Training & Certification Program
Become a Certified Breathwork Facilitator
Learn to guide others by first learning to guide yourself.
”Rua doesn’t just teach breathwork—he wields it like an instrument, tuning the body and voice until they hum with clarity and purpose.”
- Hawah Kasat, Author and Non Profit Founder
My first experience being guided through a breathwork journey was during a time when I wasn’t getting much work as an actor.
It was a deeply transformational experience. Exactly what I needed at that moment, and, to be honest, I didn't love it.
It challenged me by stripping away my distractions and showed me truths I wasn't ready to face.
But it also showed me something else.
That beneath every identity, expectation, and story I'd inherited, there was a quieter voice that had been waiting patiently all along.
From that session forward, my breath became more than just a tool I use to stay alive.
It has become a way of listening to what is true, and what I need next in my life, which back then was to become a certified breathwork facilitator.
That was almost 10 years ago
Fast forward to today. I have taken that practice of breathwork and made it my own. It has taken me all around the world, allowed me to work with +1,000 people from all walks of life, and continues to remind me that transformation isn't something we force.
It's something we allow.
This training is the container I wish existed when I started — one that teaches presence not just technique.
What makes this training unique is the understanding that transformation isn't just created through intensity, peak experiences, the ability to explain breathing mechanics, or having worked with public figures. Transformation is created through deep relationality.
This training doesn't just teach you a technique, give you a certification, and send you out into the wild world of wellness. It develops you into a healing presence. One that will be felt throughout every space you enter moving forward.
Through experiential practice, nervous system education, embodied storytelling, authentic stage presence, and relational leadership, you build the confidence, and discernment to safely guide transformative experiences for others — not by intensifying the practice, but by deepening your capacity to hold it.
My philosophy, plainly:
The world doesn't need more facilitators. It needs more people who know how to create spaces where others can safely remember who they are.
How It Works
What You'll Learn
FOUNDATIONS
The internal ground you stand on before you ever guide someone else.
-
Nervous System Regulation & Co-Regulation
-
Understand the autonomic nervous system — sympathetic activation, parasympathetic rest, and the freeze response — well enough to recognize it in real time, in your own body and in someone else's. Learn co-regulation: how your own regulated presence becomes the anchor a dysregulated nervous system borrows from before it can find its own ground again.
-
-
Breath Physiology & Emotional Response
-
Learn how different breathing patterns — rate, depth, ratio of inhale to exhale, breath holds — produce distinct physiological and emotional effects. Understand why certain patterns open catharsis and others create calm, so you're choosing a technique deliberately rather than by habit.
-
-
Titration, Pacing & Containment
-
Titration is the practice of releasing intensity in doses the nervous system can actually metabolize, rather than flooding it all at once. Learn to read when to slow a session down, when a body needs a pause before going further, and how to build a container sturdy enough to hold whatever arises inside it.
-
-
Trauma-Aware Facilitation Principles
-
Learn the core principles of trauma-informed practice: how trauma lives in the body, not just the story; why re-traumatization is a real risk in altered states; and how to facilitate in a way that restores a person's sense of choice and safety rather than overriding it.
-
FACILITATION
The moment-to-moment skill of holding a session while it's actually happening.
-
Tracking Breath, Sensation & Affect
-
Develop the observational skill of tracking three channels at once — the breath itself, visible somatic sensation (tremor, tension, stillness), and affect (the emotional tone moving through someone's face and body) — so you can respond to what's actually happening rather than what you expect to see.
-
-
Recognizing Overwhelm vs. Activation
-
Learn to distinguish healthy activation (a nervous system doing exactly what it needs to do to process and release) from genuine overwhelm (a system that has exceeded its capacity and needs support, not more intensity). This distinction is one of the most important safety skills a facilitator can develop.
-
-
Working with Resistance & Shutdown
-
Learn to recognize resistance and shutdown as intelligent, protective responses — not failures of the process — and how to work skillfully with them: when to gently invite someone back in, and when to simply stay present and let the shutdown complete on its own timeline.
-
-
Group Field Awareness
-
Develop the capacity to track an entire room at once — sensing the collective energy of a group alongside each individual within it — so you can facilitate a shared experience without losing sight of any one person inside it.
-
ETHICS
The responsibility that comes with being trusted in someone's most vulnerable moments.
-
Consent & Boundaries
-
Learn to establish clear, ongoing, revocable consent — not a single yes at the start of a session, but an active practice of checking in, offering choice, and honoring a person's right to change their mind at any point, especially inside an altered state where saying "no" can feel harder than usual.
-
-
Facilitator Self-Regulation & Protection
-
Learn to recognize and manage your own activation as a facilitator — vicarious stress, emotional residue from witnessing others' releases, and the discipline of staying regulated yourself so you can remain a stable presence for someone else.
