Breathing With the Season: Where My Pagan Path Met Breathwork
This started life on my own blog, written for the women I work with. I’m sharing it here because Sharyn invited me to write about what I know best, and what I know best is how I ended up putting breath and the turning seasons into the same practice. I’ve followed a Pagan path since the 1990s and trained as a breathwork coach much later. It’s Samhain season as I write, which seems as good a time as any to explain how the two fit together.
Say “Pagan breathwork” out loud, and people tend to react in one of two ways. Some lean in. Others brace for robes, chanting, and a long list of things they’ll be expected to believe.
I understand both. I’ve followed a Pagan path since the 1990s, and I still wince at that second picture, mostly because I do own the candles.
So let me say what it isn’t. It isn’t a technique with a trademarked name. It isn’t a religion you have to join. And it doesn’t ask you to park your logic or your healthy scepticism at the door. (I’m sceptical of fads myself. Deeply.)
What it is: breathwork practised with an awareness of the season you’re actually standing in.
What I got wrong
My Pagan path began in Wicca and witchcraft. For years, the seasons, the myths and stories of the gods and goddesses, and our pathworkings were the spine of my life. Then my coven gradually dispersed, and I drifted. Modern life filled the gap. Working first for a high street building society and then in Church of England primary schools meant keeping that part of me out of sight, and anything you hide for long enough starts to feel like something you used to be.
When I trained as a breathwork coach, I assumed it would be a separate thing, rooted in science and medicine, with no room for the rest of me. I was wrong. Breath turned out to be the way back in. No coven, no ritual space, nothing to set up: just my body, in a season, noticing. When the two met, something shifted that neither had managed on its own.
What the traditions say, and what I can’t
Many traditions have treated breath as more than oxygen. The Hindu tradition has pranayama. The ancient Greeks had pneuma. Plenty of Indigenous traditions treat breath as a bridge between the body and something larger.
I’d love to tell you what the Celtic peoples of these islands did with breath, but I can’t. Very little survives in writing, and I’d rather say so than invent it. What I can say is that the same idea keeps turning up: breath as a way of tuning in, not tuning out.
Modern physiology offers a plainer account of the same territory. Slow, conscious breathing can shift us between states, from sympathetic activation (the “tiger in the bushes” stress response) towards parasympathetic rest. Different language, same ground.
Why the season matters
Our bodies aren’t machines that run identically in January and July. For the women I work with, shifting hormones mean today can differ from yesterday, and tomorrow from both. I love that uniqueness, and I invite my clients to embrace it too.
In my own practice, breath works best when it follows the season. In the darker months, Samhain through to Yule on the Wheel of the Year, I lean inward. The breath gets slower, with longer exhales, and the focus is on rest and release. Around Beltane and Litha, the energy turns outward, and the breath can be brighter and more activating. It’s Samhain as I write this, so I’m in the first of those.
These days, I ask one question before I choose a technique: what season is it, outside and in me? What worked last month may not work this month. That isn’t failure. It’s just the season.
A practice for this week
This takes about two minutes and works whatever the season.
Go outside if you can, or sit by an open window. Even a few seconds of real air and natural light counts.
Place a hand on your tummy. Breathe in through your nose for a count of four, feeling your tummy rise. Pause for a count of two (in my training, this is called suspension, the pause after the inhale). Then, breathe out slowly for a count of six. A longer out-breath is what tends to nudge the body towards rest.
Do five rounds. If the pause doesn’t feel comfortable, leave it out. The counts are starting points, not rules. If you feel dizzy, stop and breathe normally.
Then just notice. What season are you in? What’s the light doing? What does the air smell like?
You don’t have to call yourself a Pagan
Plenty of people who find their way to this don’t use the word. You might be spiritual but not religious, earth-connected, or simply curious about seasonal living. None of that matters. What matters is whether the practice resonates.
If breathing with an awareness of natural cycles appeals to you, you’re welcome here.
Your breath has been waiting patiently for you to remember it matters. Maybe it’s time to listen. 💜
