“When we learn to hug our hearts, to welcome the Earth’s breath as our own, we meet how much life loves living life.”
— David Elliott, “Beyond Breathwork” (2025)
David Elliott is a healer and teacher who pioneered a somatic breathwork practice that helps people move from their overactive minds into their connected hearts, using breath to release stored trauma held in the body.
The focused breathing uses two quick inhales through the mouth — first into the belly, then into the chest — then out. Repeated for around 45 minutes, this lowers carbon dioxide in the blood and increases alkalinity, causing nerves to fire more easily. The result: tingling, shaking, and somatic release — the body discharging stored emotional energy held below conscious thought.
The rapid breathing bypasses cognitive control. For people in recovery, addiction lives in the body as much as the mind — trapped as freeze responses, dissociation, armoring around the heart. When words and meetings aren’t enough to reach what the body holds, breathwork offers a different inventory: one requiring presence, not narrative.
A wise yoga instructor once told me: breath is the bridge between mind and body. At our center is the heart — pumping blood, giving life, holding emotions. Across cultures, the heart has been understood as where we feel grief, love, fear, and joy. The word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath. It bridges the finite and infinite, isolation and connection, being sealed in the mind and flowing with something larger. When we breathe with focus and intention, we travel this bridge — moving from the overactive mind down into the body, where the heart can finally be felt again.
I arrive on my yoga mat, flat on my back. Blanket over me, tuque covering my eyes, hoody over that. By the end I will be freezing.
The breath begins. Two in, one out. Again and again. The dryness in my mouth comes quickly. The scraping in my chest not far behind. After a while only the rhythm remains.
The tingling starts — in my hands, my feet. My chest feels raw.
Somewhere in time the facilitator instructs us to let out a sound from our innermost core. There is a moment, blunt and sudden, where she says to let it all go. A guttural roar erupts outward from deep within me, and something breaks open. A spiritual release.
I sense my heart again within my chest. I hear it. I feel the circulation of blood travelling through me. I can see beyond me, into the darkness that goes beyond vision. My hands and feet are shaking. I start to cry uncontrollably.
I become aware I am gripping the grounding stones I brought too hard — the rough blue chalcedony is piercing my skin. Flashing in my mind are distorted images, broken timelines of moments across my life. I let them all go.
I am water again. Flowing and interconnecting with the rise and fall movement of others in the room. From a distance I sense their breath, and we are connected. Everything is connected.
By the time normal breathing returns, I am still trembling, still cold, still crying — but the block in the dam has been cleared. The bridge is crossed. My heart is waiting on the other side.
For those in Ottawa interested, Krista Reid (https://www.kristareid.com) facilitates a breathwork circle each month around the time of the new moon at Pure Yoga (https://www.pureyogaottawa.com).
Where in my life am I still bracing against what is trying to flow through me?
Where does my body still guard what my heart is ready to feel?
What would it mean to be like water — flowing rather than forcing, allowing my heart to let go of what no longer serves me?
What part of me is longing to be allowed back in?
