What happens in the body before the breath begins?

For most breathwork practitioners, the answer is: nothing structured. The client lies down. The music starts. The facilitator waits. And sometimes — often — the client spends the first twenty minutes of a breathwork session simply trying to arrive in their body, still carrying the tension of the day, the tightness in the chest, the compression in the hips, the grief locked in the rib cage.

What if there was a way to change all of that before the breath even started?

The Wave is a complete somatic bodywork sequence developed from years of professional practice in Tulamassage, bodywork, Indian head massage and breathwork facilitation. It takes ten to fifteen minutes and it changes everything about what is possible in the session that follows.

It is the only methodology of its kind in breathwork training.

Before we enter the breath, we come to the body first.

The session begins with five clearing breaths — a threshold, an invitation to arrive. From there, the work becomes both diagnostic and therapeutic. Using pressure point work applied in a rocking motion across the back of neck, shoulders, heart, hips, solar plexus and thighs, I begin to read the landscape of the body: where tension lives, where armour has gathered, what the body is holding beneath the surface. This mapping informs everything that follows — which affirmations will land, which points to press during the breathwork itself.

Then the alignment sequence. Like peeling an onion, I work through the body layer by layer — holding the head behind the occipital ridge to lengthen and decompress, wobbling each arm and leg to encourage voluntary release. Each limb is an invitation. Permission is asked, not assumed.

Once the body is open and aligned, I bring one hand to the belly and begin to rock — slow, rhythmic, hypnotic. Three fingers rest at the heart centre. I wait here, watching the breath, feeling for the moment the nervous system begins to soften and come online.

Then I come to the rib cage. Right side first, then left. This is one of the most powerful places in the body to work. Be gentle here. Watch what happens to the breath. You will often see it open more fully in this moment than anywhere else.

The thighs hold the balance between masculine and feminine energy. When that balance is off, the pressure points will tell you. This is not intellectual knowledge — it comes through the hands.

Throughout all of this, the rocking never stops. It is the thread beneath every touch — lullaby language that bypasses the thinking mind and speaks directly to the nervous system.

The sequence closes with one hand on the belly, one hand on the heart. Still. Present. Rocking gently to a close.

By the time we enter the breathwork, I know this body. I know where it holds, where it opens, where it needs tenderness. The practice that follows is no longer a general one — it is shaped entirely by what the body has just told me.

This sequence did not come from a single training. It emerged from years of professional practice across multiple disciplines, each one contributing something essential to what The Wave has become.

Breathwork training teaches practitioners how to hold space for the breath. The Wave teaches them how to prepare the body for it — and in doing so, it changes the quality of everything that happens once the breath begins.