Breathwork for Grief: Breathing Through Loss, Emotional Release & Healing
Updated: Sep 30
I have known about Breathwork for more than 20 years.
Over the years, I explored many different forms of conscious breathing, including Pranayama, Rebirthing and Shamanic Breathwork. Breath had already been part of my spiritual and healing practices for a long time.
But in 2022, Breathwork became something much more personal.
During a training experience in Mexico, another participant introduced our group to a style of Breathwork for integration that I had never experienced before. Something opened in me. I realized there was so much more I wanted to understand about the breath and the many ways people were using it for healing, embodiment and integration.
Within a few months of returning home, I enrolled in a Breathwork Facilitator training.
The program began in June 2022.
Approximately two months later, my beloved husband passed away.
I could never have anticipated when I entered that training how important Breathwork was about to become in my own life.
When Breathwork Became Part of My Grief Journey
There are experiences for which words simply aren't enough.
Anticipating the death of someone you love is one of them.
And then there is the grief that comes afterward.
Grief can move through every part of us—our thoughts, emotions, bodies, relationships, spirituality and our understanding of who we are and what our life is supposed to become.
During that period, Breathwork wasn't simply another healing modality I was learning.
It became something I could actually lean into.
I could breathe when I didn't know what to say.
I could breathe when my heart hurt.
I could breathe when emotions felt too enormous to organize into language.
Sometimes there were tears.
Sometimes there was emotional release.
Sometimes there was simply the experience of remaining present with myself for another moment.
That taught me something about Breathwork that no certification alone could have taught me.
Grief Lives in More Than Our Thoughts
When we're grieving, we may notice sensations throughout the body.
The chest can feel heavy.
The throat may tighten.
Our breathing may change.
We may feel restless, exhausted, angry, frightened, numb or disconnected.
We can experience moments when we desperately want to feel something and other moments when we desperately want the feelings to stop.
Grief isn't linear.
And Breathwork doesn't make grief linear either.
What it can offer is a practice for meeting ourselves within it.
Rather than demanding that grief disappear, conscious breathing can create moments in which we notice what is happening inside us and allow ourselves to be with it.
Breathwork for Anger, Sadness and Emotional Release
Grief isn't only sadness.
It can contain anger.
Fear.
Confusion.
Relief.
Longing.
Love.
Regret.
Loneliness.
Even moments of joy that unexpectedly return and make us wonder whether we're allowed to feel them yet.
Breathwork can provide space for the complexity.
The purpose isn't to manufacture a dramatic emotional release.
Sometimes a Breathwork experience is powerful because we cry.
Sometimes it is powerful because we don't.
Sometimes we simply become aware of a feeling we've been avoiding.
And sometimes we leave with a little more space inside ourselves than we had when we began.
From My Own Healing Into Group Breathwork
After experiencing how meaningful Breathwork had become within my own healing journey, I began bringing the practice more deeply into my work with others.
Eventually, that included facilitating Breathwork in groups.
There is something uniquely powerful about breathing in community.
Each person has their own experience, their own body, their own history and their own reasons for being there.
And yet there is also the experience of not being completely alone.
A group Breathwork gathering can include guided breathing, grounding, meditation, music, somatic awareness, emotional reflection and time afterward for integration.
Some people experience emotion.
Some experience stillness.
Some feel energized.
Others feel tired and need rest.
There isn't one correct Breathwork experience.
Breathwork Beyond Grief
Although grief transformed my personal relationship with Breathwork, the practice isn't only for people who have experienced a death.
Loss comes in many forms.
We can grieve:
A person we loved
A relationship
A marriage
A version of ourselves
A home
A community
A dream
Our health
A life transition
Something we thought our future would contain
Breathwork can become one of many practices through which we learn to stay present while life changes around us.
Breathwork and Integration
Breathwork has also become meaningful within my work around integration.
After a powerful retreat, spiritual experience, psychedelic or plant-medicine experience, emotional breakthrough or major life transition, there can be a great deal to process.
The experience itself is only part of the journey.
Integration asks:
What did this experience show me?
What am I feeling now?
What needs my attention?
How does what I discovered become part of the way I actually live?
Breath, meditation, somatic awareness, journaling and community support can all become part of that process.
From Grief Into Love
One of the deepest things grief has taught me is that grief and love cannot easily be separated.
We grieve because something mattered.
Because someone mattered.
Because we loved.
My journey through loss has influenced not only my Breathwork practice but much of what has eventually become Love as Medicine.
The work continues to explore grief, relationships, attachment, meditation, embodiment, intimacy, spiritual healing and the many ways we learn to remain open to life after experiences that have changed us.
Continue the Journey
I have also written more extensively about grief, spiritual healing and practices for moving through loss in my book:
The book explores grief through a holistic and spiritual lens and includes practices that can support the process of navigating loss and reconnecting with yourself.
Experience Breathwork Through Love as Medicine
Breathwork is offered through Love as Medicine in group workshops, retreats, online experiences, meditation and healing gatherings, and other community-centered offerings.
For those specifically seeking a private one-on-one Breathwork session, individualized Breathwork is available separately through Asttarte Deva Healing Wellness Center.
Breathwork is a complementary wellness and spiritual practice and is not a substitute for medical care, psychotherapy, grief counseling or other licensed healthcare when those services are needed.
With love,
Asttarte Deva
Love as Medicine
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