Breathwork goes with everything: what I brought to Rebel Day
Everything that goes into sharing breathwork with 100 women at an in-person event.
If there’s one phrase about breathwork I find myself uttering time and again it’s this: it goes with everything. What I mean by that is that there isn’t a space or community or moment where breathwork doesn’t fit in.
This point was driven home to me most succinctly when I went to a TEDx Women event in Lausanne a few years back and, out of the ten speakers, all but one or two actively used breathwork or talked about breath as part of their talk. There was the singer who led us in a short breathwork practice and the big wave surfer whose story of courage had breath at its centre – the topics were not even health-related but the breath found its way into pretty much every story that was told. I’ve found it tends to do this so very well because, honestly, the breath is the one thing that’s there with us though it all – the big moments and the little – in life. The breath is the thread holding everything and all of us together.
Most of us don’t even notice this. But, of course, as a breathwork facilitator, I do. And this noticing just how alive the breath is in everything has spurred me on to share breathwork in some fantastic contexts as part of some incredible events. One such example was Rebel Day, an event I was invited to share breathwork at a few months back. Think of this blog post as a case study of not only this event but how the breath amplifies and lifts the energy of basically any event. Yep, a big claim I know, but one I will stand by.
Guiding 100 women in breathwork at Rebel Day, Beaulieu, Lausanne – May 2026
About Rebel Day:
Rebel Day was, as you might expect with a name like that, a bold event. It was an event put on by Natalia Rodriguez and Pia Klaue in Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland. Designed for women over the age of thirty, it was all about inspiring women to stop playing small and unleash their inner badass. The attendees were indeed badass women who were there to listen, learn and be part of conversations around taboo topics that don’t usually get enough airtime: menopause, crypto, finances, sexuality and so on.
Around a hundred women gathered for this day of talks, inspiration, sharing, networking and meeting other like-minded souls. The energy was high from the moment we walked through the doors in the morning for our pre-kick-off coffee and the vibe stayed on point until the evening apero. I was there to share breathwork, yes, but I was also there to soak up all the wisdom of the other women there, which I can safely say I did. I came away feel uplifted, inspired, and with a knowing that women are here to change the world for the better.
How, you might be wondering, does breathwork fit into all this? This is a great question, and one that makes sense to ask. Many of us think that breathwork is just for calming down and relaxing and while, of course, this is true, it can be so much more than that. In the case of Rebel Day, my job was clear: come in for ten minutes after the first two talks of the day and the first coffee break and offer the participants a pause from the intensity of receiving information and the “performing” that a day like this asks of us. The organisers already knew my work well and trusted me to fill those ten minutes with whatever I liked, but I was determined to make them special.
The breathwork:
I knew that guiding the participants of Rebel Day in a few rounds of calming breaths and doing some breath awareness wasn’t going to cut it. It’s not that those practices are bad. At all! They are the foundation of breathwork and I’ll share them until I’m blue in the face. But I knew this event needed something a little spicier because the ladies present that day have been around the wellness block. I estimated that most of them would have experience with some sort of breathwork, or at least meditation or yoga, and a sizeable portion would be breathwork fluent already, with perhaps a few breath experts in there too. I needed to offer something that would awaken the sense of ‘oh that was new’. Why? To help these women get out of their heads and into their bodies, even the ones who have done all the breathwork before.
So I made the main event of my ten minute breathwork segment a practice called espresso breaths. After doing a much-needed posture reset, I guided the participants in ten rounds of espresso breaths, which is a double inhale through the nose and a short sigh-like exhale through the mouth. It invigorates, energises and quickly moves your awareness to the breath and body. As this is an activating breath, I included grounding breaths afterwards to bring the nervous system back into balance. And throughout, as I like to do when sharing any breathwork technique, I weaved in words about the themes of the day – self-trust, taking up space, self-empowerment – so it spoke directly to what they were experiencing in the moment.
What goes into planning a breathwork session at an event?
SO much thought and planning went into those ten minutes. As should be the case! Holding space for people to breathe is a privilege that I do not take lightly. Could I stand up in front of a hundred people and guide them in a breathwork without any prep? Sure. But I wanted this to fit the vibe of the event perfectly, so I took the time to do my homework, plan my segment and do everything I needed to make sure the delivery was on point. It’s only as an experienced space holder that I now realise how many of the spaces I’ve been part of over my lifetime have not been held well, or have even been held extremely irresponsibly. And I refuse to add to this problem, so I came PREPARED.
