From Overthinking to Inner Peace: My Journey Through Breath and Yoga

This is the 4th article in my series:

“7 Unexpected Ways Yoga Transformed My Life (and Helped Me Find My Why)”

If the previous episode was about slowing down, escaping the productivity spiral, and making peace with rest…

This one dives deeper — into the body, the breath, and the nervous system.

For a long time, I didn’t know what it meant to feel “calm on the inside.”

My mind was constantly spinning, my jaw was tense, and my breath unconscious...

I had tried meditation techniques, but they never really worked for me back then…

Then, slowly, something shifted.

This chapter is about that shift.

That moment when the breath became a refuge. When I realized that emotional regulation begins in the body — and especially with the breath.

Honestly… I sometimes wonder how I even managed to live before, without conscious breathing 😅

🧠 A Racing Mind

I’ve always had a sharp mind. Curious. Hyperactive.

I can replay entire conversations in my head. I anticipate. I analyze. I imagine every possible scenario — and their alternatives.

And sometimes, it completely drains me.

My brain runs like a hamster wheel. On loop. No pause. No “off” switch.

I always knew it was a problem… but… how do you stop the hamster in your head?

So, I just lived with it.

In the previous article, I wrote about that constant pressure to “do more, faster, better.”

This overheated mind? It was the other side of the same coin.

To cope… I escaped reality: overworking to avoid thinking, exercising to clear my head, or endlessly scrolling through social media to numb my brain (or let’s be honest, to fry it). You know the drill.

And let’s be real — society does everything it can to keep us disconnected.

You, me — we live in a world built to keep us distracted.

📱 Notifications, social media, emails, ads…

🎧 Double-speed podcasts, endless short videos, constant multitasking.

Everything is designed to grab our attention — hold it — then sell it.

📉 The average human attention span dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds in 2015… that’s one second less than a goldfish.

And no — we’re not great at multitasking, not millennials, not Gen Z. That’s a myth.

The human brain is not wired to focus on two things at once. What it actually does is called “task switching” — bouncing from one thing to another while losing focus with each jump.

The result? Mental fatigue, low-grade stress…

And a growing inability to just be with ourselves.

The article “Social Atrophy: Anatomy of a Mass Manipulation” brilliantly explores how our attention has become a commodity — and how this distraction-based society deepens our inner void.

But I didn’t know all that back then.

I didn’t even realize I was tired. I just knew I was a little addicted to social media (…which I justified by saying I worked in digital marketing and needed it for outreach). Sometimes I’d uninstall Instagram or LinkedIn just to take a break…

…then reinstall them a week later, and the endless scroll would begin again.

I knew I needed to change something… but what, exactly?

🌿 Nature as My First Inner Breath

Before I ever rolled out a yoga mat, it was nature that reached out to me.

When we arrived in Lanzarote — after months of exhaustion, instability, moving around, and professional doubts — I should have felt relieved. We had finally found a place to settle. Somewhere calm, beautiful, full of light.

But inside, something felt… disconnected.

I remember one very specific moment: sitting on our terrace, a fork in my hand.

And then this strange thought crossed my mind:

“This isn’t my hand. This isn’t my body.”

I saw my fingers moving… but I didn’t really feel them.

It was as if my body was acting on its own.

As if I was outside of myself.

It was disorienting.

When I told my partner, he reassured me. He said it sounded like an episode of derealization or depersonalization — states where the world feels unreal, or you feel detached from your own body.

I looked it up. I learned these are common responses to chronic stress: survival mechanisms that kick in when the nervous system is overwhelmed.

According to the Mayo Clinic, these states aren’t dangerous per se — but they signal a deep need for safety.

And looking back, that’s exactly what I was experiencing.

I had moved from survival mode into a peaceful environment…

But my inner system hadn’t caught up. My body still thought it was in danger.

The external silence only amplified the inner chaos.

🎨 A Spark, a Moment, a Newsletter

It was around that time that we visited the Teguise market — the big Sunday event on the island.

One small stall caught my eye: a woman was painting delicate watercolor birds, with touches of gold leaf.

The moment I saw her work, something opened inside me.

I looked at my partner and said:

“What if I started drawing birds too?”

I’ve always loved nature and drawing — and suddenly it made perfect sense: observing birds, sketching them, learning to recognize them… It was a way to anchor my gaze, to nourish my attention, to reconnect with my passions.

To be here, fully. And to share that with others.

That’s how Berthelot was born — my bi-monthly newsletter where I illustrate a bird, tell its story, and share a moment of living beauty.

👉 Discover Berthelot here (and feel free to subscribe if your heart feels called)

What’s funny is… I had no idea that this simple idea — a newsletter — would become the first step on my path toward mindful awareness. 😇

🕊️ Watching a Bird Is Already a Form of Meditation

We know it instinctively: nature makes us feel better.

But birds have this unique gift — they bring us back to the here and now.

Listening to their songs, watching them hop from branch to branch, peck at the ground, or flutter in a puddle… It’s enough to spark wonder — if our attention is present.

