Country music star LeAnn Rimes hosts Wholly Human, a podcast about unblocking trauma, embracing vulnerability, the power of compassion & self-awareness, and much more so we can fight the fragmentation of daily life and become more fully ourselves. On this episode, she sits down with breathwork teacher Ashley Neese to talk about using our breath to cultivate greater happiness and calm, to discover truths about ourselves, and get in touch with our intuition. Ashley struggled with anxiety and depression for years, turning to drugs and alcohol for escape from her traumas. When she was 23 years old in rehab, she decided to try breathwork. Since then, she’s become a teacher of the practice, and knows firsthand how grounding and healing a daily breathing practice can be.
Breathing is so natural that most of us don’t spend time thinking about it until our body is in crisis mode. But taking the time to sit quietly and focus on our breath allows us time to be with ourselves, “bring our awareness inside to our bodies so we can learn how to regulate and bring our nervous systems….to a state of more calm and peace and healing,” Ashley explains. It can be “deeply confronting” because things come up while we sit with our breath that we might not want to deal with. But LeAnn, who’s been working with Ashley on her own breathwork practice for eight years, says that while it took time, her practice expanded her “ability to sit with uncomfortable feelings,” and that now she’s able to trust that “what comes up is what you can handle.”
There are practical benefits, too. When we aren’t breathing properly, we suffer physically, developing headaches or body soreness throughout the day. Ashley’s found in her work with corporations that their employees’ focus shoots up after only 20 minutes of breathwork. That’s important for daily life and for serious healing. “It gets us really clear, gets us that direct line to our intuition,” Ashley says. “We need to do a mind/body practice to unlock not only our past traumas, but the joy and creativity we want for ourselves going forward.” Listen to the episode for more about the power of our own breath on Wholly Human.
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