Meet Our Founder and Lead Clinician:
Nathaniel Hodder-Shipp, B.Msc, CADC-II (he/him), is President and Founder of Breathwork for Recovery and has worked as a professional healer for almost 15 years. Using an arsenal of techniques with a special focus on breathwork, Nathaniel has helped thousands of people process trauma, disarm negative thought patterns, and maintain healthy and happy relationships with themselves and loved ones. Nathaniel’s client base ranges from those seeking relief from everyday anxiety to people suffering from severe emotional and physical trauma and desperate for help; his specialty includes working in addiction treatment facilities to help accelerate clients’ journey to recovery.
c/w talk of suicide
In treatment in 2009 is where Nathaniel first discovered breathwork, following ongoing struggles with addiction and several failed attempts at suicide. He was disconnected, at odds with his own integrity, and running away from life, but everything changed once Nathaniel discovered breathwork. His skepticism and resistance to traditional healing techniques dissolved as he saw how swiftly the practice shifted his perspective on life, love and recovery.
Nathaniel has been mentoring others in breathwork since 2013 having been certified in 2010, and he himself has clocked over a thousand training hours. Having been introduced to the work by Corrie Murguia, he studied with his former breathwork mentor David Elliott* for over a decade and officially founded Breathwork for Recovery in early 2018 to train others to use breathwork to treat trauma, mental illness, eating disorders, and substance use disorders. He is a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor Level II with CCAPP, a certified sex educator via Everyone Deserves Sex Ed (EDSE), and a graduate of The Fundamentals of Astrology Years I-III with Austin Coppock. His practice is rooted in contributing to the dismantling of the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. With this unique perspective and skillset, Nathaniel works full time helping empower people to make the necessary changes in their lives toward long-term health and happiness.
He has helped develop an 800-hour Breathwork Clinician Certification – the most comprehensive in the field – and has recently founded The American Breathwork Association to develop equity, ethics and regulation in the field of breathwork.
Meet Our Apprentices:
There comes a time in your life when you are so deeply moved, it’s beyond comprehension. Seeing these apprentices begin to work with the public in a meaningful way is one of those moments.
These apprentices are offering sessions on a low/no cost basis to gain experience hours towards their practicum and have completed 1 year of Breathwork Clinician Certification. You can schedule with any of them on the link in their bios!
Kelsey Allen
Kelsey Allen (she/her) discovered the power of the conscious connected breath in 2021. During her first guided breathwork session, she screamed, she cried, and she laughed — sometimes all at once. She couldn’t believe the emotional energy she was able to move in less than an hour, and in a virtual session no less. Over the next year, she invested in a personal breath practice, building a deeper connection with herself, working through difficult emotions, regulating her nervous system, connecting with the collective and the universe — and sometimes just thinking about what she was going to eat after practice.
When Kelsey isn’t lying on her couch breathing to Beautiful Chorus or East Forest, she’s a writer, putting her words to work for magazines, marketing agencies, and mission-driven organizations. She is also a volunteer creative writing workshop facilitator with Write Around Portland. She has facilitated workshops at schools for at-risk youth, burn centers, senior living communities, and low-income housing complexes, using writing as a tool for individual and societal transformation, self-expression, healing, and the realization of the dignity of one’s self and others.
After a life-changing weeklong Breathwave retreat in 2022, she officially became a student of breathwork, enrolling in the 800-hour trauma-focused somatic breathwork certification program through Breathwork for Recovery as well as the Breathwave facilitator training program.
Through breath and writing, Kelsey believes we can tell the stories held in our bodies, bring more space into them, allow energy to move, and work to shift and rewrite them.
Please note that by booking with our apprentices, sliding-scale payment will be discussed with the apprentice.
Book with Kelsey here!
Jenn Acuña
Jenn Acuña (she/they) is an intuitive, passionate student of life. They have spent decades engaged in discovery of spirit and self. It is her understanding that our energetic bodies have a profound and encompassing influence on the world in and around us. Jenn’s deepest desire is that we as individuals feel anchored in our empowerment so that we may contribute to our collective wellbeing.
As a sensitive child, Jenn was overloaded with all kinds of feelings but not always aware of their origin. It wasn’t until their early 30’s that she began to dive into the truth of what it was to be an empath, slowly learning how to harness her gifts. After being introduced to Generative Somatics, she experienced the onset of what it felt like to be in tune with not only her emotions but her body. With the help of meditation and this new awareness of embodiment, they were able to find a safer space within themself and really begin her journey towards self love and acceptance.
