Breathing Deeply Yoga Therapy & Meditation

Today, Brandt talks about a popular yet very powerful mantra which is a great addition to your meditation practice. This is a short mantra that has been chanted in the yoga tradition for a very long time. It is a lovely chant that is easy to learn and practice, we love to refer to it as a ‘greatest hit’. This chant is an ask, a prayer and instructional. Discover a contemplation of the deeper meani...

Do you struggle with getting your clients to actually do the yoga therapy practices you give to them at home? Maybe you yourself struggle to implement new habits that you KNOW will bring you so many benefits. You’re not alone and it’s also not your fault. Forming new habits is HARD - it has been proven. However, there is one habit-forming hack that has been proven to be effective in helping people...

In this episode, learn about the 4th kosha, the vijnanamaya in the 5 kosha system. This layer of ourselves is usually referred to as our body of wisdom. This is the layer of our consciousness that sits underneath what we think of as our conscious mind. Often this kosha is associated with our intuition because the wisdom that we receive comes from a deeper place within ourselves which is in connect...

In today’s Q&A, Breathing Deeply founder and lead teacher, Brandt Passalacqua sits down with his students to ask their yoga therapy questions. This Q&A has a special emphasis on working with grief, depression and women who have had major surgeries. Brandt answers questions covering breathing techniques to support grief, and tips on how to help clients who are grieving including rituals and cultura...

Before we look into meditation techniques and philosophy, it can be beneficial to get an understanding of why we even meditate at all. In today's episode, Brandt will be sharing the different reasons we might start a meditation practice through the birth of spiritual desire. Listen to this episode to orientate to this reasoning as a practitioner or a meditation teacher. This was a clip taken from...

In today’s episode, we are sharing a clip from a live Q&A that Brandt facilitated with students inside the Breathing Deeply Meditation Mentor Certification Program. In this episode, Brandt’s discussion covers how philosophical texts and personal practice work together, studying meditation philosophy, advice on approaching students’ questions, how to deal with a student who is very restless and the...

In today’s episode, Joe Simek, Breathing Deeply assistant teacher, sits down with Breathing Deeply founder Brandt Passalacqua to talk about yoga therapy and mental health. With mental health, it is not a one size fits all approach. At Breathing Deeply, we teach our students how to create individualized practices that empower their clients to take their health into their own hands! Listen in as Bra...

The Manomaya kosha is the layer of our being that represents the intellect and the conscious mind. This is the level of our conscious thoughts. The Manomaya kosha is one of the most important koshas, because of the huge effect it has on us. Because the mind is so powerful, it can affect all the other 4 koshas dramatically. We can think of the Manomaya kosha as the pivotal centerpiece in the 5 kosh...

In today’s Q&A, Breathing Deeply founder and lead teacher, Brandt Passalacqua sits down with his students to ask their yoga therapy questions. Brandt answers questions covering advice on how to work with teenagers struggling with body image issues, ways to approach hormone imbalances in women and dosha assessments in yoga therapy and our advanced program. This clip has been taken from a live Q&A s...

When we achieve balance throughout all 5 of our koshas (physical, energetic, mental, intuitive and spiritual) we are put into union with our own nature. Very few people (even spiritual yogis) put in the effort in their daily practice to touch on regulating each of the 5 koshas. However, without a practice that incorporates radical balance of all aspects of our being, we may miss out on the allevia...

As a meditation teacher or mentor, we need to develop our own personal meditation practice in order to guide others with theirs. In this episode, learn about what a personal practice is, the two distinct aspects of a spiritual practice as well as the 3 part process to construct a meditation practice plus so much more! This was a clip taken from our Meditation Mentor Certification Program. Our next...

Prana is the infinite life-force energy that runs through us and is all around us. As yoga therapists, we primarily work with the breath (pranayama) and asana to influence the currents of prana through the system which can have therapeutic effects on many diseases, particularly emotional and mental imbalances. In this episode, learn about the pranamaya kosha, what prana is, our interpretation of t...

In today’s Q&A, Breathing Deeply founder and lead teacher, Brandt Passalacqua sits down with his students to ask their yoga therapy questions. Brandt answers questions covering how to balance pitta in young men, applying yoga therapy principles to children, how to safely get into pigeon pose for various levels of flexibility, a basic protocol for working with osteoporosis and advice on how to appr...

