Put simply, energy clearing. Breathwork is a powerful tool for dredging whatever is ‘sitting’ in your system, including stress, anxiety, pain, and trauma. It can also feel psychedelic and ecstatic if your body is available to go that deep. Breathwork’s also great for focus, high performance (business and sport) and busting through creative block.

Aside from the shattering clarity, creative ideas, deep self love, and the best sleep of your life you get after a session!? The most common side effects during sessions are feeling big emotions, tightening and numbness in the hands and temperature fluctuation. Your body may feel light as a balloon or lead-heavy. You may also experience some ‘crunchiness’ after a longer session as energy re-settles in your system.

So. Many. Ways. First, being a chill and grounded human with a deep sense of self-worth (that’s different from having a concrete ego!) never goes out of style. Also, breathwork is a practical tool to master if your job creates stress in your life (whose doesn’t!?), or if you do a lot of public speaking, work directly with challenging clients, or have to step up and perform in pitches. Being able to regulate your system and ride the line of fired up and grounded is a skill worth having. Soul’s State Changes library is full of short and sharp sessions to help you unlock your next level of embodied confidence.

Journal time! Here’s the question I always ask people to answer at the end of a longer Soul Session: What must I not forget about this experience? Get pen and paper out (or use the journaling feature in the Soul app) and start jotting down how you felt, what came through, and what you NEED to remember. You’ve just turned your body in a brain so things might surfacing in new ways. Catch all the genius before it fades!

Some breathwork people are stricklers for “correct.” At Soul, we’re not so black and white. First off, no time spent in the body is wasted. Any active practice of breathing is a huge gift to yourself, and your body. If you’re just starting your breathwork journey, be far less concerned with correctness and far more interested in presence and showing up. Also, there’s no such thing as perfect breath; just what your body has capacity for. Trade in perfect for brave and everything’s on the table, friend!

At Soul, we believe creative block occurs when deep fear and deep desire collide. Those are strong emotion slamming together, and the result is a muddy feeling inside. Here’s the thing: creativity is innately vulnerable because you’re making something of out of nothing, which requires some creative muscle. And also, if your work feels personal, creativity requires a PIECE of you. Our founder, Iona, knows this. She wrote a deeply personal book, Ghost - Why Perfect Women Shrink. So, if you’ve only got a few minutes for a State Change, we recommend Spark Plug or Focus to get into flow. But we STRONGLY recommend carving out time for a longer session like Inner Gold so you can understand and clear some of your deep conscious fears around doing your best work!

Crying is so normal, especially if you’ve done a longer session like Breathwork for Love (our most popular session). While the tears might mean something (be open to that!), we look at tears as energy in motion leaving the body. Don’t make too much meaning around tears, just enjoy the release. Also, you did all that with breath: pretty cool, right?!

This is highly personal. Breathwork interacts with everyone’s system a little differently. That said, we recommend a daily State Change. Think of them like breath snacks. Perfect for waking up , shifting the afternoon sludge, or transitioning from work to play. We recommend 1-3 long Soul Session per month for general soul maintenance, healing, and earth-shattering vibes!

Our longer Soul Sessions that use the 3-part breath are NOT recommended if you’re pregnant. However, our State Changes could be very helpful for navigating the emotions, nausea, pain, and CHANGES that happen during pregnancy. In short, take care of yourself and check with your doctor. Breathwork is safe to use when breastfeeding!

NEVER friend. Some people have huge first experiences with breathwork. For others, it’s a slow burn. Try some different sessions and enjoy the process. Sometimes the greatest love of your life grows on you :)

Here’s a thought. Maybe you’re not broken… meditation is. We kid, we kid, but not really. Some tools just don’t work for people. Are you’re in the right place, because we’ve saved many a hopeless meditator and turned them into Breath Gods! Meditation is the active practice of cultivating self-awareness through observing your thoughts. It’s a fab practice for some, but if you’ve hit a wall with it, can’t quiet your mind, or actually feel MORE stressed watching your thoughts, you’re not alone. And again, you’re in the right place. In contrast to meditation that can feel a little passive and hideously subtle, (!) breathwork is the active use of different breath patterns and holds to shift how you feel. Rather than speaking your mind’s language (thoughts) you’re speaking your body’s language (breath) which makes it much easier to feel very different FAST! Try it and see how you go. Many Soul users who couldn’t meditate to save their lives found their answer with breathwork!

