Breathwork Breaks the Loop: WHY Trauma Gets Stuck
Emotional Release During Breathwork: What’s Really Happening in the Brain and Body
Why do people cry, shake, laugh, or suddenly remember long-forgotten moments during breathwork?
It’s not just a “spiritual” experience. There’s a clear neurophysiological mechanism at work—one rooted in how your brain processes emotion, memory, and safety.
Let’s break it down.
The Science Behind Emotional Release (Revised)
During intense breathwork, your breathing pattern begins to shift. You take in more oxygen (O₂) and release more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than usual, which induces a temporary state called respiratory alkalosis - a rise in blood pH levels that significantly alters how your brain functions. This state disrupts the usual balance between your cognitive and emotional processing centres.
As CO₂ levels drop, blood vessels in the brain constrict slightly, which reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex ,the region responsible for logic, control, and self-monitoring. When this “executive” function quiets down, suppressed emotional material, normally kept in check by rational inhibition, has space to surface.
This doesn’t mean the emotional brain takes over, but rather that deeper layers of emotional and sensory processing become more accessible. This includes areas of the limbic system, such as the amygdala and hippocampus, where emotional memory, threat response, and stored stress are held.
That’s when things start to move.
You may cry, shake, laugh, feel sudden waves of anger, or see images and memories. It’s not random. It’s your nervous system seizing the opportunity to finally express what was once pushed down.
At the same time, your autonomic nervous system is being actively engaged. Through rhythmic breathing and immersive sound, breathwork stimulates a dynamic oscillation between:
the sympathetic state (associated with mobilisation, catharsis, release), and
the parasympathetic state (restoration, calm, and integration).
This is where the vagus nerve plays a central role.
The Vagus Nerve and Vagal Tone
The vagus nerve is the main communication channel of your parasympathetic nervous system. It runs from the brainstem all the way down through the chest and gut, influencing heart rate, digestion, emotional state, and immune response.
When you exhale slowly, hum, sigh, or breathe rhythmically (as in breathwork), you stimulate this nerve. The stronger your vagal tone, the more resilient and flexible your nervous system becomes. Higher vagal tone means you can shift more easily between stress and relaxation, activation and recovery.
In fact, people with higher vagal tone:
recover faster from emotional triggers
feel safer in their bodies
are more socially connected and empathetic
and even experience less inflammation at a cellular level
But modern life, especially chronic stress, weakens vagal tone. Many people live in a near-constant state of low-grade sympathetic activation (fight, flight, freeze), with little access to true relaxation.
Breathwork retrains this system. It gives the vagus nerve a workout, helping restore that balance between doing and being, between emotional activation and calm integration.
This is why people often report feeling lighter, safer, and more connected after a breath session - it’s not just emotional. It’s neurological training.
The Limbic System and Emotional Access
The limbic system, composed of structures such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus, plays a central role in emotional processing, memory encoding, and the regulation of stress responses.
During breathwork, when CO₂ levels drop and prefrontal cortex activity is reduced, top-down cortical inhibition is also decreased. This doesn’t mean the emotional brain “takes over,” but rather that previously suppressed emotional and sensory content becomes more accessible. With the regulatory functions of the prefrontal cortex dialed down, subcortical regions, especially those involved in affective memory and implicit emotional learning, are able to express themselves more freely.
As a result, participants may experience tears, laughter, tremors, spontaneous imagery, or emotional surges. These responses are not random. They are the nervous system’s way of releasing unresolved affective material that was stored during times of stress or trauma, especially when the original survival response was interrupted or inhibited.
Meanwhile, the rhythmic nature of breathwork, paired with music and guided cues, again, stimulates both sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. This oscillation helps mobilise energy for expression and then supports reintegration and calm. It’s through this dynamic interplay that the body begins to resolve incomplete autonomic patterns and move toward homeostasis.
Hemispheric Balance and Emotional Processing
Intense breathwork may also influence the brain’s hemispheric dynamics. Under typical waking conditions, the left hemisphere, responsible for language, analysis, and logical reasoning tends to dominate conscious experience. However, during altered physiological states induced by breathwork, such as respiratory alkalosis and reduced prefrontal cortical activity, this dominance can diminish.
