques of yoga. Even in those early days, I noticed my nervous system calming, my mind clearing, and a real sense of safety settling in. This wasn't about affirming or visualizing safety, it was a physical change happening inside me.
Breath was speaking directly to my nervous system in a language my conscious mind couldn't intercept. Years later, when I tried holotropic breathwork, I realized it offered much more than I expected. It wasn't just about calming down or finding my center, it was about opening up completely. After that first powerful session, I wanted to learn more. I went on to train and study neurodynamic breathwork, which now shapes my own approach, along with extra support before and after each session.
What I learned through dozens of sessions, both as a participant and facilitator, is that the body knows what you need. You don't get to decide.
Not every session is cosmic
There have been breathwork sessions where I had the most peaceful naps of my life. Sessions where my body clearly said, "You're exhausted. You're overwhelmed. What you need right now is rest, not revelation." I would lie there for an hour with music washing over me, breathing steadily, and drift into deep sleep. I'd wake up recharged, restored, and ready to continue my day.
No visions. No catharsis. No cosmic downloads. Those restful sessions were just as important as the ones where deep ancestral grief surfaced, grief I hadn't realized I was carrying. In those moments, I cried, laughed, and moved to the music, letting my body finally express and release emotions that had been held in for years.
Sometimes, your body needs to let out a scream. Other times, it just needs rest. Occasionally, nothing seems to happen during the session, but a day or two later, something in your life triggers a release you didn't expect. Breathwork can loosen things inside you, create space, and your nervous system may need time to adjust.
This is the practice of surrender. You don't get to control what comes up. You don't get to decide what heals. You witness. You allow. You respond only when the action feels aligned with who you truly are.
Breathwork as a mirror for life transitions
Major life transitions, like career changes, relationship endings, identity shifts, or grief, all require the same thing that breathwork does, surrendering to what you cannot control.
We try to think our way through transitions. We strategize. We make pro-con lists. We ask for advice. We consume content about "how to navigate change." But the body holds the map, and the body doesn't speak in logic. It speaks in sensation, in emotion, and in the wisdom of patterns passed down through generations.
Traditional therapy explores the 'why' behind your patterns. Visualization practices help you dream of what's possible. Breathwork does something entirely different, it creates the conditions for transformation by bypassing the mind entirely and speaking directly to the nervous system, the subconscious, and the ancestral patterns living in your cells.
This is why I built my methodology, which I call the Alchemical Spiral, around three phases, Feel, Transform, and Embody. Most healing modalities skip the Feel phase. They ask you what you think you need to work on, what intention you want to set, and what outcome you're seeking. But when you're in the middle of a major life transition, you often don't know what you're feeling. You're numb. You're confused. You're disconnected from the very body that's trying to show you the way forward.
The Feel phase isn't about naming your emotions. It's about becoming aware that you can't feel, or don't know how to feel, in the first place. It's about recognizing the numbness, the reactivity, and the patterns you keep repeating without understanding why.
The Transform phase is where breathwork happens. You lie down, breathe, and let whatever needs to come up, come up. You don't try to control the outcome. Instead, you trust your body's wisdom over your mind's plans. Your body sets the stage for release. Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's small, and sometimes it takes time. It happens not because you force it, but because you allow it.
The Embody phase comes after integration, somatic practices, and the 48 to 72 hours when real transformation unfolds in your daily life. This is when the cosmic insight, the cathartic release, or even the peaceful nap, turns into how you show up differently in the world.
The discomfort is the point
There will be moments in a breathwork session when you wonder, What am I doing here? This feels uncomfortable. I want to stop. That's exactly what happens in major life transitions. You question the choices you've made. You wonder if you should have stayed where it was safe. You feel the discomfort of not knowing what comes next, of being in the liminal space between who you were and who you're becoming.
But here's what breathwork teaches you, and what life is asking of you in transition, everything is about trust and surrender. Trust that whatever is happening, whether in the session or in your life, is happening for you, not to you. Trust that your body, your soul, and your circumstances are working together to show you something you need to see so you can transform it into something new. And then surrender to what that "something" actually becomes.
It won't mean what you think it should. It won't look like what your logic expects. It will be something much bigger than your mind could have planned. Maybe it's a sudden insight you didn't expect, the release of old grief, a peaceful nap that leaves you feeling new, or a breakthrough that comes days later and changes you in just the way you needed.
If you allow yourself to trust and surrender to the process, the rewards are immense. Not because you controlled the outcome. But because you stopped trying to. Those choices that brought you to the uncomfortable edge? They're leading you somewhere. You just need to witness what's happening. Breathe through it. Move with it. And trust that your body and soul know the way, even when your mind is screaming that they don't. It's never about the end goal. It never is.
It's about growing through the process. It's about learning to navigate life from a place of joy and self-love, rather than fear, resentment, and obligation. It's about releasing the layers of unprocessed emotions, the aspects of yourself you've learned to reject, so you can step into life fully and authentically. Because in breathwork, as in life, the discomfort isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. It's a sign you're finally doing it right.
What breathwork gave me
Breathwork didn't just help me process emotions. It gave me clarity about what was holding me back. For years, I sensed I was meant to do healing work, but I kept talking myself out of it. Too risky. Not the right time. Who was I to guide others? But in session after session, the same message kept surfacing through my body, trust your intuition. Stop waiting for permission.
Breathwork showed me I was the one holding myself back. And once I could see that clearly, I couldn't unsee it. Through years of sessions, some transcendent, some restful, and some deeply cathartic, I released decades of ancestral patterns. I worked through fears of becoming who I really am. I learned to trust that anything that begins in the body can also be released from the body.
That awareness and trust became the foundation for everything that followed, including the launch of Love.Alchemy.Life and guiding others through the same alchemical process of feeling, transforming, and embodying their authentic selves.
This is what breathwork teaches, beyond nervous system regulation and emotional release, how to surrender to becoming. How to trust that discomfort is part of the process. How to watch yourself grow without forcing things. How to move through transitions, and through life, with the kind of openness that lets love and joy guide you, instead of fear or sacrifice.
An invitation
If you're going through a significant life change right now and feel stuck, numb, disconnected, or like you're carrying something you can't let go of, breathwork might be the doorway you've been searching for.
Not because it will give you answers, but because it will create the space for your body to reveal what you need. I'm opening my first group Alchemical Breathwork Sessions this month. Small, intimate gatherings where we breathe together, release together, and hold space for whatever needs to emerge. No predetermined outcomes. No forced intentions. Just surrender, trust, and the possibility of remembering who you've always been beneath the layers.
Going through a transition and need support? Alchemical Breathwork helps you process what you've been holding. Book your session here.
Because we are all here on this planet to experience love and joy. Sometimes, we just need to breathe our way back to that truth.
Read more from Ada Garza
Ada Garza, The Transition Alchemist
Ada Garza is a Transition Alchemist and founder of Love.Alchemy.Life, guiding individuals and leaders through major life transitions using nervous system healing, breathwork, and energy healing. Through her signature Alchemical Spiral method, she helps clients transform emotional suppression into embodied resilience, reconnect with their authentic selves, and navigate change with clarity and self-trust.
