By Liz Long Rottman and David Gonzales
Click here for David Gonzales’ website: Full Presence Qigong
Liz Long Rottman:
Today we’re going to talk about using breath in a therapeutic context. I’m here with David Gonzalez of Full Presence Qigong. He’s been studying and teaching Qigong for over twenty years, and I’m Liz Long Rottman—psychotherapist, bodyworker, and owner of Prosopon Therapy.
We started having this conversation recently about observing breath in clients.
What the Breath Reveals
David:
Yeah—one of the things I’ve been contemplating, and don’t yet have a full answer to, is what the breath can reveal about our internal state—what’s going on inside of us, and also in the people we work with.
It’s one of the ways we can track ourselves and our clients—throughout a process or even just during the day. Breath becomes both a personal and professional tool.
Liz:
Right. And when we observe breath, there are so many dimensions to look at: Where in the body is it happening? How deep does it go? Is it belly or chest? Shallow or deep? Short and quick? Is the inhale fluid? The exhale choppy?
David:
Exactly.
Liz:
And the key here is that we’re talking about noticing—not controlling. Breathwork can be great when you’re intentionally training the breath, but what we’re exploring today is just observing it in its natural, uncontrolled state.
Letting the Breath Be What It Is
David:
I’ve noticed some clients breathe with a sharp stop on the inhale followed by a quick exhale. When I see that, I start wondering—what’s happening psychologically or energetically?
Liz:
Totally. In my practice, I often see breath get very shallow when people are processing trauma. Many try to “fix” it using a learned technique—maybe from yoga or DBT—but if we just stay with the shallow breath and place attention there, it almost always resolves on its own.
David:
Yes—honoring wherever we naturally are.
Liz:
I have a complicated relationship with breath myself. In the past, structured breathwork sometimes made things worse because my breath wasn’t ready for it. I needed to spend time just staying with whatever dysregulation was present.
David:
That makes sense. The type of breathwork we introduce has to match where a person’s at. If a client is ungrounded, giving them a fast, sharp, upper-chest breathing pattern can make things worse.
Liz:
Exactly. But inviting a few slow belly breaths helps drop awareness back into the body.
Awareness and Placement
Liz:
So much of this comes down to awareness—where it’s placed in the body. The breath moves awareness. In yoga, they talk about breathing “into” the ankle or the foot—not literally, but through awareness.
David:
Yeah, I had a student once ask, “What do you mean by breathe into the lower back?” It’s a good question! It’s about bringing awareness, with the breath, into that area.
Liz:
And when we link awareness and breath, sensation intensifies. That’s part of what’s powerful about it.
The Qigong Connection
Liz:
I’d love to pivot to Qigong. Moving awareness around the body is central in that practice, right?
David:
Yes. For example, when there’s tension, we bring awareness to it. Then bring the breath there. When awareness and breath meet in that space, things start to move.
Liz:
That movement can be intimidating at first—it means facing uncomfortable sensations. But once we learn to turn toward those places, the process actually becomes pleasurable.
Practice, Pause, and Return
David:
Exactly. When we practice, it’s important to pause sometimes—observe where the breath is naturally. Then do the practice, then pause again and notice what changed.
Liz:
So you’re talking about both the micro level (within a single session) and macro (over several days)?
David:
Yes—both. We can think of breath as a circle: a smooth inhale, a smooth exhale. If we breathe that way for a few minutes, then stop and let our breath stabilize naturally, we can observe the difference.
Liz:
That’s a great experiment. And I love your point about circle breathing versus box breathing. Each creates a distinct state of consciousness.
David:
Totally. There are many variations—each serving different purposes.
Breath, Movement, Awareness
Liz:
And that’s one of the things I love about Qigong. It integrates breath with movement and awareness, often attuned to the seasons and organ systems.
David:
Right. Typically the movements are gentle, but always intentional—inhale with one movement, exhale with another—while placing awareness in specific areas of the body. The combination clears, harmonizes, or stabilizes energy depending on the element or season.
Liz:
Three simple tools: awareness, movement, and breath.
David:
Exactly.
Closing Thoughts
Liz:
We’re about out of time, but I hope this glimpse into our ongoing conversation helps people appreciate breath as a mirror—something that reveals rather than something to control.
David:
Beautifully said.
Liz:
Thanks for joining me, David.
David:
Always a pleasure.
Liz:
Bye for now.
RAW TRANSCRIPT:
Liz:
Today we’re going to talk about using breath in a therapeutic context. I’m here with David Gonzalez of Full Presence Qigong. He’s got 20 years of experience studying and teaching Qigong, and I’m Liz Long Rottman. I’m the owner of Prosopon, therapy, psychotherapist and bodywork. So we started having a conversation recently about observing breath in clients.
