The Benefits of Breathwork Apps (And Why You Should Put Soul in Your Pocket)
If you’d told me even five years ago I’d be teaching people ZeroFluff breathing tools and facilitating psychdelic breathwork journeys with a strong emphasis on learning how to love yourself I’d probably have smirk-snarled at you.
So if you’ve landed here more than a glug skeptical about breathwork or its benefits, that’s exactly why you should keep reading.
Because here’s what I’ve learned over the last five years cross the bridge from depression-tinged eating disorder hell to chill as f*ck human being and business owner.
Never hire a natural.
Because do you know what’s hilarious and bizarre? And yes, I’ve done it too many times!
When you’re struggling with something and you ask someone who’s naturally good at it for help.
Like, you can’t keep your room tidy for shit (hi, me) and you ask your pin-neat friend Gwen who collects antique Tupperwares for a hobby how she figured out how to keep her fridge so immaculate.
Or your hair looks like a nest built by a drunk pigeon and you see this immaculate woman with a thoughtful tattoo and no frizz in her curly hair at the coffee shop and ask her what products she uses and she shrugs and says “it just dries this way."
Or you just can't stop eating 17 delicious chocolatey biscuits at once and you ask Walter how he resists the urge. Except Walter's 97 and had his very last sweet tooth pulled last month and now can only eat food through a straw.
Or you really want to learn how to do a handstand and you Facebook message (lol) your high school friend Jon who started gymnastics when he was 17 hours old and walked on his hands before his feet.
THIS IS NOT WHO YOU ASK FOR HELP!
Naturals are useless and you need to run a mile from them when you’re trying to learn something new.
Here’s why.
Naturals have no idea why they’re brilliant.
They either fell out the womb that way, or the got cooked in the right oven. Seriously. If you ask the gymnast how to do a handstand he'll just tell you to kick up. Because he's been doing that his whole fucking life and he doesn't know any better. But see my husband who taught himself how to hand balance at age 35? He knows you need to turn your wrists into ankles and the exact exercises and reps to do thicken them into bamboo. He knows that you need to make your ass a pancake to correct your alignment with a very specific hip tuck. Which almost immediately creates a rib flare that you also have to correct. And he knows you need to stare at a single point JUST in front of your eye line to maintain balance. The sensation feels like knitting your eyebrows together. He knows you need to point your toes like rockets to the fucking moon otherwise your midline goes slack. He knows you need to stack your shoulders over your wrists, otherwise you’re resting on muscles not bones and you get exhausted quickly.
How do I know all this?
BECAUSE HE TAUGHT HIMSELF AND THEN HE TAUGHT ME.
And then I learned it all but didn't practice enough so I can catch the odd 30 second hold but my handstand's still kind of shit and inconsistent. But that's on ME, not him! And honestly, this is why you should never learn breathwork from someone who liked themself their whole life. I don’t even care if you've still not tried breathwork, and when you do it’s not ME you choose.
But damn.
Don’t learn about kindness from someone who didn’t have melt the ice fortress around their heart.
Don’t learn how to bounce from someone who didn’t wreck their own life on some fucking spiky rocks first.
Don’t learn how to burn bright from someone who didn’t have to tinder the last glimmer of hope they had left with a cynical first deep breath.
Learn how to love yourself from someone who’s walked the long way home, blistered for puddled miles in hate-drenched boots, only to find a golden key glistening in the muck.
Be guided into the depths of YOU through psychedelic breathwork and visualization experiences by someone who’s was willing to go first… and really needed a hero.
And, yes, I’m biased. But all of what I just said is why I think you’re going to love Soul’s take on breathwork.
Because whether you’re skeptical that breathing is in any way useful, there’s no way to avoid the mounting list of benefits that come with mindful breathing practices. And because the list of benefits is so incredible, more and more people are starting to pay attention.
Even someone like me. Who really didn’t see how something to “basic” could help me with all my particular complicated pain! We’re all catching on.
Which is one of the reasons why you’re starting to see longer lists of breathwork apps available.
And that’s cool.
The more people on this planet we can get breathing (like, really breathing) the better. Breathing does so much more than just keep you alive – although it does that really well, too. When you learn how to really utilize breathing, you learn how to tap into your full potential as human. And that potential is vast.
If you’re keen on tapping into this full human potential of yours, then you’re probably wondering…
What’s the right way to do breathwork?