Gauging the vibe
First came chatting with Natu, one of the organisers, to get a good idea of the vibe of the event and what her expectations were of me. Then came a deep dive into all the online content about the event to further solidify my understanding of the energy of the day. The main question driving all my research and prep was: ‘how do I want the participants to feel?’ The words I landed on for this particular event were: empowered and alive. This formed the foundations of every decision that followed in terms of what I shared and how it was delivered. Every word, every cue. All of it.
Responsibly holding space for a hundred people
What made the prep all the more important was the number of people in the room. One hundred humans following my guidance is a whole different thing to holding space for one of even a handful of humans. I can’t track every face as I guide them, I can’t see how everything I’m saying is landing with every single person as I go, so my structure and language have to do the holding. And they have to do it well. A huge part of this is sharing breathwork in a trauma-informed way to make sure I could hold space for a hundred people to breathe in a way that’s responsible and supportive. In practice, this meant things like using invitational language throughout and offering choice and gentler versions of everything I shared.
Creating structure that contains the flow
With a script written down, then came the practice: timing it to the minute, recording myself, correcting the weak spots. There is a lot to be said for just going with the flow and making things up on the spot, but I believe that planning forms the structure which enables this flow to even unfold in the first place. With my prep done, I knew in my bones that I had this. It was not about sticking to the script but knowing where I wanted to take the breathers and why. With all that structure in place, I could step up on that stage and do what I do best: let the words flow, feel into the moment and guide people in breaths in a way that felt grounded and intentional.
Getting in the zone
And there’s something that I cannot not mention here: my own breath. Before stepping up and guiding others, I connected to my breath, checked in with how I was breathing, took some calming breaths. Reminded myself ‘I have got this’. And, honestly, as I took the mic and stepped onto that stage, I genuinely knew in my bones that I did have it. I knew it was going to flow effortlessly. From this place of knowing, it felt fun and freeing and oh so empowering to look out at the sea of incredible women in front of me and start by going off script with the words: ‘so, who here is ready to take some breaths together?’
The result?
Honestly, it was already a win in my books that I had loved every second of sharing breathwork with a hundred women, but the feedback I got was the icing on the cake. As I had predicted, the common thread running through every comment I got was ‘I really loved that espresso breath – I’d never tried that before’. Other comments were some version of ‘oh my goodness I needed that so much’ or ‘wow, I need to do more breathwork’ and I even had one woman seeking advice on how to use breathwork as part of an upcoming public speaking gig she had coming up.
And then came the high, which I rode on for days afterwards, and something that stems from knowing I’d shared something real and something genuinely helpful with a room full of women. When I think of the ripple effect that can create, it’s almost dizzying. There will be the ones who had forgotten the power of their breath and will restart a daily practice. There will be the others who now remember to take one conscious breath before they do something scary. And then there will be some for whom the ten minutes will trigger something bigger, and they may decide to journey further with the breath: do some conscious connected breathwork, join a retreat or even train in breathwork themselves.
But the real point I want to stress here is that the ripple effect doesn’t need to be big or impressive – perhaps it’s just taking that moment to yourself in the car to sigh out the stress of the workday before picking up your kids. Or taking some espresso breaths after sitting at your desk all day. It all counts. It all adds up.
Just add breathwork
This takes me back to the bold claim I made at the beginning: breathwork goes with everything. Honestly, if the breath fits at Rebel Day and TEDx, it can fit just about anywhere – I can’t really think of a context where breathwork wouldn’t work to be honest! Whether it’s a hen party, retreat, conference, team building day, festival or workshop, breathwork can be weaved in to take the vibe up a notch and leave participants with something genuinely useful to take away with them: a reminder of the power of their breath to change their inner world and therefore their outer world.
I think you can tell by now that I love sharing breathwork at events. If you’re putting on an event and want breathwork in it, get in touch for us to have a chat. My USP is that I gauge the woo level and meet the crowd where they are at. I’m not off the charts woo (but can recommend people who are if that’s your vibe) but my work fits well anywhere between a women’s wellness retreat and a room full of corporate bros.
Or, alternatively, if you’re reading all this thinking ‘I want to do this too!’, then you can train to be a breathwork facilitator with me. This is not a weekend-long training or a quick course that will leave you with a smattering of skills and more questions than answers – it’s a life-changing 400-hour breathwork facilitator training that sets you up to step into the role of being a competent and confident breathwork facilitator who is ready to take their magic out into the world.
I’ll leave you with some words from the ladies who organised Rebel Day:
“You were absolutely incredible, as ever! We loved having you on stage and breathing with you at Rebel Day.”
