Deep Dive Aftercare: The Transformational Breathwork Integration Manual
The experience of a Transformational Breathwork session doesn't end when the session ends.
Breathwork using conscious connected breathing is a very powerful modality which is likely to open you to new and unexplored territories in your inner world.
To get the maximum benefit from your breathwork experience, it's important to devote some time and space to your inner journey — this is the process that we call “integration.”
It’s where you take the things you learned about yourself in your breathwork session and “integrate” them into your overall being.
Because we’re working with the energy body, some of the integration may not be obvious to you if you’re not used to working with the subtle body.
Even if you think you did not consciously have a meaningful emotional release or profound experience, your system is still unconsciously processing the session.
A deep dive session is only as meaningful and impactful as the time we dedicate to integrate our experience.
Integration is what will influence and impact your life coming out of a deep dive journey.
It is afterwards that you have a unique opportunity for real, lasting change. But to claim it, you need to do the “work”.
Breathwork is no magic pill, and no matter how rewarding the experience, it’s your ability to integrate it into your life that will determine its impact.
“Enlightenment has no value until it’s lived.” — Byron Katie
Plus, if we only do deep dive sessions but don’t work with our nervous system to learn how to self-regulate in daily life, effects are usually only short-lasting.
Healing means re-patterning our nervous system which needs support outside of peak or transformational experiences (aka. deep dive breathwork sessions).
How to Experience Lasting Change Through Breathwork
The way I teach Transformational Breathwork is not just to change our state while we’re in the session (that usually only last temporarily afterwards), but to bring about lasting change in our thinking, feeling and behaviour.
A deep dive sessions has three phases:
Preparation (preparing for the session) - see this resource on how to best prepare for a deep dive breathwork journey
Experience (the breathing session)
Integration (integrating your breathwork experience)
If I had to break down the level of importance via percentages, I would say Preparation = 20% Initiation = 40%, and Integration = 40%.
So, as you can see, integration is JUST AS important as the breathwork practice itself!
Thus, make sure to leave time after a session to integrate and take it easy.
Don’t schedule meetings or appointment right after.
When we properly integrate the deeply introspective experience that occurs during a CCB session, we can really reap the benefits it has to offer.
For example, if for some reason, a participant wasn’t able to integrate their experience and they rushed back to work, an unhealthy diet, and a crazy home environment, that participant could end up in worse shape than before they practiced breathwork.
On the other hand, if the participant takes the necessary time to integrate their experience properly, they would be able to completely come back into their body, give themselves the necessary time to process everything that came up during the breathwork, and come back into their daily environment with intentions of making necessary changes that will benefit their health and overall well being.
Lingering Emotions After A Deep Dive Session
Transformational Breathwork sessions can be deeply emotional experiences. They can bring repressed emotions to the surface and help you process them.
Most often, the processing of an emotion is completed during the journey itself.
Sometimes, an experience may bring something to the surface of your awareness, but the process won’t be completed yet.
You might also feel raw or vulnerable after a sesion.
However you feel immediately after your journey, emotions coming to the surface is always in your favor, independent of the speed with which you move through them.
Breathwork is not about making something go away - it’s really about bringing material up, so we can move through it consciously.
When emotions linger after a session, it doesn’t mean the session wasn’t successful or something is wrong - it means you now have an opportunity to integrate what is calling your attention, something you might have suppressed for a long time.
You can now work with what is brought up from the ocean of your unconsciousness to your awareness.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AFTERCARE
Below are our suggestions for supporting your integration process after your breathwork session.
There are two different ways to integrate your experiences in breathwork: actively, or passively.
In active integration, you make a conscious effort to work with your material through a variety of means, including such things as focused therapy, journaling, artwork, collage work, stream-of-consciousness, and much more.
In passive integration, the general idea is to simply create as much embodied presence and self-awareness in your life as possible after a breathwork session because the deeper your self-presence, the more you’ll be realigning with the state-dependent memory which you accessed during your breathwork session, which will lead to further insights and understandings about it, and the emergence of new puzzle pieces.
Passive integration can include such activities as meditation and yoga, walks in nature, massage and energy work, hot baths with candles, etc.