The answer is that there really is no “right” way. There are hundreds (thousands) of different approaches to breathwork and all have their reasoning and research as to why they believe one method is more effective than another. For me, that looks like potent short sessions. Long psychedelic journeys. And a nice splash of visualization.
What really matters is that you choose breathwork practices that feel good in your body. Or, if they’re uncomfortable, you understand that the work you’re doing is powerful in a good way – that it’s more mental irritation than physical discomfort (although that can happen, too.)
Now, there is a right way to breathe in general.
And, in general, most of us aren’t breathing correctly. Our bodies are designed to work the most efficiently when we’re breathing deep into our lungs, using our intercostal muscles and diaphragm rather than our shoulders, which happens when we breathe shallowly.
Add proper everyday breathing with breathwork sessions you resonate with and you’re literally tapping into superpowers. You might even start to notice some sweet things happening pretty quickly (especially if you have an awesome breathwork app in your pocket so that you can change your state in five minutes flat.)
Here are six of those cool things that you might start to experience when you begin a breathwork practice…
6 Cool Reasons to Practice Breathwork (And Why You Should Definitely Download a Breathwork App)
Your Less Desirable Habits Disappear. Our subconscious minds are filled with so much stuff. Research says our brains download 34 gigabytes of information every single day based on what we see and hear. Now, for our supercomputer human brains, that’s not too much. (Some scientists say our brains can hold the equivalent of three million hours of television.) The problem with all of the gigabytes we download each day isn’t the amount, but the fact that we don’t know what’s getting stored and how it’s impacting everything else in our lives – our reactions, our thoughts, our habits. The beauty of breathwork is that it literally clears out our subconscious and not in a “clear out” energetic way (although that can happen, too), but in a literal clear out way – like data erased and garbage tossed. Indoctrinated beliefs? Gone. Microaggressions? Gone. Unflattering habits? Gone. And all without you having to dig them up yourself.
You Get to Explore Altered States. You can think of breathwork as a spiritual path, but you can also look at it as a way to get high with zero drugs. As Wim Hof is famous for saying, “Get high on your own supply!” You’ve probably heard that your body is the ultimate pharmacy, supplying you with everything you need to thrive as a human – and that couldn’t be more true. Breathing is one of the ways to tap into this on-hand, drug-free pharmacy, especially if you’re into things like exploring heightened states of consciousness and euphoric trances. Altered states through breathwork usually happen when you either enter a deep meditative state through relaxation or you lower carbon dioxide levels (often through types of hyperventilation) so that you feel physically light. Some breathing exercises have also been shown to actually release DMT from your lungs and pineal gland, which makes experiencing a high-like state pretty easy to understand.
You Improve Your Focus and Save Energy. A lot of people (myself included) really dislike meditation. Not because there’s anything inherently wrong with meditation, but because it just doesn’t feel good in my body. Breathwork, however, is a type of meditation that I can totally get onboard with. Unlike meditation where you’re forced to solo battle your thoughts, breathwork gives your mind something to focus on so that your thoughts begin to dissipate on their own. (It’s like you and breathwork get to team up against your thoughts making the situation a totally doable two versus one.) And by finding a way to quiet your mind, you learn how to better focus. In other words, breathwork gives you the same benefits of meditation (i.e. laser focus) without the suffering of battle. And you know what else happens when you improve your focus? You save energy because every single thought drains energy stores – and this includes subtle energy.
Your Internal Organs Get Massaged. Really good breathing habits are learned through breathwork sessions. And when you have great breathing habits, you stop breathing only with your lungs and chest and shoulder muscles. By breathing deeply and mindfully (and in breathwork sessions), you expand and contract a whole host of muscles in your body, including your internal organs. Our bodies are designed to massage our internal organs with each full breath. And when they’re massaged regularly, they work more effectively.
You Get a New Face Shape. Did you know that how you breathe changes the shape and structure of your face? There’s a lot that comes into play when learning about how this works, but scientists have proven that the more you breathe through your mouth (which is how we’ve evolved now that we eat more processed and sugary foods that require us to chew less) the more narrow your face and the more misaligned your teeth are likely to be. By learning how to breathe properly through your nose and creating new habits of primarily breathing through your nostrils, your entire face shape can change – we’re talking the whole structure of your mouth, nose, jaw, and teeth!