-
-
Power Dynamics in Altered States
-
Understand the real power differential that exists between facilitator and participant in non-ordinary states, where trust and suggestibility are heightened. Learn to hold that power with humility and to actively guard against its misuse.
-
-
Preparation, Integration & Aftercare
-
Learn how to properly prepare someone before a session, and — just as important — how to support integration and aftercare afterward, so a breakthrough doesn't stay locked inside the session but has a real chance of becoming lasting change in someone's daily life.
-
LEADERSHIP
Becoming the kind of presence people trust with their most vulnerable moments.
-
Developing Your Facilitation Presence
-
Cultivate the quality of presence itself — steady, attuned, unhurried — that participants feel before you've said a single word. This is less a technique to learn than a capacity to develop through practice, reflection, and honest feedback.
-
-
Learning to Trust Your Internal Signals
-
Develop the discernment to notice your own intuitive read of a session — a gut sense that something needs to shift — and learn to trust it as real facilitation data, not something to second-guess into silence.
-
-
Discerning When *Not* to Intervene
-
Perhaps the most advanced skill in this training: learning that the most powerful facilitation move is often restraint — knowing when a person needs to move through something entirely on their own, and having the discipline to stay present without stepping in.
-
THE PROGRAM
**Seven-Week Virtual Certification**
Sundays, 11:30am EST · October 4 – November 15, 2026
- Weekly 2.5-hour live sessions
- Experiential breathwork practices
- Teaching + integration each session
- Practice facilitation, in and outside class
- Feedback and reflection
- Assigned reading and embodiment practices
**A Note on This Cohort:** This is the inaugural training — the first time this container has been offered in this form. That means a smaller, more intimate group of only 12 participants. This will give you more direct access to me throughout the seven weeks, and the chance to help shape what this training becomes for everyone who comes after you.
Certification Requirements
-
Attend all sessions live, or keep up via recordings
-
Complete practice facilitation hours
-
Demonstrate embodied presence and ethical awareness
-
Create and facilitate your own breathwork practice
-
Present a journey log of your training experience
Upon Completion You'll Be Able To...
-
Guide private breathwork sessions
-
Facilitate couples and groups
-
Integrate breathwork into your existing practice
-
Lead with greater confidence and presence
-
Understand ethical scope and responsible facilitation
This Training Is For
- Coaches
- Therapists
- Yoga teachers
- Leaders
- Facilitators
- Parents
- Healthcare professionals
- Creatives
- Anyone called to guide others through meaningful transformation
Although it helps, you don't need prior experience. You can simply be someone who wants a deeper relationship with their own breath — and to help others find theirs.
Contraindications
Breathwork can produce intense physical, emotional, and mental release. If you have a history of cardiovascular disease, including angina or heart attack, high blood pressure, glaucoma, retinal detachment, osteoporosis, significant recent physical injuries or surgery, you will need to consult your physician before practicing breathwork.
Breathwork is not recommended for people with severe mental illness, panic and/or seizure disorders or for those using high doses of prescription medications. It is also unsuitable for anyone with a personal or family history of aneurysms.
Pregnant women are advised against practicing Breathwork without first consulting and getting approval from their primary care physician. Persons with asthma should have their inhaler handy and consult with their primary care physician and the Breathwork class facilitator prior to the journey.
Why Learn Breath-work Facilitation?
1. Regulate the nervous system — one of the fastest ways to calm the body, reduce stress, and create emotional balance
2. Meet a growing demand — as interest in mental wellness rises, skilled facilitators are needed across communities, businesses, and retreats
3. Support high performance — help leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals build resilience and navigate pressure with more ease
4. Create lasting transformation — embodied experience that leads to real emotional breakthroughs, not just mindset shifts
5. Build a flexible, impactful career — facilitate from anywhere, minimal overhead, private clients / groups / retreats / online
"Rua has been a thought partner who showed up to Journeymen as a friend, colleague, experienced facilitator and dedicated collaborator.The work we are doing in these new cultural spaces is often in need of people who are willing to experiment, learn, teach and transform all at the same time, and Rua has been one of those people that helped us do all those things at once."
— Josh Cogan, Founder of JourneyMen
* As a part of this founding cohort you would be among the very first to experience this work in a deep and intentionally designed container by someone who has already walked 1,000+ people through this work personally over the last ten years.
"I've been very grateful to know Rua for more than seven years, and his presence in my life has significantly changed mine for the better. I was (and have continued to be) struck by his intentionality, deep emotional maturity, and understanding of those around him. Rua is a bright and healing light in this world, and he shines that light towards everyone that he comes into contact with."
— Brian Pater, Actor