Conscious Connected Breathwork

Chloe brings a trauma-informed approach to conscious connected breathwork, working across settings from rehabilitation to corporate environments. Your choices matter: you can pause or stop, and discuss what you need with Chloe before a session. Breathwork is not a substitute for trauma therapy or medical care.

Before your session, Chloe personally reviews your medical and consent form. If you have a health condition or concerns about the practice, discuss them with your clinician and Chloe rather than assuming a session is suitable.

Join virtual conscious connected breathwork sessions with Chloe from anywhere in the world. Wherever you call home, you’re welcome — no travel to a studio needed. Chloe is originally from East London; her online sessions welcome a worldwide community.

For an in-person experience, Chloe also offers retreats in Lake Como. Contact her to discuss upcoming retreat dates, availability and details; the session packages below are not advertised as retreat bookings.

Conscious connected breathwork (sometimes shortened to CCB) is a simple but powerful breathing practice. You lie down, close your eyes, and breathe in a steady, continuous rhythm — no pause between the breath in and the breath out. The breath is full and relaxed rather than forced, usually through the mouth, guided by the facilitator and by music.

Breathing this way on purpose is very different from how we breathe day to day. Over twenty to forty minutes it changes the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your body, and with it your state of mind. Most people feel physical tingling or warmth, waves of emotion, vivid imagery or memories, and a deep sense of calm afterwards — though every session is different, and a quiet, restful session is just as valid as a dramatic one.

You stay awake and in control the whole time. A session typically lasts around 60–75 minutes, including settling in and a long rest at the end, and you can pause or stop the practice at any moment.

The effects of conscious connected breathwork come from the close link between your breath and your autonomic nervous system — the part of you that manages stress, alertness and calm without conscious effort. Changing the breathing pattern is one of the few direct, reliable ways to influence that system from the outside in.

Continuous, full breathing lowers carbon dioxide levels in the blood, which mildly changes blood chemistry and produces the tingling many people feel. At the same time, sustained effortful breathing acts as a kind of physiological activation: heart rate rises, the nervous system stirs, and emotions that are usually held in the background can move to the surface. Then, in the long exhale-heavy wind-down, the body often settles into deep relaxation through the vagus nerve — the same pathway targeted by slow-breathing practices like meditation and yoga nidra.

Early research is promising but young. Recent systematic reviews of breathwork practices report encouraging effects on stress, anxiety and mood, and the field is growing; well-designed trials are still limited, and breathwork is not a treatment for any medical or psychiatric condition. Practitioners and researchers broadly agree on two things: many people find it genuinely restorative, and it works best alongside — never instead of — good medical care.

"Breathwork" is a family name for many different practices. They share a simple idea — that changing how you breathe changes how you feel — but they differ a lot in pace, intensity and setting. Here are the ones you're most likely to meet:

• Conscious connected breathwork — the practice Chloe guides. A continuous, full breath with no pause between the exhale and the inhale, taken lying down for twenty to forty minutes with music and guidance. It is one of the more experiential forms: emotional release, imagery and deep calm are common, and sessions are held one-to-one with a trained, trauma-informed facilitator.
• Holotropic Breathwork — developed by Stanislav and Christina Grof in the 1970s from the same connected-breathing lineage. It usually runs in groups, uses faster breathing and evocative music for longer stretches, and is paired with "sitters" who support each breather. Intense and transformative, but best suited to people already comfortable with strong experiences.
• Pranayama and yogic breathing — the ancient roots of all of it. Techniques such as alternate-nostril breathing, ujjayi and bhastrika are usually practiced seated, are gentle and precise, and are traditionally part of a wider yoga and meditation discipline rather than a stand-alone session.
• Box breathing and paced breathing — structured patterns like inhale-hold-exhale-hold (four counts each), used by athletes, medics and the military to steady the nervous system under pressure. Quick to learn, easy to practice daily, and more calming than cathartic.
• Coherent or slow breathing — breathing around five to six breaths per minute, often taught in apps and meditation classes. It maximises heart-rate variability, a marker of a relaxed but alert nervous system, and is the most thoroughly studied of the breathing practices.

A simple way to picture it: gentle paced practices mostly help you down-regulate — settle, focus, sleep. Conscious connected breathwork goes further, creating a deeper shift that can bring emotions and memories to the surface, which is why it works best in a guided, one-to-one container with a health screening first.

People come to breathwork for different reasons, and most report benefits in a handful of areas:

• Deep relaxation and stress relief — the long, exhale-heavy wind-down of a session settles the nervous system through the vagus nerve, and most people leave feeling calmer and lighter.
• Emotional release and processing — because the breath stirs what is usually held in the background, many people find they can feel, and move through, feelings they had been carrying quietly for a long time.
• Relief from anxiety and a busy mind — early systematic reviews of breathwork report encouraging effects on stress, anxiety and mood, and many regulars describe a quieter, clearer head in the days after a session.
• A stronger connection to the body — breathwork is a felt practice. People often report better sleep, more groundedness and an easier time noticing what they actually feel and need.
• Fresh perspective — the altered state a connected-breathing journey creates frequently brings insight: about a decision, a relationship, or the story you tell about yourself.

Two honest caveats. First, research is promising but young — well-designed trials are still limited, and breathwork is not a treatment for any medical or psychiatric condition; it works alongside, never instead of, good care. Second, the deeper the practice, the more it matters who holds it: a trauma-informed facilitator, a proper health screening and your right to pause or stop at any moment are what make the intensity safe and useful.

Deliberate breathing practices are ancient — pranayama in yoga, breath control in qigong and meditative traditions across the world have been explored for thousands of years. Conscious connected breathwork as we know it today is much younger, and was born in the West in the 1970s.

Two threads shaped it. In California, Leonard Orr developed "rebirthing" after noticing that continuous connected breathing brought up intense experiences and memories. Around the same time, Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof — whose decades of research into non-ordinary states of consciousness began at Johns Hopkins — and Christina Grof developed Holotropic Breathwork, using accelerated breathing with carefully held containers, music and trained facilitators to explore the healing potential of altered states without drugs.

Since the 1990s, practitioners worldwide have refined a gentler, trauma-informed form of the practice — conscious connected breathwork — and formalised training and safety standards through bodies such as the International Breathwork Foundation. That lineage is what you get in a modern session: an old insight about the breath, delivered with contemporary care.

Breathwork suits almost anyone curious about themselves. It's especially loved by people who:

• carry stress, tension or a busy mind that rest alone doesn't shift
• feel "stuck" — in emotion, habits or a life chapter — and want a fresh perspective
• want to feel more connected to their body, not less
• are complete beginners with no experience of breathwork or meditation

Sessions are one-to-one and fully guided, so you never have to work out the practice on your own. Before your first session you'll complete a short medical and consent form, because there are a few conditions — including epilepsy, some heart and blood-pressure conditions, glaucoma, recent surgery and pregnancy — where connected breathing needs care, adaptation, or a conversation with your doctor first. Nothing on the form rules you out on its own; it simply helps the session be safe and right for you.

You don't need to be flexible, spiritual or "good at relaxing". You only need to arrive, lie down and breathe.

Join a one-to-one session online, or contact Chloe about her Lake Como retreats. Explore the session packages or read the medical and consent form before you commit. Chloe confirms appointment requests personally by email.