Why I’m a raving fan of breathwork
Breathwork literally has changed my life. Being so much in my head, overthinking, stressing, not feeling what needed to be felt, etc., it allowed me to break that pattern and move into my heart, quicker and deeper than any other thing I’ve tried.
It’s such a powerful modality to get out of your head, to deeply relax, and to transform whatever is stuck or keeping you stuck.
Here’s a quick summary of why I believe it can be so powerful, maybe it resonates…
Breathwork is also a proven way to regulate your nervous system.
Anytime. Anywhere. Available for everyone, which strongly supports my mission.
My mission
Support people in feeling fully alive again, in touch with their authentic power, via
Breathwork,
Coaching &
Community.
We’re all walking each other home, as my teacher & mentor Pat Divilly showed me.
More about me and my story 👉 About me.
Why is this work so relevant?
You might also feel that life is moving fast. There's too little time to do everything you need and want to do. It’s difficult to catch a break. Most of the time, you’re in DOING-mode, rarely in BEING-mode. You have more stress and tension than you’d like.
You feel somewhat disconnected. With yourself, with others, maybe with nature, maybe with a higher purpose.
You might also feel that you want to follow your heart more. Or just be able to feel and tune in with your desires again. To gain clarity. To get more grounded. To come home to yourself again.
These are such normal feelings for so many of us. It’s like we’ve lost our way a bit through the busyness of modern life. And although that insight might be a bit bleak, there’s beauty in it as well as it’s waking us up to start living life differently.
More in tune with our needs.
More in line with our values.
More in flow, dancing with life from a place of calm, strength and knowing.
“The Longest Journey you will ever take is from your Head to your Heart” - Thich Nhat Hanh
How I can help
If you feel this too, I’d love to offer you support. At the core, this is going to be about subtraction.
Instead of adding more, what if you choose for less and give yourself what you truly need? So you can create space to journey back to what matters most. And from that grounded place, you can take meaningful and intentional action that moves you toward your authentic self and your authentic power.
Schedule a connection call to explore which service meets your needs (see also below).
Quality above quantity
This has always been a driving force in my work. This manifests in how I approach my work with you. And also in how I get certified:
I’ve followed a in a 300h accredited Conscious Connected Breathwork Facilitator Course from Pat Divilly so I can guide you and hold space for you in the most powerful ways.
Services
Download the BreathWorks One-Pager or the Becoming Yourself One-Pager (click on the link or the image above)
If you doubt if breathwork is something for you…
… I could give you easily 20 reasons why this can be so transformational, but I think you get the gist.
The 3 most important ones for me are:
✨ You want to feel more centered, calm, and grounded (less stress, less tension).
🔥 You want to step more into your authentic power and feel more at peace with who you are.
❤️ You want to live more from the heart, tuning into what matters most to you.
An easy entry-point if you are curious is to join one of the online group sessions in which you can safely explore this from the comfort of your home.
Keep an eye out on the Event Calendar or just send me a message.
Gift 🎁
As my mission is to bring this to as many people as possible, you get your first session for free.
Napkin thoughts
This summarizes what I aim for, generally
Testimonials
Thank you so much. For everything. This is a moment that will stay with me for a long time as an “awakening,” a realization of what I need to work on. I hope our paths will cross more often. Lots of love, Nadia
The session was a surprisingly powerful experience that stayed with me in the days after. It helped me connect on a deeper level beyond talking and thinking, and opened up new ways to release and explore what’s beneath the surface. I’m excited to continue this journey and highly recommend it. - Jill
I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of both training and experiencing breathwork sessions with Jan and I can honestly say he is an exceptional facilitator and coach. The space he creates feels deeply safe, grounded, and transformative. It’s not often you can really feel such presence and care in every moment. As a coach, he has a real gift for helping people gain clarity, shift limiting patterns, and create meaningful, lasting change. Whether it’s around personal development, habits, or navigating life’s challenges, he brings wisdom, compassion, and gentle accountability to every conversation. His ability to combine breathwork and coaching creates powerful breakthroughs and I’ve witnessed people leave sessions feeling lighter, clearer, and more connected to themselves. I couldn’t recommend him more highly to anyone ready to grow, heal, or simply reconnect with who they truly are. - Lauren
I followed a breathwork session guided bij Jan. Very powerful. Although it was a stressful time for me at the moment with lots of things going on , taking the time to do this breath work session , enabled me to let go of some of the stress and I had a very good night with deep sleep. Day after I was surprisingly full of energy. I had no expectations at all before going into the session so very pleasantly surprised to experience this. - Annelies
I was really curious to see to what extent I could “feel” through breathing, and I was incredibly surprised by the effect it had on my body and mind. My mind stayed fairly calm, I wasn’t as distracted by disturbing or limiting thoughts, and I didn’t feel the need to engage with them either. This was because the physical sensation, which kept growing more intense, made me increasingly curious for more. I literally felt the molecules in my body start to tremble or vibrate on their own with an incredible energy that I felt everywhere, bringing me into a different state of consciousness that almost completely switched off my thinking. For me, that effect is truly miraculous 😉😆!!! So I’m very happy, enjoying the super-relaxed feeling I’m experiencing now, and very curious to keep exploring what this can do for me in terms of letting go, de-stressing, relaxing… and hopefully also releasing emotions that were previously stored in my body but haven’t yet been processed or are still stuck. Thank you so much!!! - Evi
Thx Jan for a nourishing breathwork session. It has been some time since I had an in person one-on-one taking me so deep. You held the space supportively and I appreciate your advice and adjustments as I journeyed. - Jeff
Q&A
What can you expect in a Conscious Connected Breathwork Session?