Be Gentle With Yourself
Allow for greater sensitivity, openness and vulnerability
Allow some time for self-nurturing
Allow yourself to be with whatever emotions and feelings arise after the session in a loving, accepting way without judgment. Make them into your best friends. What you consider your “negative” emotions many times give you the most insight into what is really happening in your inner world. Do your best to stay in your body and with the emotional sensations in your body. No matter what is arising within you, meet yourself with the utmost compassion and remember that it will pass.
Re-enter your normal life and activities mindfully
Take some time to slow down and be present in the next 24 hours – it really helps to integrate the experience.
Practice Self-Care and Self-Nurturing (especially if you need more grounding)
Give yourself time for reflection and rest with a lighter schedule and to-do list. Stay in your calm, quiet environment for as long as you can.
Drink plenty of water and maybe some hot tea for some extra grounding
Eat grounding, healthy, nourishing food - veggie soups and roots such as radishes, carrots, potatoes and beets.
Keep downregulating your nervous system:
Slow diaphragmatic breathing with extended exhales (untimed or 4 seconds in and 8 seconds out)
Humming
Spend time by yourself or with people who are nurturing, healing, and understanding of your journey. It’s important to know yourself and what is best for you - more alone processing time or if it's ok for you to be social.
Cuddle with your pet or partner
Light a (scented) candle or some incense/essential oils to help keep you grounded
Spend time in nature, going on a longer walk or sit outdoors. If possible, connect with the earth barefoot, meditate in nature or relax by a tree. (Here are some guided meditations you can utilize)
Take a nurturing hot salt bath or shower
Drink a hot tea or warm water
Exercise gently (i.e. walking, stretching, yoga)
Get a massage or do some self-massaging
Listen to relaxing music you enjoy (here is a good integration playlist)
Do something expressive and creative like drawing, making music, dance, pottery, etc.
Get adequate rest and sleep
👉 If you still feel activated after the session but not anxious or emotional, ask your body how it would like to move. I recommend conscious dancing, shaking or going for a slow run.
Possible Suggestions to Continue to Stay With and Work with Your Inner Process if You Feel Called to Do So
Pay attention to any “material” surfacing from your psyche
Attend to and work with your dreams. You are closest to your unconscious in your dreams and more important material might surface in the days following the breathwork. If you remember your dreams, write them down.
Journal for key insights - just emptying the mind onto paper is great. Simply write your stream of consciousness without censoring yourself and note any key insights you might have had during the session. This can help you make sense of your experience.
Get a piece of paper and draw whatever wants to come out–keep your drawings! You may get more insight into what they mean a week or two later.
Put on music and allow your body to move/dance spontaneously and authentically
If it Feels Right, Share Your Process + Experience with Someone You Trust
If you are currently working with a therapist and feel called to do so, you can make an appointment to share your breathwork experience
Attend your regular support groups
Use discretion regarding whom you discuss your experience; avoid sharing with those whom would attempt to discount or invalidate your experience
If it feels right and you know your partner or friend can hold a welcoming space for you, share your experience.
Avoid Making Important, Abrupt or Rash Decisions
Wait at least a week before making any important life decisions
Dialogue with someone you trust about decisions you are considering and ask for objective feedback.
Make Your Emotions Your Friends
Start taking more responsibility for your emotional states in your daily life
You can use them (whether “negative” or “positive”) to look inside and examine and work with what is triggering these emotions in you instead of projecting the cause of the emotions onto something that happened in the outside world.
GENERAL ADVICE
We recommend you combine deep dive sessions with regular/daily breathwork and nervous system regulation practices.
For this, have a look at my course Breathwork and Nervous System Foundations.
I also offer free resources on my instagram page, eg. check out my video archive of past weekly live practices for nervous system regulation (in which I combine somatic practices with breathwork).
Why? As they say -
“After the ecstasy, the laundry.”
- Jack Kornfield
and
“Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.”
Check out this resource of mine that goes into more detail on the meaning of these quotes.
How Much Time Should You Devote to Breathwork Integration?
So, how much time is required to integrate a breathwork session to maximize “growth” from your experience?
The answer is: it depends.
Ask yourself the following questions:
How deep and/or powerful was my session?
How much did I release emotionally and/or physically?
How much was I surprised by its content?
How “blown away” was I by it?
Generally speaking, the more your answers are on the higher end of the spectrum for these questions, the more you should plan to give yourself some integration time.
