Breathwork by Valerie Moselle

Breathwork by Valerie Moselle ISBN-13: 9781641524483 Paperback: 216 pages Publisher: Althea Press Released: June 25, 2019

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
Every breath you take has the power to heal—but learning how takes practice. In Breathwork, established yoga and breathwork teacher Valerie Moselle leads you through a practical program to create a personal routine of restorative breathing techniques.

Begin each day with breathing exercises to boost energy and physical health. End each day meditating on clarity and calm. With effective practices that address everything from allergies to anxiety and more, this breathing plan is your guide to discovering the rejuvenating and varied benefits of breathwork.

Breathwork: A 3-Week Breathing Program begins by teaching the timeless fundamental practices of breathwork. Then invite intentional breathing into your life with simple, step-by-step exercises every morning and evening. Feel the positive impact of targeted breathing to treat anxiety, asthma, insomnia and more.


My Review:
Breathwork helps you to explore how you breathe and contains a 21 day program that teaches different breathing techniques. The author mostly based her selection of techniques on those used in yoga and martial arts traditions. She only included those that are safe and do-able for any age or physical ability. She started by explaining the benefits of conscious breathing. She explained the main categories of breathing techniques (like using using only the belly or rib cage, different timing for different parts of the breath, or holding one's breath) and what each type of technique will help achieve. This was very helpful for me as I was confused by all the different options that people mention.

She then got into the specifics of her program. She described several stretches that you will do for the first 5 minutes of the 10 minute morning session. She described how to do the body scan and tension meditation that you will do for the first 5 minutes of the 10-20 minute evening session. For each day, she described the breathing exercise for the morning and the evening, and they generally built on what was learned in the previous sessions. The first week focused on the physical aspects of breathwork--learning belly breathing, rib cage breathing, resistance breathing, and wave breathing. The second week focused on using breath to enhance awareness of our physical self, emotions, and thoughts. The third week focused on overall well-being and how breathwork can enhance our sense of purpose.

I have to admit I got bored with the stretching and the body scan parts of the exercises. I understand their purpose, but it adds time to what is already pushing my current "be still" tolerance levels. I also could already do everything in week 1, so that felt very basic. So it's a good book for a complete beginner because it is basic and explains things. But I suspect you're most likely to complete the 3 weeks of exercises if you're already used to spending 20-30 minutes a day stretching or meditating.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.