What Is Rebirthing Breathwork? A Guide from a School with Over 20 Years of Experience
Quick answer: Rebirthing breathwork, also called Conscious Connected Breathing, is a gentle technique developed by Leonard Orr that uses continuous circular breathing, no pause between inhale and exhale, to unlock the breathing mechanism and potentially process or release stored emotional tension. Done correctly, rebirthing should be in a one-to-one, facilitator-guided session. It’s the foundation of GBA’s Rebirth Breath Therapy® (RBT) method.
If you’ve landed here, you’ve probably already heard the word “rebirthing” somewhere, maybe from a friend who came back from a retreat looking lighter than you’ve ever seen them, or maybe from a corner of the internet that made it sound a little strange. All reactions are fair. Rebirthing breathwork is simple, and it does go deep. At Global Breathing Awareness, we’ve spent over twenty years inside this practice, and we carry it forward from a genuinely rare place: our founder, Katia Boustani, was honored by Leonard Orr himself, the man who founded rebirthing, as one of only five people in the world recognized as a Rebirthing Breath Master.
So let’s start at the beginning.
Rebirthing breathwork, in plain terms
Rebirthing breathwork, also called Conscious Connected Breathing, is a breathing technique where you breathe in a continuous circular rhythm, through the nose, with no pause between the inhale and the exhale. That’s it at the mechanical level. No exotic postures, no substances, usually no loud music or theatrics. You lie down, you breathe, and a trained facilitator holds space for whatever comes up.
What comes up is the real work. Held in a steady, connected breath, the body often begins to release things the mind has been holding onto for years, old patterns, buried emotion, tension that never had anywhere to go. Students describe everything from deep physical relaxation to spontaneous emotional release to moments that feel, quite literally, like being born again into a lighter version of themselves.
Where it came from
Leonard Orr discovered the foundations of rebirthing and modern breathwork almost by accident in the late 1960s, spending hours in the bathtub simply breathing and noticing an “energy cycle” moving through him. He spent years afterward developing the practice, shaped later by time spent with his teacher, the yogi Babaji, into what became modern Rebirthing Breathwork. It has since spread worldwide, influencing nearly every other conscious-breathing modality that exists today.
Katia Boustani, GBA’s founder, studied directly under Leonard for years, and in 2013 he honored her with the title of Rebirthing Breath Master, a distinction only five people have ever received from him. From that lineage, we developed Rebirth Breath Therapy® (RBT), a modern evolution of his original work, and built GBA into a conscious community of breathworkers carrying it forward.
What actually happens in a session
A typical session is quieter than people expect:
- You lie down in a comfortable, private, supervised setting
- You breathe in a relaxed, connected circular rhythm for roughly an hour or more
- Your facilitator stays with you the whole time, watching and gently guiding
- Nothing is added to the breath, no substances, and at GBA, we do not use music or outside stimulation, so you meet your own breath in its purest form
Most people leave a session feeling clearer, lighter, and more themselves than when they walked in.
Is it safe?
This is the question we hear most, and it’s a fair one: rebirthing has a slight reputation problem online, largely from a small number of poorly supervised, unrelated practices decades ago. Real rebirthing breathwork, done by a properly trained facilitator, is gentle and safe for the vast majority of people. At GBA, every session follows strict safety protocols with individualized, supervised support, and drama-free healing, simplicity and safety over spectacle, always.
Is it for you?
If you’ve felt stuck (in a pattern, a relationship, a version of yourself you’re ready to outgrow), rebirthing breathwork offers a way through that doesn’t require you to just talk your way out of it. Sometimes the body already knows the way. The breath just has to lead.
Curious what a full journey looks like? Explore Rebirth Breath Therapy or see our upcoming experiences.