You Become Burnout Proof. The world feels increasingly stressful and difficult, like it’s moving too fast and we can’t keep up. But this idea of “burnout” really is a collective belief – it’s not real. You don’t have to accept your limitations because they’re just an agreement you have with yourself. So much of what blocks you and makes you feel like it’s time to give up and burnout can be cleared out through breathwork. Human beings are plastic, and powerful. Your brain and body are resilient. They’re responsive and incredibly adaptable. Give new signals (like breathing exercises) and you’ll get new feedback.
Okay, Cool! Tell Me More About Breathwork Apps
Breathwork apps are on the rise because they’re a convenient way to help people tap into potentially life changing breathing practices. Because so many of us are already on our phones, it makes sense that having a tool readily available on our devices would encourage us to practice more.
Most breathwork apps function as a library of breathing sessions, either videos or audio files, that give you the ability to follow along as you practice. While articles like this are great for learning, a functional app gives you a chance to put ideas into practice – and that’s where you really start to discover gold.
Unlike studio classes or even 1-1 sessions, breathwork apps let you practice your favourite breathing techniques whenever you want. No matter how unpredictable your schedule might be, you can use the flexibility of sessions on a breathwork app to keep you accountable – and sane.
Depending on the breathwork app you download, you’ll see different categories of breathwork sessions available for you to choose from. Some apps categorize breathwork classes by length, others focus on time, and others let you choose a session based on the benefit or result you’re looking for (i.e. more energy, sleep, etc.)
The Basic Benefits of a Breathwork App
Punch in “breathwork app benefits” to your favorite search engine and you get a bunch of “beige” results. What’s a beige result? You know, plain, boring stuff everyone says over and over that isn’t very helpful when you need to make a decision but is valid enough that it’s allowed to exist.
Here’s a handful of those overplayed breathwork app benefits just so you can see them for reference.
Lower anxiety
Improve mental clarity
Enhance physical health
Increase self-awareness
Activate creativity
Of course, all of these benefits are important. They’re a whole lot of the reasons why I practice breathwork! But when every single breathwork app tells you that these are the reasons why you should download the app, you start to see what I mean when I say everything just becomes beige.
So maybe a better question is…
What does a good breathwork app look like and what can it offer me that other breathwork apps can’t?
If you’re looking for a good breathwork app, then you’ll want it to offer benefits like these:
State Changes. Benefit-focused breathwork practices are the best ways to start to understand how breathing sessions work and how they influence your state. While there are no “wrong” breathing practices, there are absolutely practices that can be done at the wrong time. At Soul, one of the things we do best is State Changes. These are five minute breathwork sessions that take you from where you are to where you want to be.
Guided Sessions. As much as you can learn from reading an article or even listening to someone explain in theory how to do a specific practice, there’s nothing like actually being intentionally guided through a breathwork session. When you give someone else the ability to guide you through a practice, you give yourself permission to be fully present – this is where the magic happens with breathwork. And the big win over at the Soul breathwork app is that there are no cringe “meditation” voices or mentions of third eye openings or even sitting in lotus. We’re just not into that!
Real Practice. Getting into the rhythm of practicing breathwork sessions with an app allows you to practice when things are easy so that you’re ready to win when things get hard. You can’t expect miracles to happen when you’re not prepared for them. So when you try a sleep breathwork practice for the first time in a year and wonder why it didn’t work, the answer is that you weren’t ready for it. If you want to get into the miraculous superpowers of breathwork, then you have to build a daily breathwork practice to lock in patterns. Once these patterns get locked in, you can access them when you need them. That means that when you need a breathwork session to help you fall back to sleep, it’s ready and so are you.
My goal through the breathwork app, Soul, and my coaching is to make potent breathwork experiences a no-brainer for practical people who have some mucky emotions they need to clear up. Wherever you are (a little creatively blocked or absolutely burnt to a crisp) I stand firm in my belief that breathwork is one of the best paths forward for everyone.
Soul is a tool that has the ability to crack the stoniest hearts open and make the most stressed individual burnout-proof. Its practices can thaw the tightness created from decades of inner judgment so that you can be known for something real.
If you’re on the fence about trying breathwork to help you reignite and re-engage with your life, keep this in mind:
The Soul app is designed to be accessible to the type of person who wouldn’t be into trying breathwork. I am not a hippy dippy teacher.
I’m a former creative director and All-American athlete turned entrepreneur who created the tool I wish I’d had when I started my inner work journey.
Soul’s designed to be comfortable, cool, elegant, a little edgy – and you might just love it.
To try it now for free, click here.
