After spending 6+ weeks in Germany teaching our breath lab retreats as part of our teacher training and spending time with family, we finally made it back home to Portugal yesterday. So good to be home!! 🥳

I wrote this letter to you from the road somewhere in Spain. Enjoy!

How do unprocessed and unexpressed show up in your life?

For me, it can be indigestion and bloating, sore throat, increased reactivity and frustration, anxiety, headaches and tension in my neck.

I usually know right away when something is off. And when I don't, my wife lets me know ;)

However, my symptoms used to be a lot more intense: eczema and psoriasis, IBS and SIBO, debilitating back or shoulder pain, and multi-day headaches.

Not fun.

Eventually, thanks so Breathwork, I learned to feel my emotions consciously. I now prefer feeling what's uncomfortable right away over the physical and mental symptoms that come from bottling things up.

If in doubt, feel it out.

*

When we don’t fully process our emotions, they show up elsewhere. It’s like trying to push down an inflated ball under water, it doesn’t work for long. And, it requires a lot of energy!

Sometimes we avoid our emotions consciously - that's what we call "suppressing."

And often we do it unconsciously - that's what we call "repressing."

Unexpressed emotions make themselves known in your triggers, your relationships, your physical and mental well-being.

This is not about self-judgment.

On the contrary, I'd like to invite self-compassion:

We often don't feel safe to feel our emotions.

Or we don't have the time or space.

Or we simply don't know how. Many of us never learned to consciously be with and express our emotions.

Learning how to navigate and consciously feel my emotions (and not just think them!) was a HUGE key on my own healing journey. And the breath was the gateway to my emotional world.

You see, emotion is movement. When we suppress their movement and expression, several things happen:

• The activated charge and hormones don't get mobilized
• The emotional stress cycle stays incomplete
• The unprocessed energy gets buffered in the body
• When we dissociate from our emotions, we dissociate from ourselves

The only way to be truly free is to feel and express your emotions.

To do this, we need to realize that emotions are never good or bad. Emotions simply are.

As much as we need to empty our bladder frequently, we need to process our emotions.

If we don’t, our body literally keeps the score.

When you don't allow yourself to feel, or when you try to bottle up your emotions, the charge has to go somewhere.

Here are 14 signs unfelt emotions are stored in your body:

1. You cry easily or get angry/frustrated quickly
2. Tension in your back, neck or shoulders
3. Teeth grinding at night
4. Obsessive thinking, rumination and worrying
5. Passive-aggressive reactions
6. Overusing distractions (e.g., social media, food, Netflix, socializing)
7. You use sarcasm or cynicism a lot
8. Lump in your throat
9. Perfectionism and procrastination
10. Digestive issues
11. Skin inflammation
12. Headaches or migraines
13. Anxiety
14. Depression

The truth is:

Emotions are messengers, teachers, guides. They are our internal GPS. They show us our needs and boundaries.

Once we acknowledge them with compassion and allow them to be felt, their activated charge can pass.

Now, there is only one way to do our emotional healing work, and that is to learn to feel and express our emotions.

To do this truly and fully, we need to include the body. Talking about our emotions just doesn't do the job.

One powerful way to do this is to use our breath, specifically conscious connected breathwork.

Conscious connected breathwork (CCB) helps process emotions not by figuring them out, but by bypassing the neocortex and plugging into the body’s emotional circuitry directly.

It is one of the most powerful ways to complete emotional stress cycles, because it processes the emotional energy itself.

When we breathe in this way, the body releases what it has been holding - sometimes for decades - allowing us to experience a profound liberation that cognitive approaches alone simply cannot access.

*

If you feel called to (re)connect with your emotions, this Sunday, I will be guiding a deep dive breathwork journey to support you in feeling and processing your emotions and past woundings.

It is a wonderful way to start building a new relationship with your inner world and explore what is stored in your unconscious.

​Join us here!​

The class is pay what you can. Hope to see you there!

👀 Recommended Resources 👀

📝 Essay

​The Walking Rebellion: Restoring the Mind at Three Miles an Hour​

Walking helps regulate your nervous system, as it downregulates the amygdala.

I personally try to get my 10.000 steps every day, most of them without interacting with my phone.

This is a beautiful essay on walking as a powerful antidote to our digitally saturated lives to help restore our minds, improve our physical health, and strengthen connections with nature, others, and spiritual traditions.

🧬 Science Paper

​Breathwork-Induced Psychedelic Experiences Modulate Neural Dynamics​

This new study shows that conscious connected breathwork can reliably induce psychedelic-like states - marked by bliss, insight, and spiritual experience - and these are mirrored by increased neural complexity in the brain.

Using EEG and real-time tracking of subjective experience, researchers found that longer breathwork sessions made these altered states more likely, with no substances required.

Breath is the medicine (which we knew) - and now the brain data backs it up.

(When you click the link, you will find a summary of the paper)

📰 Article

​My POV on HRV: Is Your Oura Ring Really Disconnecting You From Your Body?​

Does wearable tech increase or decrease disconnection from our bodies?

This essay explores how Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measurements can serve as a valuable tool for understanding our nervous system's state and its impact on our overall health, despite concerns that tracking HRV might disconnect us from our bodies.