And science agrees:

🔬 A study published in PNAS found that natural sounds — especially birdsong — reduce stress and anxiety, and significantly improve mood.🌱 Another study published in Scientific Reports showed that simply being surrounded by birds strongly correlates with higher psychological well-being.

Since 2018, UK doctors have been prescribing nature walks to combat anxiety.

In Japan, forest bathing has been practiced for decades.

And more recently, a new practice has emerged: ornitherapy — or birdwatching as therapeutic care.

👉 I even dedicated an article to it in Berthelot, if you’d like to dive deeper 🪶

“Unplugging from tech and reconnecting with nature should be a medical prescription.”

Couldn’t agree more with this quote from Cyril Dion (a French environmental activist, filmmaker, and author, known for co-directing the documentary Tomorrow and advocating for ecological transition through art and civic engagement.)

🧘‍♀️ Breathing to Come Back to Myself

It was only through yoga that I discovered a breath-taking truth (yes, pun absolutely intended 😉):

👉 The way you breathe shapes the way you live.

Before that, my breath was choppy, uncontrolled.

I thought it was just “my way of being.”

But in reality, it was a constant tension I had stopped noticing.

I learned to observe my breath, to lengthen it, to let it flow through me without trying to control it.

And something shifted.

Breath is the only part of the autonomic nervous system we can consciously influence.By changing it, we can shift our internal state.

You can’t just “lower your heart rate” or “turn off stress” through sheer willpower.

But you can breathe differently.

And that changes everything.

💨 Rethinking Meditation (and Ditching the Clichés)

For a long time, I thought meditation was boring.

I had tried apps like Petit Bambou or Calm in the past, but I never managed to stick with them.

I didn’t feel any real shift inside. It all seemed too external, too generic…

As if it didn’t touch the places that truly needed healing.

Then, as I started exploring aspects of yoga beyond the physical postures on the mat, I realized something:

There are as many ways to meditate as there are people.

You can meditate on a part of your body, an emotion, a mantra, a breath, a word, an image, a memory…

And above all, you can meditate in connection with your body — through movement, chanting, or even by watching a bird.

🕊️ Discipline + Gentleness = Transformation

My doorway into meditation and the power of breath was Kundalini Yoga.

A practice I knew nothing about… until one day, at the Flows Festival in Croatia, I attended a class that completely shifted something inside me.

It included:

• intense breathing (breath of fire),

• long-held postures (arms raised while seated cross-legged for several minutes),

• bursts of cardio to release the body (rapid punches, running in place),

• chanting, mantras, instruments, and silence…

• And above all: a total presence.

Ivana, the teacher, poured her heart, soul, and full awareness into the session.

It was powerful. Vibrant.

And deeply liberating.

At the end of the class, I felt transformed by what I had just experienced.

So I waited until everyone left to go thank her and talk for a while.

Ivana shared her story: a former mathematician, she had also experienced deep misalignment in her life.

And it was almost “by chance” that she encountered Kundalini Yoga, through Guru Rattana, an American teacher, author, and pioneer in bringing this practice to the West.

I hope to one day interview Ivana so she can share that awakening moment — because she’s the one who inspired me to explore the practice more deeply…

🌪️ A Powerful Energy, A Sensitive Topic

The word “Kundalini” can sometimes be intimidating.

Or, on the contrary, idealized.

For some, it’s a new-age myth.

For others, a real energy, coiled at the base of the spine, capable — once awakened — of radically transforming consciousness.

Yogi Bhajan, who introduced this practice to the West in the 1970s, once said:

“Kundalini is the only drug you’ll ever need.”

At the time, he was speaking to a generation searching for meaning, often numbed by LSD, weed, or heroin.

His message was simple:

“Why take drugs to get high,when you can get there naturally — by breathing and chanting?”

In yogic tradition, Kundalini is seen as a dormant energy that rises through the chakras when certain conditions are met:

• physical purification,

• emotional regulation,

• grounding,

• and inner guidance.

But not all teachers share this view. For instance, Indian mystic Sadhguru is very clear on this:

“Kundalini is not something you should seek as an experience.It’s a possibility to prepare for.”

He compares awakening Kundalini to handling a high-voltage cable: if connected without proper grounding, it can burn instead of illuminate.

His core message: don’t chase the experience — prepare yourself.

And that resonates with me. In fact, what Ivana shared in her class — rooted in the teachings of Guru Rattana (who herself was a student of Yogi Bhajan) — aligned perfectly with a gentle, grounded approach.

The goal wasn’t to force an awakening, but rather to explore various keys to feeling realigned.

Among those keys were breathwork techniques that radically shifted my understanding of what meditation could be.

🧘‍♀️ The Approach of Guru Rattana: Discernment, Regularity, Gentleness

Guru Rattana’s method is built upon three core pillars:

• Discernment

• Consistency

• Slowness

From the very first lesson, she emphasizes the role of discipline in inner transformation. It reminds me of this beautiful quote by Gandhi:

“Sow a thought, and you reap an action.Sow an action, and you reap a habit.Sow a habit, and you reap a character.Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”

Guru Rattana also outlines key milestones of transformation. According to her, this is how long it takes to embody a practice or habit:

🪷 40 days to change it🪷 90 days to anchor it🪷 120 days for it to become part of you

So I decided to try.

