Why Healing Stalls and How Deep Dive Breathwork Releases Repeating Patterns

Why do some people spend years doing healing work and still end up in relatively the same place? You may have tried therapy, courses, self-help books, and even breathwork before — yet the same patterns resurface: anxiety, indecision, repetitive relationship dynamics, or internal self-doubt.

Always Feeling Frustrated? How Functional Breathwork Helps Regulate Your Nervous System

Do you find yourself getting irritated over small everyday things? Maybe it’s traffic crawling along, or asking your child to tidy their room for the third time only to find it still messy. You can really feel it in your body — that heat in your chest, the tight jaw, the tension in your shoulders — and you just want to shout. That’s frustration showing up physically, even before your mind has a chance to catch up.

Breathwork is one of the simplest yet most powerful tools you can use to improve your health, wellbeing, and emotional resilience. But if you’re new to it, you might be wondering: Where do I start? How do I practice correctly?

This guide gives you a clear, structured path to begin your breathwork journey, with practical exercises and explanations so you can feel confident incorporating breathing practices into your daily life.

By the end, you’ll understand the basics, know a few practical exercises, and feel confident about incorporating breathwork into your daily life.

Are you ready to transform your energy, calm your mind, and improve your overall health? I’m Mel Breathgal, a breath coach based in Steyning, West Sussex, and I specialise in helping people unlock the power of their breath. Whether you live in Brighton, Hove, or elsewhere in West Sussex, I offer online Healthy Breathing Workshops and online or face-to-face 1:1 sessions designed to meet your unique needs.

A year ago I wrote about the moment grief snacked me in the face at Christmas. I was standing in a supermarket aisle, listening to a family going about planning their Xmas and something inside me broke wide open. And the grief poured out right there in that aisle. (I had lost my mum the year before).

Many of us get a stuffy nose in winter. Cold air, central heating and seasonal colds make nasal congestion common, which in turn pushes people toward mouth breathing, poorer sleep and less efficient oxygen use. Before reaching for sprays, there is a simple, non pharmaceutical technique used in breathwork training that can help open the nasal passages quickly by using your own breath. This nose unblocking exercise is used in Oxygen Advantage teaching and is a safe, effective first step for many people.

This is the month when people tell me, “I just can’t catch my breath.”
And it’s no surprise — the days are darker, the pace is faster, and we’re all trying to fit more into less time. The breath is often the first thing to go when life gets full. It becomes shallow and quick, shoulders rise, and before you know it, your body is running on stress.

As the air turns colder, our bodies instinctively tighten up. We hunch our shoulders, breathe a bit higher in the chest, and feel that drop in warmth and energy.
Breathwork can do more than calm the mind — the way you breathe actually influences how warm and alive your body feels.

Conscious connected breathing is a deep, intentional form of breathwork that helps you access more clarity, emotional release, and energetic balance in the body. Unlike regular day-to-day breathing, which is often shallow or automatic, conscious connected breathing encourages a continuous, connected flow of breath, often through both inhalation and exhalation without pauses. This sustained, conscious breathing allows your body and mind to enter states of deep relaxation and heightened awareness.

If you have been exploring breathwork, you might have typed into Google: “Is conscious connected breathing dangerous?” It is a question I hear often and it deserves a thoughtful answer.

This blog is inspired by a recent deep dive breathwork session that left me completely in awe. A client experienced such profound fascial release in the neck and shoulder area that the surrounding tissues visibly shifted, even though she didn’t consciously feel it. Watching it unfold was extraordinary, a reminder of how responsive our bodies are and how much they can let go when we breathe deeply and consciously. It was one of those moments where the body’s intelligence is undeniable, moving and releasing in ways that the mind cannot always perceive.

If you’ve ever been nudged awake by a frustrated partner, or startled yourself with your own snoring, you’re not alone.

Snoring affects nearly half of all men and about a quarter of women.

Why Do We Snore?

Snoring happens when airflow becomes partially blocked during sleep, causing the soft tissues in the airway to vibrate. In simple terms, your body is working harder than it should to push air through narrowed passages.

I want to share something that might surprise you: breathwork isn't about staying calm all the time.

I know, I know. That probably sounds contradictory coming from someone who teaches breathing techniques. But stick with me here, because this shift in perspective could change everything about how you approach your emotional wellbeing.

Sitting all day—whether at school or work—can lead to poor posture, which disrupts healthy breathing. Slouching compresses the diaphragm, encourages mouth breathing, and weakens vagus nerve function, leading to symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, and shallow breathing. Poor tongue posture adds to the problem by restricting airways.

As a certified breath coach, I help identify and retrain dysfunctional breathing patterns caused by long-term sitting. With the right techniques, you can restore proper breathing, improve posture, boost energy, and feel better than you even realised was possible.

Are you struggling with that familiar midday mental haze? That feeling where your thoughts feel stuck in molasses and simple tasks seem impossibly difficult? If you're a woman navigating perimenopause or menopause, you're not alone. Brain fog affects up to 60% of women during this transition, but there's a surprisingly simple tool that can help: conscious breath holds.

Last week, I found myself standing in the kitchen after my youngest came home from school, fighting back tears. He'd had another difficult day, and that familiar voice in my head was getting louder: "You're supposed to be the breath coach. Your children should be thriving. What kind of example are you setting? This must be your fault."

It's ironic, isn't it? Here I am, teaching others how to use their breath to navigate life's challenges, yet when my own child struggles, I immediately turn that judgment inward.

Ever found yourself puffing halfway up the stairs or breathless after a gentle hill walk and thought, “Wow, I’m so unfit!”?

Before you sign up for bootcamp or blame your age — let’s hit pause. That breathlessness might not be a sign you’re out of shape. It might be a sign of dysfunctional breathing patterns.

Yep, I said it. The real culprit could be… your breath.