Who Is Catching You?

Most breathwork out there right now says the same thing.

Go harder. Breathe faster.

I don't have a problem with it. It works, and some of the people running those sessions are extraordinary. They have trained for years and know exactly how to manage the space. What it is, though, is controlled hyperventilation. You breathe fast enough for long enough that the carbon dioxide levels in your blood drop, and your state of consciousness shifts. That is simply what is happening.

A study published last year followed 61 experienced practitioners and found that the further their CO2 fell, the deeper they went. The states they reached were comparable to a moderate therapeutic dose of psilocybin. Ego dissolution. Mystical experience. That is what you are agreeing to when someone tells you to breathe faster.

Two rooms can both be called "breathwork" and have nothing in common. One is there to settle your system. The other is built to take you somewhere else. On a class schedule, they look identical. You only find out which one you walked into about fifteen minutes in.

But the thing is... Doing a lot of sessions does not mean you can run one.

I understand wanting to. You go feel something and it changes you, and you want to hand that to somebody else. But facilitating is a completely different job. When you are the student, you get to go all the way in. That is the point. When you are the facilitator, you are the one who has to stay out and the one who has to stay present, because you are watching twenty people at once. Nothing about being the student teaches you that.

Someone is going to tell me there is no evidence that people are being hurt in these rooms. That is true. There isn't any. There also isn't any data on how many people get hurt by unqualified yoga teachers, and I have been around long enough to have seen those shoulder injuries first hand. Nobody is counting. This industry expanded rapidly in about five years, and no one is keeping records.

There is also no license for this. No state board, nothing you can look up before you lie down. The most established standard is voluntary, written by a group of breathwork schools in 2003, asking for 400 hours of training over two years. Nobody is required to meet it.

I taught at Breathe Degrees in North County San Diego for four years, in a studio built around fast breathing and cold exposure. I was there when “we” opened the doors and managed the studio for the first 2 years. It was a significant period of my life, and I watched people build real strength, reset, and connect with themselves in ways I still think about. But the message never changed.

Go harder. Do more. You can do hard things. You are strong and resilient. You only grow in your discomfort.

I was good at it. I believed in it. But I have been guiding on my own for over five years now, and I don't teach that way anymore.

RhythmReset® is built on a different premise. We are not going hunting for your wounds or performance. We are updating the baseline you react from, and we do it at your pace. It can be emotional. People have experiences they did not see coming. But it happens because they chose it, not because I drove them there.

I read something recently that named what I had been circling for years. A coach tries to drive you toward a goal, treating the session like a race to the finish line. A guide assumes you already have the tools, walking next to you while you learn to hear yourself again. And I can be that coach. I know how to drive you toward the goal and keep you moving, and there are places where that is exactly what you need. But I am here to guide you.

That is true of the breathwork and it is true of the yoga. I am not setting the goal and I am not measuring you against it. There is nowhere you are supposed to arrive by the end of the hour. The practice on your mat belongs to you. I take what I need and leave the rest, and I ask you to do the same.

So before you book anything, anywhere, and not just with me, ask who they trained under. Ask how long they have been doing this and how many hours they have actually logged. Ask whether anyone watched them work before they were allowed to run a session on their own. And when you get there, look around and see whether they are alone in the building.

Experience is not a feeling and it is not a certificate. It is hours. It is the number of times you have been standing at the front when something you did not expect happened, and it adds up one session at a time. You cannot study your way around it and you cannot rush it. And hours on your own are not the same as hours next to someone. Working deeply with people is not a thing to learn alone. Call it a mentor, a trainer, a teacher, the word does not matter. What matters is that somebody further along was watching, correcting, and there when it got complicated.

So if someone cannot tell you how many hours they have, or who they were working alongside while they got them, that is your answer. And notice whether they tell you what to skip.

I don't take medical histories at the door. But every class, I say out loud that if you are pregnant, or if you have a medical condition and you are unsure, you should speak with your doctor about it first, skip the breath holds or just come another day.

There are real physiological reasons for that. It takes ten seconds to say. Plenty of facilitators still don't do it. Ask me. I will be glad you did.

If you teach, I would like to hear from you. And if you have been in a room that opened something up, good or hard, tell me that too.

A Love Letter to Encinitas

In 2016, we packed up our lives in Chicago and brought our kids out to the ocean air of Encinitas. Ten years prior, we had left Sweden when they were just toddlers. But from the moment we landed in North County, this town became our true California home.

Fast forward to right now: our daughter is back in Sweden studying at university, our son is moving to Canada as we speak to coach hockey, and for now, my husband and I are soaking up every moment in the town that helped raise our family.

Living here for a decade means watching how Encinitas has evolved. We've all felt the shift as skyrocketing commercial rents have made it almost impossible for local mom-and-pop yoga studios to survive. One by one, authentic community spaces get priced out, replaced by corporate chains with mass-produced schedules and scripted teachers.

If we want yoga to stay what it used to be, a genuine, unscripted sharing of the practice, we have to support independent spaces.

That is why choosing a co-op space at Oasis for my own independent classes was a deliberate choice. When you step onto the mat with me, you aren't walking into a corporate gym cycle. You are entering an intimate space built around human connection, continuous breath guidance, and actual rest for your mind.

As my kids launch into their own next chapters, I am so honored to launch this new chapter with the town that welcomed my family a decade ago.

• Come flow with me at Oasis this week:

  • Launch Date: Wednesday, September 2nd

  • Location: Oasis Encinitas

  • Reserve Your Mat.

Never Lose the Breath

We’ve all seen the Reels poking fun at yoga teachers who talk endlessly about their personal lives mid-pose. The comment section tells the whole story: when you step onto your mat, you came to quiet your brain, not to take in someone else's daily commentary.

There is a big difference between talking just to fill the room and providing continuous breath guidance.

My voice is strictly there as an anchor. I believe that your practice is yours and yours alone. We take what we need, and we leave the rest. The only thing I ask from my students is that they breathe.

From start to finish, I cue every single inhale and every single exhale alongside your movement. You don't have to guess when to transition, count your own breath, or manage your tempo. By holding that rhythm out loud, I take the mental load off your shoulders so your brain can finally stop working for an hour.

When you don't have to overthink the movement, your nervous system drops out of stress mode and into real recovery. You leave the room feeling lighter, grounded, and truly rested.

Come flow with me in North County

You can experience this fully-guided style with me throughout the week across North County, including my newest weekly class at Oasis Encinitas, launching Wednesday, September 2nd.

• Oasis Launch: Wednesday, September 2nd

• Location: Oasis Encinitas

• Visit: balancebymalin.com to secure your mat.