To take on a new challenge — not with Duolingo streaks, but meditation streaks.

I practice for 15 to 30 minutes daily, sometimes more if I fully surrender. I incorporate active breathwork (pranayama), mantras, chanting… and sometimes just quiet listening to the air moving in and out.

And if I miss a day? I just start over. No self-blame. Just kindness 😇

What’s remarkable is how quickly I began noticing subtle but profound shifts...

✨ Here’s What I Noticed in My Body

Nothing spectacular — I’m still at the beginning of the journey —

But it's deeply tangible:

• My diaphragm relaxed. My breath reaches my belly.

• My jaw softened. Like an invisible lock had been released.

• My heart rate slowed down. I feel more grounded and safe.

• My thoughts quieted. The internal chatter calms down naturally.

• I feel held. Like being embraced from within.

• When strong emotions arise (stress, frustration, sadness), I know how to welcome and navigate them. (I’ll dedicate a full article to emotional regulation soon.)

Sometimes I just pause, out of nowhere, and say to myself:

“I’m breathing.I’m here.I’m present.And that’s all I need.”

And that happens more and more often.

🔎 The Science Behind It

Here are three solid studies that confirm the physiological and emotional effects of breathwork and Kundalini yoga:

📘 1. Kundalini Yoga & Generalized Anxiety

A randomized clinical trial (226 participants) compared Kundalini Yoga, CBT, and stress education.

Result: Kundalini Yoga showed significant improvement in 54% of participants, with sustained anxiety reduction. (Source: NYU School of Medicine, 2020)

🧠 2. Yogic Breath & Brain Regulation

An fMRI study on bhastrika (intense breathwork) showed activity in the amygdala, insula, and prefrontal cortex — key areas for emotional regulation. (Source: Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2020)

💓 3. Breathwork Meta-Analysis

A review of 26 studies showed regular breath practices (like those in Kundalini Yoga) reduced stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and improved heart rate variability (HRV), a marker of nervous system resilience. (Source: Scientific Reports, 2022)

🏃 Even While Moving, I Breathe Differently

Today, even when I exercise — whether it’s HIIT, strength training, dancing, or simply a brisk walk...

I breathe with the movement, not against it. I let the breath carry me.

I remember that exhaling calms,

inhaling supports,

and that breath sets the pace.

And it changes everything:

• I recover faster

• I experience fewer aches

• I last longer without straining

• I move with more awareness

• I’m gentler with myself

✨ I feel more alive. More free. More present.

And for me, that’s a small revolution 😇

🌬️ Breath as a Door to Reality — And a Way Out of the Virtual World

By now, you probably get it: I used to run from silence.

I would fill every empty moment with something to do.

Always a screen nearby. A notification to check. A message to answer. A distraction within reach.

And I know I’m not alone.

Deep down, we feel it: our rhythm is too fast. Too tight.

But we keep going…

Endless scrolling.

Bingeing shows to avoid thinking.

Grabbing our phones at the slightest pause — in the subway, at dinner, in life.

Visit public transport in Japan — it’s frightening.

No one speaks. Everyone stares at a screen.

Their minds are hijacked by a constant stream of information.

What if this were our future — unless we choose otherwise?

Let’s be honest: the hardest part is getting started.

Saying: “Okay, I’m doing this.”

But once you get moving… it’s harder to stop than to keep going.

🌀 The real challenge is the first push.

After that, the body follows. The mind softens.

Breath becomes a friend, a guide.

Gradually, you spend less time on your phone.

And more time being here, with yourself, with others, with the world.

One day, you’ll look at someone endlessly scrolling, isolated without realizing it.

And you’ll think: “I used to be like that. But now, I choose something else.”

And your gaze will be kind.

Because you know it’s not their fault. And you know change is possible.

You’ll become one of those people who starts conversations.

Who dares to connect in real life.

At first, people might think you’re weird…

But trust me: creating real connection feels so good.

People won’t always admit it — but they crave it.

Deeply.

Social media connects us virtually... but isolates us in real life.

And remember: the more you practice, the more natural it feels. The deeper it settles. And the more it transforms.

It’s a habit that can only add goodness to your life.

We need it. Our society needs it.

And the best part? You don’t need to practice yoga to begin.

Start with something simple:

💨 Notice your breath.

🚶‍♀️ Take a walk with no destination.

🪺 Sit on a bench and listen to a bird sing.

I hope with all my heart that you, too, will find that moment…

when you can simply say to yourself, in silence:

“I’m breathing. I’m here. And that’s all I need.”

👉 Ask yourself: when was the last time I truly breathed?

If you'd like to go deeper into this connection between breath, nature, and awareness — I’d be honored to walk alongside you.

Thank you for reading all the way through.

Namaste 🙏