Learning to Stay: The Next Step in My Breathwork Journey

After that first chapter of discovering breathwork, the tears, the softening, the unravelling - I thought I’d had my big breakthrough. I expected things to keep shifting, gently but steadily, towards clarity and peace.

But what I didn’t realise was that the real work had only just begun.
It’s one thing to find a connection to yourself in a breathwork session, to feel something deep unlock, to touch stillness or release even if it’s only just for a fleeting moment. It’s another thing entirely to stay with yourself once the session ends. To carry that presence into your everyday life. That was the next step for me. It was harder than I imagined.

After the high of these early experiences the discomfort came back. The old stories played in my head and my heart. You’re not enough, you’re too much, you’re too sensitive - they returned. But now I could hear them more clearly. Breathwork didn’t erase my insecurities, it simply peeled back the noise that had kept them buried deep inside. So I had a choice. Run from them again…and again…and again or stay. Sit in the discomfort and follow the thoughts and feelings until they had nowhere to hide. Until I had nowhere to hide.

Staying meant noticing when my chest tightened during a conversation and choosing to breathe and sit in the discomfort, rather than shut down or run away. It meant feeling the ache of loneliness on a Sunday afternoon and not rushing to numb it with distraction. It meant being with my sadness instead of apologising for it. Being with my joy, too, without shrinking it. Without feeling like I need to dull it down or dim its sparkle.

Breathwork and all of the other work I have been doing on myself with coaching and learning to coach others over the last few years gave me the tools, but I had to choose to use them.

But I am still human, like everyone else. Like all the people I get the pleasure of working with. Some days I still resist. I still get caught in spirals. But I’m learning to meet those moments with compassion rather than criticism. I’ve learnt that presence isn’t a constant state it’s a practice. It requires consistency and breath is one of the anchors I return to, again and again, each time I drift.

I have also started weaving breathwork into small everyday rituals. A few conscious breaths before checking my phone in the morning. A grounding breath in the car before walking into a networking event or work meeting. A longer session when I feel my body holding something I can’t quite name. These little moments matter. They remind me I have a choice. To disconnect or to stay connected…to myself. These are the moments that build my resilience, that help me nurture myself, water myself like a plant, spurring me into growth.

This next step in the journey isn’t as dramatic as those first breakthroughs. It’s quieter, slower, more intentional. But it’s deeper. It’s about trust. Trusting that I can meet life as it comes, as myself. That I don’t need to perform, perfect, or prove. I just need to stay.

If the first part of this journey cracked me open, this part is teaching me how to hold onto what I’ve found inside. To continue to be curious, but with compassion and observing all the parts of me.

And that’s where I am now. Not healed, not finished, but presently observing with curiosity and compassion. Practising. Breathing. Staying, for myself.