Rather than outsourcing our awareness to apps, Doyle argues that HRV data can enhance our interoception - our ability to sense our internal landscape - by providing objective feedback on how stress affects our physiology, especially for those who may be chronically stressed yet unaware of it.

🎙️ Podcast

​Breathe Better, Live Better: Unlocking Therapeutic Breathwork​

Dr. Brems wrote the book Therapeutical Breathwork, which is a great guide for clinicians and people working in healthcare (although a book can never replace in-depth certification training).

In this conversation, she breaks down why most breath cues are misinformed, how resilient breathing works, and why real breathwork must be personalized, subtle, and rooted in function - not hacks.

🧬 Science Paper

​Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being​

As you know, I’m a big fan of smartphone hygiene and limiting my use of digital devices for nervous system and mental health. Maybe this recent research will help you join me:

This 2025 study found that blocking mobile internet access on smartphones for two weeks significantly improved participants' mental health, subjective well-being, and sustained attention.

Notably, the improvement in attention was equivalent to reversing a decade of age-related cognitive decline, and the reduction in depression symptoms surpassed average effects of antidepressants.

These benefits were partly attributed to increased offline activities like face-to-face socializing, exercising, and spending time in nature.

🎙️ Podcast

​Western Therapy Is Failing Us — Here’s Why​

This conversation challenges the dominant mental health paradigm by arguing that traditional therapy and SSRIs often fail the majority of people, fostering dependence and overdiagnosis rather than resilience.

He presents compelling evidence for Conscious Connected Breathwork as a powerful, drug-free alternative that can induce transformative, psychedelic-like healing states and significantly reduce anxiety.

The conversation also critiques “therapy culture,” diagnosis inflation, and society’s growing tendency to pathologize normal emotional experiences.

Even though I don’t agree with everything (eg. at times the arguments are a bit too one-dimensional and black/white, especially considering that there are many more therapy modalities than just CBT or talk therapy), I do find this conversation important to have.

🌬️ Breathe With Me Live 🌬️

​Breathwork for Emotional Release + Integration​

Breathwork Alchemy's monthly/bi-monthly powerful signature deep dive session.

Date: Sunday, May 25th 2025
​Time: 6pm CET Berlin / 5pm GMT London / 12pm EST New York
​Where: Online via Zoom

Transformational Breathwork is an active meditation using conscious connected breathing. It is designed to:

• release stress, tension and held emotion
• improve mental clarity & focus
• connect you to your inner wisdom, creativity & awareness
• help repattern your nervous system and mind by completing emotional stress cycles to return back to homeostasis for increased self-regulation

So let's get together to heal, feel and release using the power of the breath.

In order to make these offerings as accessible as possible, I am offering sliding scale pricing for this session, so you can choose how much you can pay based on your financial resources.

🪐 What's Happening in My Universe 🪐

• 🌱 The last few weeks were buuusy and I felt it. So yesterday, my wife and I treated ourselves to a 90-minute massage and a few rounds of sauna + cold baths. After a good night sleep, my body felt restored again. Going to make this part of my regular routine again.
• 🏄 Excited for summer in Portugal and surfing my heart out!
• 🇮🇸 We’re going to Iceland for a week end of June to celebrate my birthday. Any must-sees?
• 👥 I’m thinking about creating a free online community, which would also be the place where my weekly Instagram live practice sessions would move to. I’m interested in creating more of a personal and intimate space rather than anonymous sessions on Insta. What do you think?

I always love hearing from you, just hit reply and say hi and let me know what you enjoyed the most in this week's newsletter edition!

What resonated most? Where are you in your journey?

Keep breathing, keep feeling, stay awesome!

With warmth and care,

Conni. 🐋

PS:

​Breathe with me this Sunday!​

Here is how I can support you further:

→ 🫁 Breathwork + Nervous System Foundations Course​

Learn how to regulate and rewire your nervous system. Access more calm, energy and focus by using the power of the breath. It will teach you how to properly and safely use the remote control (aka your breath) for your nervous system. Get it here. ​

→ 💨 Live Free Breathwork for Nervous System Regulation​

Join me each week for a live 20-minute breathwork and somatic practice focusing on nervous system regulation. 👉 Tuesdays 6pm London / 7pm Berlin / 1pm New York / 10am Los Angeles on my Instagram @breathwork.alchemy​

→ 🎓 12-Month / 500-Hour Intesoma Breathwork Teacher Training (🇩🇪🇨🇭🇦🇹)

If you are passionate about the breath and feel the calling to share it with the world, learn to become a breath coach and nervous system specialist. Applications for our 2024 training are open.

→ 👥 1:1 Inner Work Mentoring​

Heal old wounds, integrate unprocessed traumas and feel stored emotions that may have been holding you back from living the life you truly want. Together, we will get you out of your head and into your body.

--

Conni Biesalski

Nervous System Specialist
Breathwork Facilitator & Meditation Teacher
Somatic Trauma Practitioner (Somatic Experiencing©️ & NARM©️-informed)
Pain Reprocessing Therapist
Attachment and Relationship Coach
Founder Breathwork Alchemy​
Co-Founder Intesoma©️ Breathwork Teacher Training​

“Regulate your nervous system, process your emotions, and come home to your body.”