And, as always, trust your intuition.
What to Do If You Don’t Feel Complete After a Session?
What to do if a deep dive journey left you unintegrated / anxious / depressed?
Accessing altered states of consciousness can bring dormant and unconscious material up to the surface for integration. Usually it gets processed and integrated during a session but at times something bigger comes up or we don’t fully get to complete the emotional stress cycle during a session.
Maybe you feel overwhelmed, anxious, shutdown/freeze, depressed, intense sadness or anger - it’s absolutely ok to feel that way.
If you find yourself still activated, reactive or in shutdown/freeze the next day, know this:
It’s part of a natural process. It doesn’t mean the session was “unsuccessful” - on the contrary, this is good news in the breathwork world - it was very “successful”. You now have a golden nugget to work with intention!
Deep dive sessions aren’t meant to breathe anything away - it’s the opposite: we want to bring things up. and if something keeps lingering in our bodies after a session, it’s a wonderful opportunity for us to consciously work with parts of ourselves that want our attention. We get the chance to integrate them in our daily lives, to feel them, to learn to be with them and to befriend them.
As they say - after the ecstasy, the laundry.
We often want uncomfortable emotions to go away and do something to regulate ourselves quickly - however, the invitation is to work on increasing our capacity be with whatever is there.
In order to integrate and process the intensity of what is present for you, we have to find and connect to the root cause of your activation and intense emotion, which is almost always from a frightened frozen child our amygdala created as a survival mechanism so many years ago.
Relief comes from getting out of the overt THINKING processes in your mind and into the covert FEELING processes inside your body.
First off:
See if you can access self-compassion and full permission for what you are feeling and experiencing -
“It’s ok for me to feel this way.”
“I feel sad/angry/shutdown/scared and that’s ok.”
Let me give you permission first: it’s ok and natural to feel whatever it is you are feeling.
If you need more resources on helping you access self-compassion, here are some amazing practices.
Step 1: Resource Yourself
It is important that you create internal capacity first to be able to process what wants to be felt.
Increasing capacity means finding and using resources that help us feel safe in our bodies in order to process what wants our attention.
What feels good for you right now?
What gives you a sense of safety?
Which parts of your body feel safe, pleasant or neutral?
Here are some recommendations:
use the instant reset breath and do 3 rounds: 3 inhales through nose, then pause for 2-3 seconds and then sigh out the mouth - hold your breath again for 3 seconds
relax your jaw, your shoulders and your belly
humming and chanting mantras
a hot epsom salt bath
use a weighted blanket / weight on body
calming music (see this playlist)
tap below collar bones at the same time (EFT)
splash cold water onto your face
aromatherapy
locate 3 objects in your environment. Take in their color, shape and size. Breathe.
name the present sensation in your body out loud. Say “heart racing”, “sweaty palms” or “knot in my stomach”
put one hand on your forehead and one on your heart and take a few slow breaths
Them put one hand on your heart and one on your belly and take a few slow breaths
put a pillow on your belly and hug it
tap down your body
shake your body out
breathe with one of my instagram sessions, for example:
You might have your own ways to create safety in your body - think of people who you feel safe with, places and practices.
Step 2: Befriend Your Experience
Once you have resourced yourself, the next step is to befriend the emotion / the experience:
Find where you feel the emotion or anxiety in your body.
The best solution is not thinking, but feeling.
First off, look around your room and repeat to yourself: “I am safe in this moment” - and really feel it in your body.
Feel your feet on the ground and the lower half of your body
Then find an area in your body that feel safe, pleasant or neutral and connect to it.
Next, scan your body for an area of intensity or charge. Look for a pressure, an ache or pain, and tension in your throat, chest, solar plexus, belly..
Let go of any need to label what you are feeling as an emotion, just focus on the physical sensation in your body.
Simply focus on tracking the sensations of the charge
Put your hand over that area and continue to breathe slowly - see if you can breathe into that area where you feel the sensation of charge and tension
Stay with the sensations in your body (even if its uncomfortable) and ignore the thoughts in your mind (your thinking brain, the prefrontal-cortex is impaired by the stress chemicals adrenaline and cortisol)
Oscillate between the regions in the body that feel safe or neutral and the sensations of tension or activation...