David:
Yeah, one of the things that I’ve been kind of contemplating, and don’t worry, we have the answer to yet, is kind of like, what can the breath reveal to us about ourselves, our own internal state, what’s going on with us, and then about like, somebody that we’re working with that’s, yeah, it’s one of the ways that we can track ourselves and also track our clients when we are in a process or going throughout our day. It’s a tool that we use, both personally and professionally. And so there’s different ways that the breath can show up.
Liz:
Yeah? I mean, like, one of the things that we can look at is like, where are we breathing in the body? Yeah, where in the body? You know, it’s like, how deep is it going? Are we breathing into our belly? Are we breathing into our chest? Is it shallow? Is it deep? Is it short and quick? Where’s the cut off in the inhalation and the exhalation? And are they like in a natural, fluid sense, or are they more choppy?
That’s right, yeah. And I think there’s something important here, as we notice the different ways the breath shows up. We’re talking about this from a just a noticing perspective, as opposed to a controlling perspective. So breath work activities can be very helpful, especially when it comes to trying on different breath types, or training the breath. But we’re really talking about just noticing the breath in its uncontrolled natural state and what that can bring us.
David:
Yeah, and that’s where it’s like, I’m I’m still, I’m exploring this, because I don’t know exactly what that is, but like, I’ve noticed different types of breathing where there’s like, kind of like an inhale, and there’s like, it’s like it stops, and then there’s like, a sharp exhale, you know, and so like, like, just like noticing this type of breathing within a client, And then kind of like going into, like, where that client’s at, what’s going on with them, energetically, psychologically, emotionally, and kind of like piecing that together.
Liz:
Absolutely yes, and I’ll share a breath pattern that I’ve noticed throughout my practice, is often when people are processing anything, but especially trauma, the breath will get really shallow, and people have been taught to do breath work through a variety of contexts, whether that’s yoga or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and they’ll start implementing a technique that they’ve learned. But if we just stay with that shallow breath and actually turn all of our attention towards that shallow breath experience, the breath will actually resolve on its own. Most of the time, it’s very rare that I have to jump in with an additional intervention to get the breath to come back to a deeper, more regulated place, because it’s more about moving through at that point in time, as opposed to like creating a structure for how we should breathe.
David:
That’s right, that’s right, and honoring wherever we are naturally at any point in time. So I don’t know about you, when I’ve done I have a really complicated history with breath, actually, but when I’ve done breath work techniques in the past, it actually made things worse, not better, because my breath wasn’t ready for that kind of practice, and I needed to spend a lot of time staying with whatever dysregulated thing my breath was doing before I was ready to start doing some kind of practice.
Liz:
Yeah, I could see that. And then also, depending on what type of breath work practices people are utilizing for what type of people and where they’re at.
David:
That’s right. So, like, when we’re talking about, like a client, for example, that is, like feeling ungrounded. And then we give them a bunch of, like, really shallow, sharp breaths and like, kind of, like, it’s all up here, it can actually unground them more.
Liz:
That’s right, you know. Versus like, being like, let’s just take a few deep breaths into our belly, right, you know. And just kind of feel our belly space, feel our breath, feel what that feels like, and that just starts to drop the attentional awareness down into the body.
Yeah. So a lot of this talk that we have, or these these thoughts we have about breath have to do with awareness and the placement of awareness in the body. So this is where, and of course, the breath is in the body. But I don’t think it’s always obvious to people how truly linked everything is. And, you know. And there’s this idea in yoga, for example, of being able to breathe even down into your ankle or your foot, yeah, or, you know. And there’s this, these ideas around prana, where we move prana by moving the breath, and it feels that way. I actually feel like I’m breathing in my ankle, even though there’s no lung there, right?
David:
Yeah, yeah. I had a student one time who said he’s like, what do you what do you mean when you say breathe into the lower back, you know? And it’s like, it’s a, it’s a great question, you know? And it’s like, kind of like utilizing the awareness with the breath to go into a space in the body.
Liz:
That’s right, yeah. And there’s something about linking it to the breath that amplifies the intensity of the sensation of our awareness being in that part of the body.
David:
Totally.
Liz:
Yeah. So, you know, and we can talk about this from the energetic perspective, there’s also, I’m not going to get into it, but there’s a whole lot of science that backs this up, including the benefits of moving our awareness around our body, which I’m actually going to dovetail us over a little bit to Qigong, because Qigong has a lot to do with moving the awareness around the body.
