I couldn’t bring myself to send an email the day after Emerge. The day felt too sacred for words, and I knew that anything I wrote would fall short of what had happened in that room.

So instead, I spent the morning after Emerge at a clinical facility, where I had been hired to present Azamra Breathwork to a group of therapists. We explored common misconceptions around breathwork and what thoughtful, responsible, and genuinely safe clinical practice should look like.

Then I took the afternoon for my own care, receiving a session from the amazing Ahuva Libman, who is Azamra trained and was visiting from Israel.

Ahuva had not facilitated me in quite some time, and at the very beginning of the session, as she placed her hands on me, she immediately exclaimed at how different my body felt.

It was softer, more human, less wired for battle, and more open to surrender.

She was right. I didn’t need her to tell me. The body never lies, and it's astonishing, the stories our bodies tell.

I have now had the privilege of facilitating this particular experience approximately twenty times, and this season of Emerge taught me something new. I have been doing the work a disservice by calling it “pool breathwork,” because that phrase is so far from what's actually happening.

One woman shared that when she had placed her head underwater she heard her own heartbeat. At first, she thought it was incredible. It sounded fast, like a fetus. Then another thought arrived. "Wait, that's way too fast. I must be panicking. Run!"

And she did.

At one point during Emerge, I was facilitating twenty-four women, and not a single one of them was in the pool. There were red faces, panic, tears, resistance, and absolute refusal to be with the water. The day was blazing one person panicked, and the fear moved through the group like lightning.

 What was I thinking as this unfolded?

I was amazed.

My co- facilitator Sara Estee and I kept looking at each other in awe as the stories emerged.

Emerge is not simply a breathwork experience in a pool. It's a constellation. It's a day where stories surface through bodies, relationships, resistance, movement, breath, water, memory, and choice.

This year’s theme was legacy; the stories we carry, inherited both consciously and unconsciously. We explored what we honor, what we choose to keep, what we want to tweak, what we return to sender, and what we ultimately choose to pass on to our children.

We spent the morning reflecting on the quiet legacies that shape our lives; how we bring in Shabbos, how we resolve conflict, how we celebrate success, how we respond to fear, and how we express love.

Then we had the extraordinary opportunity to experience our family lineages through embodied constellations. Women stood in as mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and daughters. We laughed, we cried, and we discovered that we are all more than a little psychic.

Then we allowed the stories to emerge in the water.

The women in the room committed an act of enormous bravery. Instead of the cute spa experience, they asked for the full impact.

They wanted the truth, and they wanted to be set free.

It was ninety-billion degrees beneath a glaring sun, and our legacies were breathing and breaking open.

After the first water session, we took time to debrief. Woman after woman shared that her experience in the water had mirrored, with astonishing precision, her experience of birth, childhood, motherhood, family, fear, or belonging.

Then we chose something new together. We altered course. We shifted the experience inside our bodies.

We changed history.

The second breath session in the water was one of the most glorious, profound, and humbling experiences I have ever facilitated or participated in. We came out different. Radiant. Settled. At peace in a way that was visible before anyone said a word.

This is also why I need to surface something that's hard for me to say.

I have watched untrained people attempt to offer “pool breathwork” this summer, and it is breathtakingly irresponsible.

Water intensifies everything. It can amplify panic, dissociation, birth trauma, attachment wounds, sensory overwhelm, loss of control, medical risk, and group contagion. A participant may appear resistant when she is actually flooded. She may look calm while moving into freeze mode. A facilitator needs to know the difference and know what to do next.

This work requires far more than access to a pool, a playlist, and enthusiasm. It demands substantial training in nervous-system regulation, breath, trauma, group dynamics, touch, consent, contraindications, emergency response, and the ability to track many bodies at once without forcing an outcome. It requires the humility to step back when the work is asking for space and the skill to intervene when safety requires it.

I have spent years developing, facilitating, studying, refining, and training in this work. Even after approximately twenty iterations, I am still learning from every room. 

Imitation may be flattering, but participants should never become practice material for someone who has confused a powerful modality with a new age summer "healing" activity. What happens in that water matters, and what happens after matters ten times more.

I was a little nervous when I emailed the women afterward and asked them to share their experiences and rate the day. I didn’t need to be. The response was universally stunning, even when women struggled to find language for what had happened.

But again, the body talks.

There were no words for the therapist who reached out, with her client’s consent, to say that her client had walked into session lighter and freer than she had seen her in years.

There were no words for the woman who felt her baby kick for the first time while she “mothered” someone in the water, or for the women who said psychedelics could not hold a candle to the experience.

There were no words for the matriarch whose love for her granddaughter was so clearly present that I kept feeling compelled to play one specific song all afternoon, (only to discover afterward that it was the song her grandmother used to love!)

There were no words needed when Ahuva placed her hands on me the next day and immediately felt the difference.

So yes, it took me time to write this email. I did not want to reduce the day to words.

The day after Emerge, my mother texted me that she had a gift for me. I felt so loved, and I told her so.

What legacy did I personally explore at Emerge?

How we express love in my family.

I've been doing this work for a long time, and my mind is still blown every time something like this happens.

I only offer Emerge once a year, and that's part of what makes it so special. There are other events coming soon, however, and you are going to want to stay close.

Something is coming in August, (and you won't need to travel in.) More details soon.

There is also Vessel, my once-a-year flagship course and the foundation beneath everything I teach.

And our Hypnotherapy Facilitation Training is underway. We have a beautiful cohort, and I cannot wait to dive deeply into the art, responsibility, and skill of true facilitation with them.

Does it sound like I am doing a lot this summer? I am. :)

And I'm deeply grateful.

I'm grateful that this is my legacy. A body of work I love, work that provides for the children I adore, and a life that makes me excited to get out of bed.

You are always welcome to walk this path with us.

Talk soon,

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