Ok, we know it feels weird, even painful, but what you’re experiencing is called tetany, and there’s nothing to fear. We’ll give you the science and the woo. The 3 part breath used in some Soul sessions causes CO2 levels to drop. This results in less oxygen entering the blood and tissues making your blood more alkaline. The combo of a drop in CO2 and rise in blood pH leads to involuntary locking and tightening of the hands. Ok, now it’s woo time (our favourite time)! When you breathe deep into your body you crack the heart open… and your hands are an extension of the heart channel. So you’re actually holding your heart in your hands when you breathe. This can feel like laser-beams shooting through your fingers. With your focus on your hands, ask yourself a good question: what am I ready to let go of, or loosen my grip on? Now, if you’re deeply uncomfortable, soften your breath, try shaking your hands, and if you feel comfortable make a noise (we LOVE a yell!). Also if it’s intense but not interrupting your experience, just let your hands do their thing and settle into deep awareness of your body and soul. Insight may reveal itself to you :) It’s important to note that tetany will subside within minutes of returning to normal breathing and tends to lessen the more you practice breathwork!

In short, yes. Our body is a scrapbook: it holds our entire life. We all experience microtears over the years (some worse than others) and all these experiences get stuck and stored in the body. Breathwork is one of the most powerful ways to process trauma because when you breathe into your body you are speaking your body’s language, which can allow it to reveal to you what needs to be let go. That said, it’s important to be in consent with your body. Go slow if you need to. Start with a gentler or shorter session. Healing is in no rush. Also, big love for knowing the past is something you can let go and heal from.

Absolutely! Soul’s co-founder Iona, is a former junior international hockey player and All-American athlete. She used breathwork to help her stay calm and pass many fitness tests over the years. However, it wasn’t until her athlete career was over that she discovered the power visualization of visualization for performance. How cool is this? The brain can’t tell the different between something vividly imagined, and something that’s actually happened. Athletes can use breathwork to inoculate their stress responses, quiet their mind, and visualize success. We’ve partnered with Division 1 school to help their athletes unlock their highest potential during competition. Please reach out directly to info@ionaholloway.com if you’d like to discuss our Athlete Track.

I mean, sort of. But can we tell you a secret? At Soul we’ve never really been into yoga. Like, cool if it’s your thing. It’s just not ours! At Soul, we’re SO into teaching you how to use your breath to clear emotional muck and glow again so you can take radical responsibility for your one beautiful life.

Very much not BS. In fact, breath is the most natural way ever to alter your state of consciousness. Some people have trippy experiences every time they breathe. For others, it’s only in the longer sessions. For some, they never touch that side of it. Long story short: you cannot force a psychedelic experience. But you can control your openness to the experience :)

Totally normal. Remember, the body is a scrapbook, and the breath moves energy. So memories getting kicked up is to be expected, especially in a longer session. Depending on the visualization you’re cued with, you might “see” something you weren’t expecting. Roll with it. Also, don’t pressure yourself to “see” the right memory. The one that’s “for you” will reveal itself. You can always do the practice again with a different memory; in fact we recommend it! Also, don’t beat yourself up if you can’t visualize. No drama, everyone is a little different. Perhaps one of your other senses is your superpower!

No failure, only learning! There’s a few different ways to look at sleep in breathwork. First, if you chose one of the chill sessions to help you wind down, congratulations, you won! If you didn’t want to fall asleep but started yawning the breath you used was probably down-regulating your system which, again, is a great thing! However if you really didn’t want to fall asleep then consider sleep as resistance to the experience and an easy way for you to “peace out” when things get hard. Next time, see if you can keep yourself present and active in your breath.

Simple. You don’t. You have zero influence over other people. Focus on yourself. Go deep with breathwork and feel the difference. Trust us, people will notice and ask question when you start being a cooler and chiller person who suddenly loves themselves! That’s when you casually let them know Soul is magic :)

Oh hello skeptic our old friend. Look, we get it. But don’t leave until you’ve tried breathwork once. Also, our co-founder Iona is the least hippy dippy person out there. When we created Soul we made sure it was a lovely balance of deeply practical and kind of magical!

Absolutely! Breathwork is amazing for regulating and reshaping your nervous system AND clearing some of the stories and beliefs that caused you to get churned up in capitalism’s brutal wheels in the first place. We recommend a daily State Change so you can care for your system over time.

Our most popular session is Breathwork for Love! Get the hankies out. This sessions melts the coldest of hearts!

First of all, congrats on using breathwork to support the anxious sensations you’re feeling. You’re in the right place to build tools to make your body feel more safe over time. And that’s the thing. Breathwork is not a one-hit wonder. But practicing breathwork consistently will be HUGE for reshaping your nervous system and processing stuck and stored looping patterns. Keep practicing!

Sometime experiences are huge. Pretty cool to summon something big with just your breath, right?! Sit with the experience and notice what comes up. Perhaps journal or take notes, and make sure to go slow. Also, keep in mind that if your next experience is less “big” that’s not a bad thing.

Yes. Breathwork is huge for both focus, and stepping up big when it’s game time. We recommend Spark Plug and Focus for getting into creative flow and getting ready to perform at the highest level at work.