10 Tips for Choosing a Breathwork Trainer
10 Tips When Choosing Your Breathwork Trainer
Let’s face it, breathwork has exploded in popularity over the last few years and there are over 8,000 unique searches for breathwork alone, not including additional search terms like breathwork training, breathwork certification, or online breathwork.
With its explosion in popularity has come a lot of unscrupulous characters trying to make a quick buck or become the next Tony Robbins (let’s not forget Tony Robbins has been accused of sexual assault by numerous women). Because of how powerful of a healing tool breathwork is, we wanted to write an article to help you navigate finding a breathwork practice, facilitator, or training that is right for you. There is a breathwork technique out there for almost everyone, and we are not so attached to what techniques you use, as long as you find one that’s right for you!
Let’s start by defining breathwork:
“Breathwork is an umbrella term used for any regulated breathing practice. Every practice offers different benefits, but by taking control of your breath, you gain access to your autonomic nervous system responses allowing you to manage anxiety, depression, PTSD, and mental health. It’s almost like magic. Magic backed by a shitton of scientific evidence.” Most of these practices stem from India and are pranayama techniques, or variations thereof. We absolutely want to give credit to the history of these practices, even though we may not know where they originated specifically.
Now that you have a better idea of what it is, how do you tell the good practitioners from the shysters? You’ll have to employ a lot of discernment, and some investigative skills, but there are some easy ways to spot a good practitioner. Here are some tips:
They speak to systemic issues.
This one right here is one of the easiest ways to spot a practitioner doing the work. Are they promising you 20 years of therapy in just one session, or are they speaking to the systemic issues which are at the core of our wounding? Yes, we need to take responsibility for our healing and our destructive behavior, but as long as the systems which oppress us are thriving, our personal healing can only go so far. This isn’t just a few catch phrases tossed around to virtue signal, this is deep committed work and you’ll be able to tell them apart by not only the copy on their site/blog/page, but by their actions as well. Do they offer sliding scale work for those in need? Do they do pro-bono work for their communities? Do they speak to injustice and inequity? Do they offer scholarships because it’s the right thing to do, or because they were called in for not doing so? People can change, but if there is a history of abuse clearly outlined with little or no change, chances are they haven’t cleaned up their act one iota.
2. Do they incorporate a trauma-informed framework?
This goes hand in hand with systemic issues. If you’re trauma-informed, then you’re involved in social justice. You cannot separate the two. Additionally, 20,000 searches occur each month for the term “trauma-informed care” and people are jumping on the bandwagon to capitalize on this term. Check out this article for help identifying who is and who isn’t really trauma-informed, and apply the wisdom there to your search. If their practice is truly founded in trauma-informed care (or trauma-specific for that matter), they’ll tell you HOW it is, not just label it as such. This is an easy tell.
3. How long have they been doing this work/how long is the training they’re offering?
School after school of breathwork training have been popping up, and many of these practitioners haven’t been doing their personal work long enough to really be pitching certification or training of any kind. But that’s were the money is, so they build one and viola. If they’re an GPBA approved school, that can help a bit, but they do not go far enough in the pursuit of ethics or standards in our opinion. Is it helpful? Absolutely. So, if the trainer been doing breathwork since 2020, and have been offering certification since then, you do the math. Same said to the length of their training and how it’s given. There are people offering “certification” in a weekend all through recorded material. There are folks promising you training in just a few hours. Avoid these better than you avoided COVID.
4. Are they promoting themselves through celebrity endorsement or bragging about their multiple million dollar businesses?
Look, there’s nothing wrong with asking for a review from your clients or making money, but marketing yourself via celebrity endorsement is not only tacky as fuck, it tells us you care more about your image than you do the care of your client. We’ve worked with many A-list celebrities but we treat our sessions with the sanctity they deserve by not pushing our clients to out themselves publicly for our benefit. We also treat breathwork sessions just like counseling or therapy sessions and apply HIPAA laws even though we don’t have to do so. Our clients’ healing is none of the public’s business unless they want it to be, and soliciting reviews from them is bad practice.
5. They speak to lineage and cultural appropriation.
There are a thousand new “gurus” that spring up every month claiming they’ve invented the practice or that it’s been given to them via download or that they “received it” from some person or another, but let’s face it. These practices stem from India, Tibet, China, and Japan for the most part, and these white dudes branding themselves as the breathwork master have stolen these techniques without attribution. Hell, I’ve read 6 different articles claiming that square breathing was invented by an ex-marine when it’s clearly part of traditional pranayama. It’s called Sama Vritti Pranayama. Wim Hof gets a shitton of credit, but he studied under Tibetan Monks (Tummo) and doesn’t mention this anywhere anymore. Then there’s the dudes who insist you use their name even though they stole the technique without attribution themselves. White folks be whiting I guess. Watch me fucking virtue signal my ass off here.
6. How much are they charging?
This one is a hit tricky because I firmly believe in getting paid what you’re worth, but I’m also a firm believer in overdelivering. If they’re charging $3k and up for an entire course that’s prerecorded, yikes. If they’re telling you that you must not value yourself enough when you can’t afford it, if they’re asking you to “level up and invest in yourself” if they’re taking photos of themselves in private jets and talking about scarcity mindset, these folks are firmly entrenched in the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and its best to let them continue to live their fantasy and find someone truly invested in you and your healing.
7. Are the trainers all white?
Or all of them but one? Are they all cisgender and straight? Do they have a black square on their Instagram? Often times it’s just gonna be one white person at the head trying to soak up all the credit, with a few teachers underneath if there are, and they’re all promoting the same spiritual bypass bullshit or calling you “beloved” without consent. They’ll tokenize anyone in the community who they can to come across as invested in social change, but then purposefully misgender you in the training. Fucking gross as shit.
8. What other training or certification do they have?
Again, a tough one because many structures like these can easily be a tool of white supremacy. If they’re claiming to help you relieve mental health issues and they have no mental health training something isn’t right. Are they claiming to be an “expert” on addiction or alcoholism and their only basis in that is experience with it themselves? Get away from them. Being in recovery does not make you an expert in it, and while it’s fine for AA and NA, that is no qualification to assist you with recovery via breathwork. I can’t believe it’s 2022 and I have to write this shit. AA requires no training and no code of ethics. They don’t offer any education about addiction. They are peer support and that’s it. Not professionals. Period.
9. Do they make overt sexual jokes or advances?
We have personal experience with this unfortunately. Practitioners grooming their clients by first throwing a “softball” sexual joke to get a read how their clients respond. If the client laughs or perhaps join in the banter themselves, this creates an environment where the practitioner can slowly increase the sexual energy until they are outright touching their clients sexually or engaging in sexual activity. Gross.
10. How quickly did they return to in person work during COVID?
If it was right away, they don’t give a shit about you. Simple.
Alright, well, here’s the list though it is not definitive. Please comment with the tips you use to discern good practitioners from frauds!
Learn About Our Breathwork Training
If you want to learn more about the breathwork training that we do, and why we believe we are so different than the majority of trainings that crowd the space, check out our homepage to get a sense. We’d like to think that we’re doing a damn good job of helping people learn how to practice breathwork with integrity and a solid clinical foundation.