In 2013, Jenn enrolled in Healing Hands School of Holistic Health in Southern California. They completed over 1000 hours of training in massage therapy and holistic health courses, including an introduction to breathwork with James Beard. She was grateful to be able to take the course a second time around, and really allowed herself to sink into the practice. The connection they felt to their body was unprecedented, sparking a renewed enthusiasm for Somatic integration. She is familiar with both western and eastern philosophies of study and is a level II Usui Reiki practitioner.
Jenn employs a systems-oriented, relational, and intersectional approach to their work. They have a passion for the LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and underserved communities looking to grow and thrive in the face of trauma and oppression. The continued training with Breathwork for Recovery has deepened Jenn’s understanding of what it means to be an ethical and expansive practitioner. She believes working with a spectrum of individuals is imperative to our universal liberation. Jenn is a heart centered individual, incorporating warmth and compassion into every session. With curiosity, shared support and wisdom, they believe we can move through any obstacles uncovered during the integration process.
Limited scheduled availability, please email jenn.acuna77@gmail.com to inquire about sessions.
Please note that by booking with our apprentices, sliding-scale payment will be discussed with the apprentice.
Diyanat Ali
Diyanat Ali (he/him) is an outdoor and experiential educator from Hyderabad, India. He is a transformation life coach and a somatic embodiment coach serving clients to find meaning, purpose and authentic self-expression.
He enjoys creating and facilitating experiences that bring out profound reflections and learnings through hands-on, reality-based experiences in the outdoors, nature, and life in general.
Diyanat has been facilitating adventure, outdoor and experiential learning programs for groups for over 15 years, and his passion deepened to work with personal development and healing using experiences in the outdoors and nature.
Diyanat facilitates experiences using the whole person approach, including the head, heart, mind, and spirit and honouring the client's innate capacity to heal and grow.
Diyanat loves designing and creating profound healing experiences through wilderness quests, rituals, and ceremonies, many of which he learnt with his teachers in the Shamanic, Vedic and Sufi traditions.
Diyanat has profoundly benefited through the journey of working to be a breathwork clinician.
The breathwork for recovery training helped him deepen his inner journey and heal from within. The breathwork practice with the teachers and course partners enabled him to go deep, heal from within and show up from a place of deep authenticity and presence. He loves being part of the breathwork for the recovery community and mastering the craft of facilitating wholeness and healing through breathwork practices.
As a facilitator and coach, Diyanat has a flair for understanding participants' needs, Listens deeply and emphatically, holding space for participants to co-create learning moments and invite change. He has an innate ability to create safe and engaging spaces to help participants open up in conversation, share, learn and heal within deeply.
Please note that by booking with our apprentices, sliding-scale payment will be discussed with the apprentice.
Book with Diyanat here!
Abigaëlle-Marie Mulligan
Abigaëlle-Marie Mulligan (she/they) is a humble guest on occupied xučyun (Huichin) land, the home territory of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people also known as Oakland, CA. Weaving practices that honor the spirit of breath, magic & ceremony, earth-based lifeways, herbal plant allies, and intuitive channeling to explore what it means to heal for self and for the collective.
For a majority of her life, she has struggled to feel safe to embody her truest self. As a mixed race body of culture (with lineage from the Philippines, Germany and Ireland), a child of immigrants, a survivor of domestic and sexual abuse, and recovering from substance misuse she was made to feel “othered” in her way of being. Now she is reclaiming the power of walking within the borderlands and traversing spaces where ‘others’ find it hard to sit in and witness. Her healing journey has brought her to find power in peoples’ multiplicity and solace in the ways we choose to heal and identify ourselves.
When you find yourself literally in a liminal – a transition, a moment of movement, space between where you’ve been and where you’re going – that’s where Abbie comes in. Believing strongly that each person’s path to healing is their own, for those seeking support on their journey, she upholds the witnessing of the cycles of death, failure, rebirth, conflict and regeneration to uncover a deeper path to finding self.
Abbie is continuing education and training in breathwork, community herbalism, and elemental reiki. She is passionate about supporting people of the global majority (BI&POC) communities, young adults from immigrant families, and houseless communities. You can learn more about Abbie’s various offerings on her website, Liminal Grounds.
Please note that by booking with our apprentices, sliding-scale payment will be discussed with the apprentice.
Book with Abbie here!
