You’re Not Breaking Down — You’re Breaking Open: Why Breathwork Makes You Cry

When Breathwork Opens the Heart

You’ve heard the stories — how breathwork can leave you feeling light, expansive, and deeply at peace.
So you show up for your first session, curious and open, ready to meet your breath in a new way.

But somewhere between the rise and fall of your chest, something unexpected happens.
Your throat tightens. Your breath catches.
And before you know it, tears are streaming down your face.

You weren’t expecting to cry.

Maybe you thought this was about stress release or clarity — not being undone by a wave of emotion you didn’t even know was waiting.
But that’s the quiet miracle of breathwork: it bypasses the mind and speaks directly to the body.

If you’ve ever wondered, “Why do I cry during breathwork?”, you’re not alone.
Let’s explore what’s happening beneath the surface — both scientifically and soulfully.

The Nervous System: Where Breath Meets Emotion

Your breath is the remote control for your nervous system. Every inhale and exhale sends messages through your vagus nerve — the body’s communication bridge between brain and organs.

When you breathe deeply and intentionally, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system — the body’s “rest, digest, and restore” mode. This calms the stress response and brings you back into physiological balance.

And when the body finally feels safe, the emotions that were once suppressed for survival begin to surface.

Scientific studies show that breathwork increases respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) — a marker of healthy nervous system regulation.
This shift helps your body process what was once too overwhelming to feel.

So when you cry during breathwork, it’s not weakness. It’s your body saying, “I’m safe now. You can feel this.”

How Emotions Get Stored in the Body

From a young age, many of us learn to suppress our tears and “stay strong.”
But unexpressed emotions don’t disappear — they find a home in the body.

These un-felt feelings become tension in the muscles, tightness in the breath, and a nervous system that stays partially in “survival mode.”
Somatic therapy research confirms that emotions and trauma can be held in the body’s tissues and expressed as physical symptoms or chronic stress.

Breathwork helps to reopen that door.
Each conscious breath begins to soften the body’s protective layers, allowing energy to move and emotions to finally complete their natural cycle.

The tears that flow are not breakdowns — they are breakthroughs.

The Healing Science of Tears

Crying is the body’s built-in release mechanism.
Modern science shows that tears are not only emotional but deeply physiological.

• Tears release stress hormones: Emotional tears contain cortisol and ACTH — hormones linked to stress regulation. Crying literally helps the body detoxify tension.

• Crying activates the parasympathetic system: After a good cry, your breath deepens and your heartbeat slows — signaling the body’s return to calm.

• Tears release oxytocin and endorphins: These natural “feel-good” chemicals ease pain and create a sense of relief and connection.

• Crying restores emotional balance: Tears help regulate the connection between the emotional brain and the body, improving overall wellbeing.

When you cry during breathwork, your body isn’t betraying you — it’s resetting you.

Somatic Breathwork: The Bridge Between Body and Breath

Somatic breathwork is a deeply embodied practice that links the body and breath — the physical and the emotional, the conscious and the subconscious.
It was created as a way to release stored emotions, energy, past hurts, and trauma from the body — and that’s why it’s so profoundly transformative.

As James Nestor writes in Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art:

“Breathing is a missing pillar of health. It touches every aspect of our physiology and can either restore balance or destroy it, depending on how it’s used.”

Through intentional, connected breathing, we recalibrate the body’s natural rhythms, create safety within the nervous system, and open pathways for emotional release and healing.

And as Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score:

“The body keeps the score: If trauma is encoded in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations, then our first priority is to help people move out of fight-or-flight states and reorganize their perception of danger.”

Somatic breathwork does exactly this — it helps you move out of protection and back into connection, out of numbness and into aliveness.

My Experience: Grief, Breath, and Being Human

I’ve cried more times than I can count during breathwork.
One of the most profound experiences came after learning that a close relative had passed away.

In that session, my breath became both my anchor and my guide. Each inhale carried the ache of loss; each exhale softened my resistance.
The tears that came weren’t just for that moment — they were for years of unexpressed grief.

Breathwork allowed me to feel the depth of my sadness — a depth I may never have reached on my own.
And in that space, I found something sacred: not just sorrow, but release. Not just pain, but presence.

A Sacred Space to Be Seen and Felt

In our 1:1 Somatic Breathwork Sessions, you’re invited into a sacred, compassionate space — one where you can be truly seen, heard, and witnessed.
Here, you are free to breathe, cry, and feel — without judgment, expectation, or shame.

We also integrate somatic breathwork into our 1:1 Somatic Psychotherapy Sessions — using the breath as a bridge between the mind and body, helping you process, integrate, and release what has been held inside.

Because healing doesn’t come from avoiding what we feel.
It comes from feeling it fully.

We don’t heal by thinking our way out.
We heal by breathing our way through.

The Truth About Tears

There is no shame in crying.
There is no weakness in feeling.
Your tears are sacred messengers of truth.

As Charlotte Brontë wrote:

“Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”

So when your breath leads you to tears, trust that your body knows exactly what it’s doing.
You’re not breaking down — you’re breaking open.
And through that opening, life begins to move again.

Book Your Session

If this speaks to you, I invite you into a 1:1 Somatic Breathwork Session or Somatic Psychotherapy Session at The Soul Work Space.

Together, we’ll create a space where you can release, feel, and return home to your body — without judgment, without rushing, and with full permission to be human.

Your breath is the bridge. Your tears are the truth. Let’s walk that path together.