How many breathwork sessions do you actually need?
Short answer: five to ten sessions. Long answer: how long is a piece of string?
I've been doing this 17 years and it’s impossible to predict. The question is bigger than the both of us and depends what surfaces when we walk that tightrope into the unknown.
Here is why one isn't enough:
One session will make you feel great
You'll likely walk out lighter, your nervous system will have stood down for a full hour, possibly for the first time in months, and you'll wonder why you don't do this every week.
So what's the problem here?
A single session won't get underneath your neuroses and it won't hand you anything you can actually use when your boundaries are tested for the zillionth time.
“So how can I do the real work?”
It all happens in the complex place we meet. Call it energy...or alchemy. If that sounds a bit, "Live, laugh, love" (lol), here's another go in plain English:
Everyone who enters my practitioner space has a different set of needs. I have no way of knowing what these are before we begin. So during your first session, I'm mostly working out where you are.
“What’s your role while I breathe?”
The session does itself really, but subtle cues tell me:
When to be quiet.
When to be lairy and demonstrative.
Where a hand placement might help.
Where physical interventions might intrude.
Whether you need to lie down or sit up.
Whether you need to quicken the pace, or stretch the out-breath longer than the in-breath (tip: this is what tips you out of fight-or-flight).
...or even whether you'd benefit from breathing in water. --It's surprisingly miraculous!
None of this is guesswork and none of it is set in stone before I work with you. That's the precarious tightrope, and for me there is a lifetime of learning in it.
The first session is largely diagnostic, the second is usually more interesting and the fifth is a different thing entirely.
Then you'll feel comfortable disobeying
This is the part I find most interesting, and the part nobody mentions when they talk about breathwork. As you get to know me, you work out how to push against me. How to use me as an archetype, as something solid, as a boundary you can lean on and shove at. You find out what your NO feels like in your own body, with someone who isn't going to punish you for it.
You can't practise this stuff with a stranger. That's the entire point, and why one session alone won't cut it.
So how many, then?
The research on therapeutic work generally leans towards about eight sessions. My own instinct, after 17 years of doing this, is somewhere around five to ten. Some people arrive with something specific and finish it in three. Others settle into it as an ongoing practice and stay for years. Neither is a failure.
You'll be able to get there on your own. Mostly.
Somewhere around session ten, something shifts. You'll have developed a life skill and will more or less be able to get yourself there without me faffing around next to you, which is always the goal. And yet, we all need someone to push against in order to find our edges. Someone to rally against. Someone to practise saying NOOOO to.
It took two people to bring you into this world. You're not supposed to do anything alone.
If you're wondering whether this is for you
You don't need a crisis to qualify. If something is just slightly off and you can't quite work out how to feel better, that's reason enough. In fact, most people I see are in this category.
If any of this landed, get in touch and we'll have a quick call about where to start. No pressure, and no packages to sign up for on the spot.