Email: Info@thrivebeyondtraumacounseling.com
Call: (248) 392- 3733
Counselling
Counselling
Trauma-Informed Breathwork
Somatic Healing | Nervous System Reset | Emotional Release
A stand-alone specialty service at Thrive Beyond Trauma Counseling
Your breath is one of the most powerful tools you carry — A direct pathway into your nervous system, emotional world, subconscious mind, and embodied patterns of survival.
Trauma-informed breathwork is not about pushing your body or forcing release.
It is a gentle, structured, clinically grounded modality that helps:
- Calm an overactive nervous system
- Soften chronic tension
- Release stored emotional energy
- Restore connection to the body
- Increase internal capacity
- Deepen healing across all modalities
*Breathwork helps your body do what it was designed to do — Release, reset, and return to safety.*
Why Trauma-Informed Breathwork Matters
Not all breathwork is safe for trauma survivors.
Traditional breathwork can:
- Overwhelm the nervous system
- Trigger trauma responses
- Induce dissociation
- Activate panic
- Create emotional flooding
At Thrive, we use trauma-aware, nervous–system–informed
breathwork that prioritizes:
- Regulation over intensity
- Embodiment over catharsis
- Safety over speed
- Pacing over pressure
This approach supports healing without overwhelming your system.
Breathwork should never push — It should invite.
*Trauma-informed breathwork protects safety and capacity while still allowing depth.*
What Breathwork Can Help with
Breathwork is one of the most versatile somatic tools available.
It can support:
- Stored emotional tension
- Hyperarousal
- Shutdown/numbness
- Emotional flashbacks
- Body-based trauma memory
- Racing mind
- Chronic worry
- Panic
- Stress intolerance
- Urge states
- Emotional flooding
- Body disconnection
- Shame cycles
- Relapse triggers
- Burnout
- Exhaustion
- Emotional depletion
- Fight / Flight / Freeze / Fawn patterns
- Internal heaviness
- Stuck emotions
- Heart-based grief
- Reconnecting with your body
- Increasing internal safety
- Developing tolerance for sensation
- Stress-related pain
- Trauma-related muscular holding
- Difficulty relaxing
Breathwork helps the body release what the mind has been carrying.
*Breathwork supports emotional, physiological, and somatic healing together.*
How Trauma-Informed Breathwork Works
Trauma-informed breathwork uses specific breath patterns that:
- Downshift survival states
- Increase vagal tone
- Expand your window of tolerance
- Regulate panic
- Soften emotional intensity
- Reconnect you with your inner world
- Create space for processing and release
Our clinicians tailor breath patterns to your nervous system needs:
For anxiety, overwhelm, fear, and panic.
For shutdown, numbness, depression, and fatigue.
For emotional blocks, stored grief, trauma tension.
Used after EMDR, parts work, hypnotherapy, or deep healing sessions.
Your breath becomes a bridge between your past overwhelm and your future calm.
*Breath patterns are chosen intentionally to meet your nervous system where it is.*
What A Session Feels Like
Clients describe sessions as:
- Calming
- Grounding
- Relieving
- Empowering
- Clarifying
- Emotionally freeing
- Deeply connecting
A typical session includes:
1. Nervous-system check-in
2. Gentle somatic grounding
3. Breath pattern selection
4. Guided breathwork sequence
5. Emotional processing + integration
6. Return to baseline + grounding
There is no forcing, no intensity for the sake of intensity, no rapid “deep dives.”
Safety first. Depth follows naturally.
*Sessions are structured, paced, and responsive — Never overwhelming.*
Breathwork as a Foundation for Other Modalities
Breathwork amplifies and supports all trauma modalities, including:
EMDR
Hypnotherapy
Individual trauma therapy
Breathwork is the nervous system foundation under every other modality.
*Regulation through breath allows other therapies to work more effectively.*
Breathwork Groups & Classes
We will be offering:
- Trauma-Informed Breathwork Circles
- Somatic Breathwork for Anxiety
- Breathwork for Addiction Recovery
- Nervous System Reset Workshops
- Breathwork + Yoga Integration Groups
These groups will help clients:
- Regulate together
- Heal in community
- Deepen embodiment
- Build resilience
- Feel less alone
*Breathwork becomes even more powerful when shared.*
Who Breathwork Is For
Breathwork is ideal for people who:
- Feel disconnected from their body
- Feel stuck in anxiety or fear
- Carry emotional tension they can’t talk away
- Want mind–body healing
- Experienced trauma or burnout
- Feel too activated or too shut down
- Want a non-verbal, somatic pathway to healing
- Need a supportive group for nervous-system repair
*If your body is holding tension your mind cannot release, breathwork may be your way*
Related Specialties
Addiction Recovery →
FAQ
Yes — When done with pacing, grounding, and trauma-informed techniques.
Sometimes — But only if your body is ready.
No, but it deeply enhances trauma therapy.
Our method is gentle and paced — Not rapid cathartic work.
No — We guide you every step of the way.
Begin Your Healing Journey With Gail
Gail is the Head of Holistic Care at Thrive Beyond Trauma Counseling, leading integrative mind-body services that support trauma recovery and behavioral addiction healing. She brings deep mind-body wisdom into Thrive’s trauma-informed work, complementing our therapeutic approach with whole-person care.
Your breath is a powerful healing tool.
It can soften what is tense, release what is stuck, and reconnect you with the parts of yourself that learned to shut down to survive.