In this episode, Brandt dives deep into an exploration of the Vijnanamaya kosha, also known as our intuition body or our unconscious mind. Learn what the Vijnanamaya kosha is and how it may look or feel for you when it is imbalanced. Discover the four stages or goals of meditation and how meditation works to balance the Vijnanamaya kosha. We look at the Vijnanamaya kosha through the lens of the th...

In today’s episode, we are sharing a clip from a live Q&A that Brandt facilitated with students inside the Breathing Deeply Meditation Mentor Certification Program. In this episode, Brandt’s discussion covers how to guide people when teaching yoga philosophy, desire and non-duality, whether non-dual philosophy can help people suffering from addiction and what the different goals of our practice ma...

Working with the pranic body through pranayama can often have really amazing results for yoga therapy clients. Whether is it yoga therapy for mental health or yoga therapy for chronic pain or any other imbalance in the doshas. In this episode, learn about the different doshic imbalances that can be addressed through pranayama as well as the art of balancing the doshas. We also cover 2 case studies...

In this Q&A Brandt covers yoga therapy for hip replacements, the koshic framework, the differences between acupuncture and yoga therapy, how chronic pain influences neural pathways, how yoga therapists work with mental health and using asana to balance the doshas. We hope you enjoy this Q&A. Let us know in the comments any key takeaways you had and share it with someone you think it may benefit! O...

The Anandamaya kosha is the part of ourselves that is pure bliss. In this episode, we explore the Anandamaya kasha or Bliss body, which is the innermost kosha in the 5 kosha system we teach here at Breathing Deeply. Learn more about the Anandamaya Kosha and tools to balance this layer of our being through devotion and ritual. Discover a devotional deity yoga practice to balance this kosha and lear...

In today’s episode, we are sharing a clip from a live Q&A that Brandt facilitated with students inside the Breathing Deeply Meditation Mentor Certification Program. In this Q&A, Brandt’s discussion focuses on the distinction between dualism and non-dualism is the context of the yoga tradition. He discusses whether we can do a spiritual practice wrong, the concept of dualism vs non-dualism, the pur...

Pain is something that many of us have to learn how to work with effectively as yoga therapists! Most of our clients will struggle with some sort of physical pain! In this video, Brandt outlines the type of pain that we work with as yoga therapists, the difference between muscle and nerve pain and also the system and methods we can use to help our clients find remedies for their chronic pain. This...

This clip has been taken from a live Q&A session with Brandt and his yoga therapy students. In today’s Q&A, Breathing Deeply founder and lead teacher, Brandt Passalacqua sits down with his students to ask their yoga therapy questions. The floor is open to all kinds of questions! They can relate to their personal practice, the yoga therapy foundations program, their course practicum, clients and mo...

Today we’re going to be looking at the mental body. This is the conscious and, also known as the Manomaya kosha in the koshic model that we work with at Breathing Deeply. This is one of the more important layers of our being as the way we think makes up so much of how we think about ourselves and has a big impact on our everyday life. This is also the kosha we use to perceive our experiences and t...

In this interview, Breathing Deeply Director & Lead Teacher, Brandt Passalacqua, sits down with Melissa Russell who is one of our advanced program graduates and a C-IAYT Yoga Therapist to talk about Yoga therapy for depression. In this conversation, Melissa shares how she helped a client with depression by using the tools and techniques she learned inside the Breathing Deeply Advanced Yoga Therapy...

In this episode, Joe Simek, Breathing Deeply teacher, sits down with Breathing Deeply founder Brandt Passalacqua to talk about meditation in the context of yoga therapy. In this episode, you’ll learn how yoga therapists can use meditation as a tool for therapy with their clients. This conversation covers the difference between meditation in the context of yoga therapy and learning from a meditatio...

In today’s episode, we are sharing a clip from a live Q&A that Brandt facilitated with students inside the Breathing Deeply meditation program. Brandt discusses the practice of becoming aware of our central channel and how a practice like this can help us understand the limitless nature of our desires. Brandt discusses the ego desires, vs our actual desires from the perspective of classical tantra...