My journey into a career in Breathwork

If you had told me ten years ago that I would be working on Harley Street, helping people reconnect with their breath and their life’s mission, I would have laughed. A lot.

Back then, I would not have given myself permission to feel this way. I probably would have judged the version of me writing this now.

I have spent most of my life feeling disconnected from my body. After being diagnosed with OCD in my early twenties, I lived largely in my head, caught in cycles of rumination. That makes it even more extraordinary that I now help clients come back into their bodies.

Like many of us, my teenage years and twenties were spent living almost entirely in my head. Constant fight or flight, often tipping into freeze. I have always been curious and empathetic, but those qualities were blocked early on after learning that it was not safe to feel my feelings. The armour was firmly on.

The good news is that breathwork, and a lot of it, has helped me slowly remove that armour. It has allowed me to feel more, reconnect with my soul’s mission of helping others, and build a career I once thought was impossible.

I am only at the beginning, but it feels very good.

In my twenties, I lived someone else’s dream. I studied real estate, joined a large US consultancy, and was eventually fired in 2017. What followed were six more years of dodging panic and anxiety attacks while trying to survive in corporate jobs that never quite fit.

I was scared to try new adventures, worried they would make my anxiety worse.

I do not regret my time in real estate. I met incredible people and learned a huge amount about business and life. I sometimes wonder whether I should have started my own thing earlier, but perhaps I was not ready. Timing matters.

Everything changed when I became fed up with how I felt day to day. Living someone else’s dream was no longer sustainable. Something had to change, and I was ready to invest everything into that change. The talking had to stop.

One night, scrolling Instagram, I saw an advert for a breathwork session in Seven Sisters, of all places. After spending around £20,000 and over a thousand hours in therapy, something about it spoke to me differently. So I booked it.

I remember feeling intensely anxious beforehand. Out of my body. Stuck in my head. But as soon as I started breathing continuously, something shifted. Something genuinely magical happened in my body and mind.

I could see the person I wanted to become, and how I wanted to feel in my everyday life.

After the session, standing on the tube platform, I felt more grounded than I had in years. I knew this was it.

Over the next two years, I followed the breadcrumbs. Workshops, trainings, retreats. I tried a Wim Hof retreat in the Alps, incredible for resilience, but far too activating for my nervous system. It became clear that I needed breathwork, just not that version of it.

I then trained with The Breath Guru while working my last job. It was solid, but I wanted more depth. More science. A deeper understanding of how breath interacts with our major systems.

During that time, I listened to a podcast with Ed Dangerfield and immediately knew I needed to learn from him. The problem was that he lived in Bali and I was stuck in London.

When you get closer to your soul’s mission, you have to become very good at saying no to people and places that no longer serve it. I booked a flight to Bali before leaving my job, creating the accountability I needed to take the leap.

I had £5,000 in my account and was willing to go broke to understand why I was really here.

I spent four months in Bali, reconnecting with old friends, living more healthily, and immersing myself in the deeper layers of breathwork. Above all, I learned one fundamental truth.

The way you breathe is the way you live.

I learned how shifting breathing mechanics can support the body’s major systems up to 26,000 times a day. I learned attuned touch, precise bodywork, and how to sit with people through the good, the bad and the ugly. I also learned how to sit with myself.

Every day since has included doubt, anxiety and a healthy dose of imposter syndrome. But alongside that, life has opened up. New purpose. New relationships. A deeper connection to myself and the world around me.

I have never trusted anything as much as I trust breathwork to support our life’s mission.

What I have witnessed in my client sessions on Harley Street has been nothing short of extraordinary. This feels like the beginning of a truly aligned chapter, one where I get to live in integrity and help others do the same.

In future posts, I’ll share more about breathwork, the nervous system, and what I’ve learned along the way.

Thank you for reading,

Will