How Breathwork Changed My Life

"I want to feel like this more often: whole, healed, at home within myself."

Externally successful...

I spent the majority of my life striving for success. I graduated from a Bavarian high school with the highest honors. Immediately afterward, I studied political science and psychology at universities in Germany and Scotland. During my studies, I was supported by the German National Academic Foundation and received a scholarship from the Bavarian Max Weber Program. I completed internships at the EU Parliament in Brussels and at the Austrian Embassy in Cairo, worked successfully as a tutor and research assistant, and received widespread praise and recognition for my outstanding achievements. I also completed my studies with a 1.0 grade point average. Afterward, I took positions at three renowned German research institutes and universities. My research and academic work took me to Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, Nigeria, the USA, and Canada. It looked like I was on my way to a professorship, and according to many colleagues, I had promising prospects for success.

... internally overwhelmed and exhausted.

Everything else seemed pretty: I had a nice apartment in Berlin, close friends, a wide network of acquaintances, traveled a lot, was active in sports, worked hard, and allowed myself to indulge in extensive partying (just like everyone in Berlin, in academia). Yet, at the same time, I had to exert myself so incredibly hard to maintain all of this. Especially while writing my PhD thesis, I became increasingly exhausted and felt like I could only hold this life—and myself—together with great effort. My partnership and sexuality were marked by many disappointments, I had frequent and often intense conflicts with my parents, and I found my work increasingly meaningless. I was often sick and drained, and alcohol became a key—and regular—coping strategy. What began with exhaustion and tension only intensified; external—seemingly random—events led to even greater overwhelm and triggered old unprocessed trauma, leaving me feeling like I urgently needed to do something...

On new paths

"Breathwork and shamanism opened doors for me that I didn’t even know could exist."

In that moment of crisis, I experienced breathwork for the first time. What an experience! Never before in my life had I felt so whole and complete. It was as if much of the baggage I had been carrying with me had been washed away with my breath. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt completely at home within myself. What I experienced is hard to put into words. It was an absolutely fantastic and fascinating experience. And I wondered: how could I not have known about this? Why had no one told me that there are such simple techniques that can make you feel this good? Why do my many friends and colleagues, who also suffer from stress in academia and struggle with mental health issues during their PhD, know nothing about this?

Guiding Star: Feeling Completely at Home"

And indeed, from that moment on, the experience I had with Breathwork became my guiding star: this is how I wanted to feel more often. I began to reshape my life around it. I started asking myself: does what I am doing right now bring me closer to this experience of wholeness?

The most immediate change was that I gave mindfulness practices a fixed place in my life. I began meditating regularly and stopped overloading my days with appointments. I also started exploring spiritual topics for the first time. Staying true to my academic background, this meant I initially stocked up on books about mindfulness, Kundalini, shamanism, self-love, inner child work, etc. But perhaps the most important aspect was that I began questioning patterns and beliefs that had previously been taken for granted. Suddenly, I was confronted with entirely new ideas and concepts about life's big topics, like relationships, purpose, and sexuality. And this offered me an opportunity to rethink my past experiences, become aware of my existing thought and behavior patterns, and examine them.

Freer from burdens, free to be.

From then on, things developed quite rapidly and yet very organically for me: I joined a trip to Mexico that introduced me to new teachers; I met my current partner, Luis de la Cruz, and moved to Mexico with him; I began training in shamanism and became a certified Clarity Breathworker, and started orienting myself in my daily life according to Toltec principles… And indeed, I feel much better and more fulfilled today than I did just a few years ago. I am much freer from old burdens and experience a lot of inner peace, joy, and connection in my daily life. I am more clearly aligned and follow my own path more, rather than trying to meet demands that I unconsciously picked up during my upbringing. In both my work and personal life, I can see how this is inspiring others to shape their lives more freely and give themselves more space to just be.