As the analytical left hemisphere quiets, the right hemisphere, which governs emotional perception, bodily awareness, spatial processing, and nonverbal memory, becomes more engaged. This shift supports the emergence of emotional, intuitive, and somatic content that is often less accessible in a purely rational state.
In this way, breathwork promotes a more integrated brain state, allowing participants to experience their inner world in a multisensory, emotionally nuanced way - often with new insights and a deeper sense of embodiment.
Memory Reconsolidation and Integration
One of the most powerful aspects of breathwork is what’s called memory reconsolidation.
When emotional memories resurface in a safe, conscious state, supported by breath, music, and guidance, the brain gets a chance to reprocess them. You’re no longer in survival mode. The emotion can be felt fully, but from a place of safety. This is what allows the nervous system to rewire its patterns and release trauma at its roots.
You’re not just “feeling your feelings” - you’re teaching your body and brain a new way to relate to the past.
During this phase, your body naturally produces endorphins, oxytocin, and serotonin - chemicals that foster trust, openness, connection, and healing. These neurochemical shifts reinforce the transformation, helping you feel softer, safer, and more integrated after a powerful release.
But emotional understanding alone isn’t enough.
True integration requires that the body also completes the process.
Trauma isn’t just cognitive, it’s somatic, stored in muscle tone, breath patterns, and the subtle signals of the nervous system. This is why people may shake, cry, or release sound during breathwork. These aren’t random reactions; they’re the body’s way of discharging trapped survival energy and closing the loop that was left open during the original trauma.
Which leads us to the next stage of healing:
Completing the Stress Response Cycle
To understand why breathwork is such a powerful healing tool, it helps to first understand how trauma operates within the nervous system.
Trauma is not just the event itself. It’s what happens when the body initiates a survival response - such as fight, flight, or freeze, but is unable to complete it. Incomplete defensive responses become “stuck” in the autonomic nervous system, particularly in the sympathetic branch, which governs high-alert, mobilised states. The result is a state of chronic autonomic dysregulation, where the body remains primed for danger, even in the absence of actual threat.
This is known as an incomplete stress response or unresolved procedural memory, a physiological imprint of the trauma that persists beneath conscious awareness.
In the animal kingdom, this cycle is easy to observe. For instance, when a deer escapes a predator, it often shakes uncontrollably once it’s safe. This trembling is a form of somatic discharge: a full-body release of adrenaline, motor tension, and stress hormones like cortisol. It allows the animal to return to baseline, re-establishing nervous system homeostasis.
Humans, however, often override or suppress these natural responses, because the environment isn’t safe, or because social conditioning encourages us to “hold it together.” When we freeze, dissociate, or suppress action, the body doesn’t forget. It retains the uncompleted survival energy as neuromuscular tension, altered breath patterns, and heightened reactivity, often for years.
Breathwork offers a way to resolve these incomplete stress cycles. It bypasses the cortical, thinking brain and gives the body space to re-engage with those suppressed physiological responses. Shaking, tears, vocal release, even stillness, these are not signs of breakdown. They are somatic expressions of resolution, marking the body’s attempt to restore autonomic balance and re-integrate the memory under new, safer conditions.
This isn’t just emotional catharsis. It’s neurobiological completion.
To SUM UP: Why This Matters for Facilitators
If you guide breathwork sessions, understanding the mechanism behind emotional release isn’t optional, it’s essential.
This isn’t just about catharsis. It’s about real, measurable neurophysiological change.
Breathwork alters blood gases, particularly CO₂, reducing prefrontal cortical activity and loosening top-down cognitive control. This allows the limbic system to express stored emotional content. Through breath, sound, and body-led release, participants access and resolve material that traditional cognitive methods may not reach.
At the same time, the oscillation between sympathetic and parasympathetic states helps complete old stress responses, while neurochemicals like endorphins, oxytocin, and serotonin support integration and healing.
However, it’s important to note that emotional release is not always resolution. Without proper support, intense release can overwhelm the system, especially for individuals with complex trauma or limited emotional resources. In these cases, release without regulation can lead to further dysregulation rather than integration.
This is why pacing, safety, and co-regulation are so critical. The presence of a skilled, trauma-informed facilitator makes all the difference, someone who understands when to guide deeper, when to slow down, and how to create a container of psychological safety.
Because true healing doesn’t come from intensity alone.
It comes from completion, containment, and integration.