The Biggest Myths about Breathwork (Hint, They’re All Basically the Same Uniformed Thing)
B.S. Claims About Breathwork and Trauma
Let’s really get to this stuff here, folks. Firstly, there are a lot of “breathwork practitioners” making a lot of claims about what breathwork can do, especially as it relates to healing trauma. We’re going to dispel some myths about trauma and breathwork, but we want to first define what trauma is.
SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) defines trauma as: an event or circumstance resulting in:
· physical harm
· emotional harm
· and/or life-threatening harm
The event or circumstance has lasting adverse effects on the individual's:
· mental health
· physical health
· emotional health
· social well-being
· and/or spiritual well-being
This is pulled right from the SAMHSA website and is clear about how they define it. No fluff. No filler. No woo-woo bullshit. We like to rely on professional and proven sources and SAMHSA is well respected throughout the trauma treatment field (even though they need to call it substance use not abuse).
Now that we understand what trauma is, there is also some confusion as to what constitutes a traumatic event. If I had a nickel for every time a client diminished the violence or sexual abuse they experienced as a child as “not traumatic,” I’d have a five gallon bottle of nickels. Ironically, minimizing your trauma is an impact of trauma. Trauma leaves a lasting imprint in our belief systems, our bodies (both physical and emotional), our ability to connect to others, and our ability to connect with something greater than ourselves, along with a slew of other repercussions that affect our daily lives.
Trauma could be a car wreck, it could be neglect, it could be assault, it could be molestation, it could be witnessing any of these things. You want to get a clear idea of what trauma is and how it’s impacted you, go take the PACE quiz. This is a tried-and-true measurement of the lasting effects of traumatic experiences. It affects so many different parts of our lives that it’s hard to know where to begin. The higher your PACE (or ACE) score is, the more likely you are to struggle with depression, substance use disorders, anxiety, mental illness, cancer, heart disease, and a lot more physical and mental challenges along with an increased chance of personal injury, a lower earning potential, higher risk of STIs, and unintended pregnancy.
Holy fucking shit, right?
Yeah, so trauma is no small thing. It’s a silent epidemic and the more disenfranchised you are, the greater your risk of experiencing traumatic events. It’s a shit sandwich. It impacts Black, Indigenous, People of Color exponentially more, as well as LGBTQ+ folks, and disabled folks. It’s fucking killing us and here we are either ignoring it, pathologizing it, or claiming that very normal reactions are a result of traumatic experiences.
Then of course, we have new age snake oil salespeople claiming all sorts of shit about trauma and how they can “cure” it.
Here’s the myths:
1. Breathwork “clears” trauma from the body.
This one cracks me up because if you understand even the smallest amount of information about what trauma does to us, you would never claim anything of the sort. During my first experiences with breathwork training I was taught that this technique has this power, and then I started learning about trauma from actual trauma professionals. Trauma doesn’t go away. It doesn’t just disappear nor can we get rid of it. We change our relationship to traumatic events, absolutely, but the imprints in the body and belief system are long lasting and there is no such curative that “clears trauma” from the body.
Breathwork regulates the nervous system, absolutely changing our relationship to our bodies and the psychological sensations that accompany the fight/flight and freeze responses, as well as mixed responses like fawning. But this is not “clearing” it from the body. Our nervous system is going to let us know when we’re in danger it does so via these responses. If they stop happening, something is very wrong, contrary to what many of these breathwork practitioners claim. Our nervous system is supposed to respond to threats. Hell, one could argue that is the main function of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) anyway. We want our ANS to let us know that shit is not right, we just don’t want to spin out in a dissociative state for weeks on end.
2. Breathwork removes trauma from the body.
Same thing here, in fact most of the bullshit info out there about healing trauma is framed in a way that leads one to believe that they can get rid of it. Again, that’s not how trauma works and that’s especially not how healing trauma works. You don’t get rid of the responses of the nervous system. You do change your relationship to them, and you change their impact in your life. Your nervous system is so badass, that when you experience a threatening event, it catalogs the way you successfully survived that event through nervous system response, so if you fought your way out and made it through, that’s the way you’ll respond to similar threats in the future. If you were able to flee after fighting failed, then your nervous system responds that way in future similar threatening situations. Same with freeze. It’s supposed to do that. It’s an evolutionary mechanism that has allowed us to survive and thrive since forever.
That is so fucking cool I can’t even express it in words. Your nervous system remembers the way you survived and responds accordingly in future events, thus decreasing the time it would take to respond, thus increasing the likelihood you live. Totally fucking amazing. You don’t want to “remove” this.
3. Breathwork “gets rid of” “undoes” “deletes” “erases” trauma, or any other language framing trauma as something bad you need to fix.
Look. That bad shit that happened to you. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault and you should never have had to go through it. You don’t have to find a spiritual or higher purpose in those shitty events. You never should have had to experience them, and that’s it. You did though. You fucking did and it’s shit. Now what?
Now we reduce the impact of it. We clean up the fallout. We build community where community was ripped from us. We reestablish hope where it was stripped from us. We reclaim our power where we were powerless. And we choose love when those who should have loved us, failed to do so. But we don’t get rid of it. We don’t pretend that it made us stronger. It fucking did not. You made yourself stronger. You’re the one who made it through, and chances are you had some help along the way. Don’t thank your trauma. Thank yourself for being a complete badass.
There’s nothing in you that needs to be fixed. There’s nothing in you that’s wrong or broken. Don’t let people who have no concept of what trauma truly is make you feel like you aren’t good enough, or that you need them to “heal” you. Especially if they claim they’ll “clear” your trauma in exchange for $$$.
It’s true that we can’t heal on our own, and that you need support, community, and mental healthcare. If you’re ready to work with trauma, here’s a few resources for trauma specialists we trust:
Resolutions Therapeutic Services
You’re already here reading this, so you must trust us a little bit. Breathwork can help you heal trauma, but the practitioners must have specific training in order to do so. You’ve come to the right place for trauma-focused breathwork practitioners.