Mercedes Grant
Mercedes is a queer femme witch, writer, activist, community organizer, trauma-focused and justice oriented yoga teacher, psychonaut and trauma-focused breathwork certification apprentice, currently practicing on the island of the T’oq qaymexw in the traditional territory of the Klahoose, Tla'Amin, and Homalco First Nations, on Turtle Island, with ancestral roots in Ireland, Scotland and England.
She is dedicated to creating and supporting dynamic, inclusive, accessible, expansive educational spaces and opportunities that encourage somatic and spiritual healing, integration, and the exploration of ancient and emergent technologies to build and co-create narratives for a new way of being with each other, and the natural world.
Mercedes’ personal and ancestral history of complex, intergenerational trauma led her to the practice of yoga, beginning her humble and non-linear journey towards healing and reclamation.
She holds over 500 hours of certified yogic education, with a focus on trauma recovery through a disability justice lens, having created and facilitated educational and therapeutic workshops and training programs focused on substance abuse and addiction recovery through the wisdom of Ayurvedic yoga therapy, within a modern, harm reduction framework. She is educated in journalism, creative writing and documentary filmmaking, and has produced, directed and written several films, in addition to providing strategic communications support for crowdfunding for independent filmmaking projects. She likes to write about the intersections of death, drugs, grief, science, healing, power, politics, magick and Collapse, and currently has bylines in The Daily Beast and Doubleblind magazine, among others.
Mercedes has contributed to the psychedelic and plant medicine space since 2015, providing strategic communications, crisis management, event production and film production support to organizations including The Psychedelic Society UK, Therapsil, the Spirit Plant Medicine Conference, The Psychedelic Chronicles documentary film project, MAPS Canada, and the 2018 and 2020 Psychedelic Psychotherapy Forum.
She is committed to on-going practice and education in somatic abolitionism, while humbly navigating and unraveling the internal and external symptoms of living within systems of racial capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism and oppression that hinder our individual and collective liberation. This lens informs how she moves through the world, how she shows up in her work, and who she chooses to build community with. Currently, you can find her writing, learning how to rest, building a tiny house in the woods, navigating chronic illness, absorbing art, exploring altered consciousness, and weaving the threads of her experience to hold space in her community for resilience building, Grief integration, community care and mutual aid, amid Collapse.
Please note that by booking with our apprentices, sliding-scale payment will be discussed with the apprentice.
Book with Mercedes by emailing her at
mercedescagrant@protonmail.com
Meredith Turner
Meredith Turner (she/her) is a humble resident of occupied Syilx/Okanagan territory, also known as Vernon, BC, Canada. She is a Registered Nurse, with a background in Critical Care, Neurosurgery & Trauma. In addition to being a practicing nurse she currently holds a role as a Clinical Instructor for burgeoning nursing students. She first found breathwork in 2019 at a retreat and it was a “love at first” experience moment. She has received certification through David Elliott, but felt called to apprentice with Breathwork for Recovery as it became evident that a deep understanding of trauma was essential to creating a safe breathwork space for her clients. Deep diving into learning, personal development and awareness with Breathwork for Recovery has been a profound experience in helping her navigate her own healing and to grow deeper in her reverence for this practice. She is a passionate land steward, helping to manage her family farm complete with mini cows and one chicken. She uses her intuition to guide her space-holding, often walking between the worlds of human and spirit to bring in elements of healing and heart-centered awareness. She holds expertise in the complexities of grief, death/life cycles, and the harnessing of emotion as a catalyst into the heart.
Please note that by booking with our apprentices, sliding-scale payment will be discussed with the apprentice.
Book with Meredith here!
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
In the almost 12 years I spent studying under David Elliott as one of his main teachers, I’ve grown both spiritually and professionally and will always be grateful for the opportunities that working closely with him has afforded me. In Fall 2021, I made the heart-wrenching and difficult decision to leave David's breathwork community, as I could no longer ethically be associated with him or his teachers due to the legacy of harm outlined here by Breathwork for the People.
I was not involved in the letter-writing nor am I affiliated with Breathwork for the People, but what they did was an important step in healing the breathwork community and took a tremendous amount of courage. I remained in David's breathwork community for a year and a half hoping to be a part of the important changes urged by Breathwork for the People and several other community members throughout the years, and to make it a better program and safer, more affirming space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as well as folks from the LGBTQIA+ community. The issues outlined in the letter were not remedied, however, and the changes were not made. So I left the community in order to build one that represents the values and justice focus that I and so many others hold true.