Here’s a video that explains the most important elements, including the practicalities for an online session.
What is Breathwork?
Breathwork is a general term that refers to breath awareness (becoming more aware of how you’re breathing) and conscious breathing (consciously changing your breath with a specific purpose).
The breath gives you an indication of your bodily state. For example:
Shallow, quick, or holding your breath is an indication of stress or tension (fight, flight, freeze response);
Deep, calm breathing is an indication of a relaxed state.
In this way, you can use the breath to regulate your nervous system. It’s the only part of our autonomic nervous system that we can consciously influence, making it a very powerful tool for regulating it (i.e. your bodily or physical state, which also influences your mental state).
What are the benefits of breathwork?
Breathwork is a bottom-up approach to healing and transformation, meaning we are working with the body (bottom), which influences the mind (top). Therapy and coaching are top-down approaches where we work with the mind to influence how we feel. Both are important, yet in Western society, we mainly focus on the top-down approach.
The power of a bottom-up approach is that we don’t need our mind for growth and transformation. On top of that, in certain states (bodily states) we simply cannot access the power of our mind. When you feel depressed for example, you might not be able to out-think your depression. Positive thinking simply isn’t available to you in that state. Or when you get overwhelmed by a strong emotion, you simply don’t have access to the rational part of your brain and hence cannot really influence your thinking.
What does work in those moments is to change the state of your body. To do this, the term Somatics indicates that we can work with our body to change this state (can be by dancing, shaking, doing trauma release exercises, singing, humming, etc). Breathwork is one of these somatic modalities that work directly with the body.
When working directly with the body, you don’t need your mind to heal, gain insights, or better your life or health. The body stores a lot of information that we cannot always access with our mind. When you think in terms of trauma, the body keeps the score. Any time we experience something that feels overwhelming (i.e. when we feel that our resources cannot meet the needs of that situation), our body puts us in fight, flight or freeze mode, a survival instinct which creates excess energy in the body in order to be able to perform the action that gives us the highest chance of survival (fight, flight or freeze). If afterwards, we don’t release that excess energy (for example by trembling, shaking, crying, …), it remains stuck in the body, disturbing the natural energy flows of the body, causing disease in the long term. With breathwork or other somatic modalities, you will be able to free up those energies, which you would not be able to do with talk-therapy alone.
What type of breathwork do we teach?
We teach a technique that is called Conscious Connected Breath.
What is Conscious Connected Breath?
This is a gentle bottom up approach.
You breathe in and out through the mouth in a conscious, guided way (stepping out of our natural rhythm and natural way of breathing)
The inhale is active and full
The exhale is passive (letting go)
And you connect the inhale & exhale, not leaving any gaps or pauses.
With the active inhale, you’re activating energies that might have been dormant in your body.
With the passive exhale, you’re learning to let go of what wants to be released, and find softness in your being.
With connecting the in- and exhale, we’re creating a continuous loop of energies, helping us to access those stuffed away energies from the past, possibly leading to massive healing of something we couldn’t achieve with talk-therapy or coaching. And the beauty is, we don’t even need to know what we’re releasing or healing, the body takes care of that.
What does a Conscious Connect Breathwork Journey look like?
Welcome & chat
Grounding exercise
We breathe consciously for 30 up to 60 minutes.
Opening: gently settling into the body and preparing the body for the Conscious Connected Breath
Build: we do the Conscious Connected Breath, slowly building up to deeper and fuller breathing, and more letting go.
Peak: breathing at the top of your capacity of that moment
Integration: slowing things down and letting the experiences sink in (integrating). Coming back to our body and our senses.
Sharing of experience, if desired
Possible experiences during a journey
Mental
For a lot of people, this is one of the few modalities that helps them move out of their head, not thinking about anything (in this way could be a great precursor to meditation, as your mind will generally be much calmer). It might feel a bit like a dream-like state where you’re present but not occupied with anything around you, nor with the past or the future, fully present in the moment and with your body.
Physical
As we’re altering the way that we are breathing, our bodies usually respond with noticeable sensations (like tingling, waves of energy, heat, cold, cramp-like feelings, etc). You might experience a dry mouth and throat, which usually passes quickly.
Emotional
As we’re possibly tapping into stuffed away energies, this might lead to a release of emotions (laughing, joyful feeling, crying, anger, sadness, …).
Spiritual
As we possibly for the first time ever tap into the power and wisdom of our body, we might experience feelings of deep connection to yourself or to others, the world, or something bigger.
The most important things to remember and practice when something arises during the session:
You are always fully in control. If an experience becomes too intense, you can always slow things down.
This is an opportunity for you to explore sensations, emotions, thoughts or anything else that comes up with curiosity, without a need to change or fix anything. We often run away from discomfort. A breathwork journey could offer you the space where you feel you can meet yourself in different (deeper) ways, with love, compassion and courage, helping you to embrace and become more of your authentic, powerful self.
It might help you to experience the law of impermanence: our lives and our experiences are a constant wave of coming and going. Nothing lasts forever and you might experience this when observing the different elements shifting when we embrace whatever comes up with curiosity (physical, mental or emotional).
Coaching
For more information on Coaching, see the Coaching Page.
