13/12/2025
I’m not long back from a solo mission to Frankfurt with the express intention of taking part in a breathwork research project. I’m so grateful to 3 weeks ago Kat for taking the plunge and booking the trip, though she was fearful at the time.
I feel shaped by this experience. There is the stirring of something new and exciting. I feel alive. Free. So joyful. Beyond my experience, this was so much more for the breathwork community as a whole.
I participated in a study at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience (eeek! How cool?!) that is setting out to measure how changes in wellbeing, behaviour, and neuronal activity might come about through conscious connected breathwork.
The session was led by the magnificent and two incredible ladies, Etsch and Francesca, who helped me feel at home, explained what we were doing, while competing with one another to get the signals firing through the EEG first.😝
I was wired to an ECG and wore an EEG cap that has +-50 electrodes that measure electric signals from my brain through my scalp. Isn’t that the coolest thing ever? The data (and other data sets) will be analyzed next year, for now, we collected it.🧠💥✨
What unfolded was nothing short of magical. I dropped in fast and deep, there was fear, there was joy. It wasn’t long before I was beckoned out of the shadows by my dad 🕊️ before venturing into a gloriously joyful monkey dance, where we were both monkey versions of ourselves. The metaphors were wild and I’ll share more on that soon.
For now, I am deeply honoured to have taken part. I firmly believe this research will be a cornerstone of insight that we lean on one day. So grateful to the three powerhouses who shared the day with me!🙏🏽❤️
Afterwards, I walked out the institute and continued for hours along streets through suburbs, letting it all filter down. Contributing to this body of work felt huge for me, for that beautiful team, for breathwork as a whole.
Frankfurt, you were a joy. From the Christmas market that felt like Xmas on a dose of psychedelics, to getting hopelessly lost catching wrong trains in wrong directions, to breathing new life into myself and breathwork! Danke! 🙏🏽