Sense your feet, your legs and your pelvis - it will help you stay grounded
Focus on your breathing, your own touch and the sensations in your body - allow the muscles of your jaw and shoulders to soften and relax
When we feel activated, our muscles unconsciously tense up, sending a signal up to the brain that we are in danger
Once you feel some more calm in your body and mind, connect to the younger part of you that is represented by the activation or charge in your body
Keep breathing into the sensations and send that activated younger part of you compassion and support
Then see how the emotional charge wants to move your body. Start making the movements slowly, really slow them down.. and see what happens to the charge..
Do three rounds of humming or voo-ing - it will activate your vagus nerve, which will calm down your body and mind even more
Whatever is present for you after the session, see if you can just let it be there. Welcome it all in. Make all the parts and emotions within you a cup of tea and see what is allowed to flow on its own - without doing anything, just allowing.
Step 3: Journal
After the feeling and sensing part, writing about your experience can help you unpack and uncover deeper insights.
Here are some questions for inspiration:
What are three words that best summarize your experience?
What feelings are most alive in your body as you reflect on your journey?
What are the key insights you’ve had?
What are some questions or curiosities that have come up?
What am I noticing? (thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, images, urges, fears…)
Which emotion(s) am I trying to avoid right now?
Why am I trying to hide from this emotion?
What does this emotion need from me?
If you are interested to dive deeper into journaling for healing purposes, here are two great books:
Self-Therapy : A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness Using IFS by Jay Earley
Expressive Writing: Words That Heal by James Pennebaker
Recommended: Work With A/Your Therapist
At times, we have experiences during a session that requires additional support from a professional, especially if we are dealing with traumatic material.
If you already work with a therapist, it’s a good idea to reach out and make the experience in the session the topic of a consultation.
If you are currently not working with a therapist, we have a list of recommended practitioners if you’d like to work with someone who has also done breathwork and understands the types of things it can catalyze and how to work with that material. Check out our list of “breathwork-friendly” therapists, , to work more deeply with the issues/topics which are coming up for you in breathwork.
We also recommend working with a practitioner who is trained in somatic psychotherapy such as Somatic Experiencing oder NARM.
And if you are struggling financially and don’t have a lot of financial resources for psychotherapy, you can find a practitioner through open path, which is a psychotherapy collective offering affordable offline and online sessions. Another option would be Betterhelp or Talkspace. If you are looking for support as someone from the LGBTQ community, you may find a suitable therapist via Pride Counselling.
Need More Support? Here Are 3 Options:
1 - Send Us an Integration Support Email
After the session, if you’d like guidance, or if any questions arise related to either your breathwork experience, or about your subsequent experiences related to the session afterwards, please feel free to check in via our Breathwork Alchemy Integration Support Email.
We always do our best to respond to support questions within 48-hours of receiving them.
2 - Book a Breathwork Coaching Session
An additional level of support is also available to those who feel they’d benefit from a personal consultation with an experienced facilitator. You may schedule a Breathwork Coaching Call with me or one of my trained facilitators to address anything on your mind related to your breathwork experiences.
These consultations are only available if you have joined one of Conni’s deep dive Zoom sessions live.
You can use these sessions to:
ask questions about anything related to your breathwork experiences
get advice on how to overcome blocks and challenges in your breathwork journey
get tips on taking your breathwork to the next level
experience a safe space to talk about anything related to your breathwork experiences.
receive validation, or simply a nonjudgmental witness around your breathwork process
learn more about the long-term practice of breathwork
etc.
How the Breathwork Coaching Call Works:
When you sign up, you’ll answer a few very quick & simple questions about your experience. Then, when we talk via Zoom, your facilitator will listen to your questions and ask a few questions, and will then answer any questions you may have about your experiences in breathwork.
Cost:
$50.00 USD for 30 minutes (this rate for deep dive session participants only)
Send us an email at mail@breathworkalchemy.co to schedule your breathwork coaching call.
3 - Book a Private 1-on-1 Deep Dive Breathwork Session
For individualized support during a session, we recommend you book a 1-on-1 session.
This way, we can customize the setup, playlist, guiding and process of the breathwork journey based on your background, needs and requirements.
Cost:
$250 USD for 90-120 Minutes
Send us an email at mail@breathworkalchemy.co to schedule your breathwork coaching call.