I can pinpoint the seven minutes that changed my life forever for the better. It was the initial seven minutes of my first breathwork practice.

Those first seven minutes woke up something inside me and made me acknowledge a few deep inner truths I had been ignoring for months (even years!) beforehand. After that first session I had the courage to take one little step in the direction I knew I needed to go. And taking that step gave me even more courage to take each subsequent step and make even bigger changes in my life and business.

Some of you might be wondering if seven minutes of active breathing is really even enough to do much of anything. Maybe you’ve been in a group breathwork class and are used to the deeper medicine of a thirty minute practice - leading you to think that in order to have a deep and transformational experience you need a longer and more in-depth practice. But that’s absolutely not the case.

There are so many benefits to even seven minutes of active breathing - especially when it’s done daily or weekly.

7 ways that seven minutes of breathwork can change your life:

Breathwork quiets the brain in preparation for deeper work.

Deep work of any kind (writing, developing, creating, understanding) requires attention and focus - two things our tech-heavy, skim-and-scan, modern thinking weakens over time. Seven minutes or more of focused breathing can settle your brain and release distracting thoughts - allowing you to sit down and focus without inner interruptions. This is the number one reason why I began all of the co-working and writing business groups I led with ten minutes of breathwork. It helped everyone shake off any stress or worries that their brain might have already taken a hold of that day and prepared their brain and body for an hour of deeper creative work.

Breathwork gives you an emotional outlet so you can look at your life/work with a clearer head.

Let’s face it - we’re not machines, we’re human beings who happen to be living lives and maybe running businesses. And along with our humanness comes our feelings - lots of them. So even though I’m someone who 100% welcomes my emotional self into my business, I also know that feelings aren’t facts and sometimes my business is best served when I let my feelings have my full attention for a few minutes at the start of my day so that they don’t take over completely and run the show. Breathwork gives our feelings the attention they desire. Whether it’s five minutes or fourty-five minutes, breathwork will bring up the emotions that need full attention so that they can be witnessed, worked with, and then moved all the way through so we can get back to our work.

Breathwork helps you rewire your brain and change the way you think.

Do any of these beliefs feel familiar to you??

“I could never start going to the gym, I have no idea how those machines work.”

“I could never start a podcast, I’m a terrible public speaker.”

“I could never make enough to save for retirement, I’m too afraid to ask for a raise / raise my prices.”

Most of us already know that changing our actions starts with changing our thoughts and beliefs. And breathwork is one of my favorite ways to utilize our brain’s neuroplasticity and do some rewiring up there. You can even think of breathwork as another form of self-hypnosis. Done regularly, you can make huge strides in what you believe you’re capable of. I’ve seen clients use breathwork in this way to shift their beliefs around self-worth, boundaries, and what they’re truly capable of doing/becoming.

Breathwork can help you make tough decisions.

Making decisions is often one of the hardest parts of life. It’s the number one thing that my breathwork and mentorship clients arrive to our sessions feeling all tied in knots about. Maybe their heart or intuition is pulling them in one direction while their brain or empirical data is pulling them in another direction. And while a good pro/con list is always an option, I find that it tends to keep us in a really heady analytical space. So as a good counterpoint, I always like to finish coaching calls with a bit of breathwork. Afterwards, clients report feeling more clear headed, sure of their decisions, and path forward.

Breathwork cuts through the mental noise.

Speaking of over analyzing - anytime I find myself thinking parts of my own business to death, I’ll lay down for a few minutes of breathwork to help break the cycle. After five or so minutes my brain chatter starts to quiet down and the topic doesn’t hold quite as much of a charge in my body. Even if the breathwork break doesn’t illuminate exactly what the problem is, it always cuts through the noise and allows me to contemplate in peace.

Breathwork supports brainstorming.

While breathwork helps cut down anxious brain chatter, it doesn’t turn off the brain altogether. It quiets down the overprotective part of the brain so that the creative and problem-solving part of the brain can be let off its leash. Short bursts of breathwork can really help you in brainstorming your next creative project, world-changing idea, or piece of content. Nearly every great idea I’ve had in over the last five years has shown up during a breathwork session.

Breathwork busts through writer's block and opens up the creative channel.

This is my all time favorite use of mini-breathwork. Anytime I’m looking at a blinking cursor on my laptop with a sense of dread, I stop what I’m doing (or not doing!) to lay down and breathe for a few songs. Every. Single. Time. I end up with a great idea or message that feels so on point I generally want to write about it before the playlist is even over. Many of the folks in the co-working groups I used to lead loved our group breathwork for this reason as well. During our time together they’d use the mini-breathwork as a means to connect to their creativity and then the quiet focus time to write blog posts, podcast episodes, and course content.

So there you have it. If you needed a reason to try a shorter style breathwork practice, you now have seven!

Want to try it yourself?

If you love music as much as I do and prefer to use songs as a timekeeper instead of a timer, I’ve made you a little playlist to use today for your mini-breathwork practice.

Use the active breath for the first two songs and then rest with a passive breath for the last song.