Yes, can you speak to that a little bit — moving the awareness around the body in correlation to breath, or even just the experience of moving the awareness around the body, and what that does?
David:
Yeah, well, it’s like, just for example, like when we go into, like, tension, where there’s places of tension in the body, you know, like, one of the practices is like, okay, observe that tension, bring your awareness there. Then what happens? Bring your breath there. Then what happens, you know, and you’re, you’re sitting there in this place of tension in your body, with your breath and your awareness simultaneously in that space, and things start to move.
Liz:
That’s right, things start to shift. Yes, and I really want to highlight here too that it can be a little scary at first to start doing this, because we’re actually going towards uncomfortable places. We’re going towards stuck or painful places. And once we get the hang of actually turning towards those scary things, this process becomes very pleasurable. It feels really good. And that to me, outside of all of the health and psychological benefits we get from doing this, that’s a big driver for motivation to learn how to do this and how to start facing these things that feel scary in the body.
David:
Yeah. And so, like, I think one of the recommendations would be, like, when we’re working with a practice, is to take that practice in, do it for a little while. Whatever that amount of time is, could be 30 seconds, could be 30 minutes. And then also, like, and then stop doing it, yeah, just like, come back to like, Okay, where’s my baseline. Where am I at?
Liz:
So when you say stop doing it, I’m guessing you mean like, do it for a few days and then stop for a few days and then come back to it, something like that. Are you talking about something that’s more immediate?
David:
Both, yeah, right, you know? Because it’s like, all right, where’s my breath at, right now, yeah, just observing how that feels, and then being like, Okay, and what are the recommendations, and kind of like that the Qigong world is to think of the breath is like a circle, you know. So there’s like, that nice fluid inhale, and then that nice fluid exhale, you know, it’s like, kind of, this is one way of breathing. You know, there’s many ways of breathing, of course, but if we’re like thinking of the breath as the breath as a circle, then we’re going to go into that.
When you start breathing like that, we’re going to feel that sensation in ourself. And so then when we stop doing that, let’s say we do that for five minutes. We stop doing that, and then we just allow our breath to stabilize in its natural way, and when we’re stabilizing in our natural way, and then observing that, what does that feel like?
Liz:
That’s right, you know. And so we can do that before the practice. Do the practice? Do that after the practice. What shifted? What moved? Was there discomfort? Was there things that that feel more aligned? What’s the state of the mind, the quality of the mind, the quality of the thoughts, the emotions, the body, and just like being present with all those things, so that we can just really observe where we’re at and then, kind of like, utilize whatever practices we’re using to move in a certain direction.
That makes so much sense now. And I love this emphasis on using the breath as a way to evaluate how we naturally are, to bring more awareness. If I go into a practice that has, like an application or a control feeling to it, and then I can go back to my natural state, I actually get some clarity about how my natural state is operating. I also really love what you said about circle breathing, because that box breathing is really popular. So just even thinking about maybe you want to try this, breathing in a circle versus breathing with box breathing, and just noticing how that creates a different state of consciousness depending on what totally you’re focused on.
David:
Yeah, yeah, great, yeah. And there’s like, a whole bunch of different types of even, like, types of box breathing or circle breathing and things like that that can be experimented with for different reasons, for different reasons, right? And so now we’re, we’re deepening into here the tools of breath and how they can be applied, and especially in a practice like Qigong or yoga, which I think more people are familiar with, they have the same practice of using different breath types to treat or explore or to send the energy in one direction or another direction.
Something I love about Qigong is that they do it based on the flow of the seasons and what organ channels are being lit up at any given time.
Liz:
Yeah.
David:
So it’s interesting, because in in Qigong, it’s like, there’s the there’s this typically, a gentle movement, not always, but usually, and then kind of the guidance of the breath, like we’re going to inhale as we’re moving in a specific way. We’re going to exhale as we’re moving in a specific way. And then there’s the awareness of, like, where to place, where we’re placing, the awareness in that moment, you know? And there’s a lot of different things that we can do that, according to the season, the element, the organ that we’re working with, different things like that that are going to help clear things, harmonize things, stabilize things. You know, there’s just a lot of different ways to interact with these, these three simple tools of awareness, movement, breath, awareness movement, breath.
Liz:
Yeah, great. So I think we’re coming up on time for today, but I just — David and I talk a lot, so it’s uncharacteristic for us to have a shorter conversation, but we wanted to show you a little bit of what two people who have a lot of experience in the field think about when it comes to breath. So I hope that was helpful, and David — always a pleasure. Thank you for joining me.
David:
Yeah. Thank you, wonderful. Bye for now.
