Our breath is one of our most powerful tools for healing, awareness, and even life expectancy.
We take about 25,000 breaths per day yet many of us have no idea the power our breath can hold when we focus on it and allow it to help us feel and heal trauma, anxiety, illness, and more.
Today I’m sitting down with breathwork facilitator and CEO of Pause Breathwork, Samantha Skelly to share with us the incredible healing power of something we all have free access to; our breath.
Years ago Samantha Skelly found herself at a very dark and painful place in her life, she was struggling with depression, chronic anxiety, an eating disorder, and completely out of touch with her body. She sought out a world-renowned healer in Bali (yes, the exact one in Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert) and he told her that her “brain was broken” and she needed to meditate.
When she arrived late to the meditation class, all that was left was a breathwork class. She left that class a completely different person and knew the world needed to know about and experience breathwork.
Samantha has since founded Pause Breathwork, the world’s leading breathwork facilitator and is on a mission to reduce human suffering by increasing human consciousness through the power of breathwork.
If you struggle with mental health, a physical health problem, or even just have a hard time meditating, I cannot encourage you enough to give this episode a listen. (It might just be one of my favorite episodes we’ve ever done!)
In this episode we discuss:
- 05:23 Sam’s story of struggling with an eating disorder, exercise addiction, and depression
- 07:13 How the book, Eat, Pray, Love influenced Sam’s journey to healing and discovering breathwork
- 08:24 Sam’s first breathwork class experience and how it changed her life forever
- 10:52 What breathwork is and how it’s different from simply breathing
- 11:20 The difference between breathwork and meditation
- 15:40 The science behind breathwork; how and why it works
- 19:00 Allowing breathwork to help access and trust your intuition
- 21:49 The fascinating truth about the mind-body connection
- 25:42 How emotions and traumatic experiences get trapped within the physical body
- 30:19 Allowing breathwork to free the trauma stuck in our bodies
- 37:18 The impact breathwork has on our physical health and life expectancy
- 39:56 How to get started with breathwork and how to implement it into our daily lives
- 45:18 A guided breathwork exercise from Sam!!
Connect with Samantha Skelly
Instagram: @samanthaskelly
Podcast: The Sam Skelly Show
Episode Resources:
Try breathwork at pausebreathwork.com
Become a trained breathwork facilitator
Sound Meditation for Manifestation from Wayne Dyer
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
Ep.2 Netflix special: Goop Lab – Cold Comfort
Want some Whimsy to bring along on your journey to breathe, feel, and heal? Here’s what we recommend:
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Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Whimsy & Wellness Podcast brought to you by Whimsy & Wellness and hosted by Meg Ryan. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review – even just a short sentence is so helpful & greatly appreciated!!
Music & Editing by Taylor Ryan.
