Trauma-Informed Breathwork Teacher Training Program Fall 2026

Overview

This breathwork teacher training is designed to deepen your personal practice while equipping you with the skills to guide others. Through this journey, you’ll explore your inner landscape, learn to hold space for yourself with compassion and patience, and reconnect with your most authentic self. You'll also gain the tools and confidence to facilitate breathwork sessions—whether one-on-one or in group settings—to support others in their healing and transformation.

The training will take place over four Saturdays at a lovely private residence with ocean views in Ocean Park. Each day will include a breathwork session on a different theme, plus the following content:

DAY 1 (August 29): What is breathwork and how can we hold space for others to heal?

• Trauma, Samskara (patterns we get stuck in based on childhood experiences), the nervous system (including the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems).
• What are somatic practices and how can they help address trauma?
• Playing with different breathing techniques and how they affect the body.
• The job of a breathwork facilitator: Holding space and bearing witness.
• The breathwork technique, why we use this technique, and how to explain it to others.
• Developing your own personal breathwork practice.

DAY 2 (September 5): The history of breathwork and what you can offer as a facilitator

• The history of breathwork and how it has been adapted.
• The key players in breathwork, worldwide and locally.
• What are your unique qualities that you can bring to breathwork?
• Learn and practice how to explain what to expect when practicing breathwork
• What are the elements of breathwork and how is a session broken down?
• How to choose a music playlist. Start a breathwork playlist.
• Headphones and how they can help in group breathwork sessions. The differences in doing sessions with and without them.
• Contraindications (which medical conditions are incompatible with breathwork).

DAY 3 (September 12): A deeper dive into the role of our mind, body, and emotions

• What is our relationship with our thoughts and how do they impact us? How do thoughts sabotage or drive our behavior, what are they based on, and creating new neural pathways.
• What is our relationship with our emotions: how we were taught to view our emotions? How can emotions help us release trauma and stuck energy? Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable to experience resilience and transformation.
• Our relationship with our physical body: changing our relationship from judgment to acceptance, how our thoughts and emotions impact our physical body, and looking more deeply into how breathwork physically impacts the body (in both the short and long terms).
• A closer look at the body (how trauma lodges in the body, how tightness and pain in the body can be a reflection of trauma, which body parts are connected with which kinds of trauma).
• What kind of themes are you interested in teaching? Create journal questions to get your students to think about a theme.
• How to close a breathwork session.

DAY 4 (September 19): An exploration of the Chakras and the business of breathwork

• An exploration of the Chakras and how breathwork relates to these energy centers in the body.
• Finding your voice. Being your authentic self while teaching.
• Combining breathwork with other modalities.
• How do we take care of ourselves so that we don’t feel depleted or take on all the negative energy that people are releasing?
• Responsibilities, boundaries, and ethics.
• Before a session, what should you let your students know so that they come prepared? What do you need to do to come prepared?
• Challenges that you might encounter (eg paradoxical breathing).
• Different types of classes and audiences: one-on-one, group classes, and on-line sessions. Catering to different audiences.
• Practice responding to different challenges and questions you might encounter in a breathwork session.
• Waiver forms and liability insurance.
• Pricing.

Half-Day Sessions (November 7, 8, 14, & 15): Breathwork Finals

• Showcase a breathwork session with your instructor and fellow students.
• Receive personal feedback on what went well as well as constructive suggestions on how to make it better.
• Note that you are required to support each other by attending all breathwork finals.

Summary of Course and Course Work

• 4 in-person training days, each of 7.5 hours (9am to 5pm with a half hour lunch break) = 30 hours (Saturdays August 29, September 5, 12, and 19)
• A minimum of 5 hours of homework per week = 20 hours
• 10 practice sessions and a summary of what went well and any challenges that arose = 20 hours
• Ability to ask questions and get responses during the course through WhatsApp group
• Final exams 4 half-days (8-16 hours) depending on number of students (Over November 7, 8, 14, & 15)

Total number of hours: 80+

Those who complete and pass the coursework, will receive a certification of completion.

Pricing

Early Bird Pricing until June 30 : $950

General Admission thereafter: $999

Limited spaces available. Ask about payment plans.

Pricing includes snacks during the training and practice days. Please bring a packed lunch with you to each session.

About your Instructor: Daniella Gould

Breathwork completely transformed Daniella’s life, allowing her to release emotional baggage from her childhood that had once caused her to be very reactive and explosive. For Daniella, breathwork has been powerful in supporting her to live in a way that is more accepting of herself, allowing her to engage in life with less drama and with more ease. Daniella loves to guide others on their breathwork healing journeys.

Daniella is owner of Santosa Yoga and Health and she teaches group and private breathwork classes as well as trauma-informed yoga and retreats. She leads supported breathwork journeys of healing, self-love, and personal growth. She has attended multiple trainings on trauma, resilience, self-regulation, inner child work, and psychology. She has practiced breathwork with many different teachers, and she was certified with Jon Paul Crimi.

You can learn more about Daniella and read reviews on her website or on Trip advisor.

This training is for you if:

• You want to deepen your personal breathwork practice
• You are ready to release trauma stored in your body
• You want to connect with your most authentic self
• You’re a yoga teacher, healer, psychologist, doctor, or mindfulness coach who wants to help others heal somatically
• You love breathwork and know firsthand how powerful it is
• You are passionate about helping others grow, heal, and come home to themselves

Breathwork can be practiced with a whole range of clients and in many different settings.

Reviews from previous Trauma-Informed Breathwork Teacher Training (posted on Trip Advisor and Google Maps):

As soon as I experienced Santosa’s breathwork sessions, I knew I wanted to deepen my practice under her guidance. I was fortunate to attend her Trauma-Informed Breathwork Teacher Training. As a clinical psychologist, Daniella’s guidance throughout the training allowed me to deepen my understanding of how somatic therapy—specifically breathwork—is a powerful tool for transforming trauma stored in the body. I am now more confident in working alongside my patients and clients.

— Estefania

Daniella is an exceptional teacher (of teachers) of breathwork! I feel completely prepared as a facilitator after taking her 5-week course! Highly recommend!

— Julie

I attended Santosa’s Trauma-Informed Breathwork Teacher Training, and it was honestly life-changing. Danielle fostered a strong learning community that continues to this day. Together we explored the history of breathwork, different styles of practice, and the physiology behind how this style works in the body. We also learned how to construct and facilitate sessions, and how to create and hold safe, healing spaces. The training deepened my own practice and gave me a real appreciation for the complexities, and honor, of guiding others through this work. I highly recommend it.

— Angela

Completing the 80 Hour Trauma-Informed Breathwork Teacher Training with Daniella Gould of Santosa Yoga and Health was extraordinary. This was not just an excellent certification; it was a deeply transformative, beautifully held, powerful, and profoundly human experience.

I entered the training during a very vulnerable season of my life, while supporting my father through Alzheimer’s and navigating my own grief, memories, tenderness, and inner openings. And that is exactly why I can say this so clearly: Daniella knows how to hold deep spaces. She does it with a rare combination of compassion, presence, steadiness, wisdom, ethical care, and genuine sensitivity. In a practice where intense emotions, trauma, body memories, and complex group processes can arise, feeling safe and well held makes all the difference.

The content of the training was incredibly rich. We explored breathwork through so many important lenses: the nervous system, trauma, the body, emotions, the history of conscious breathing, major influences in the field, contraindications, music, session structure, boundaries, ethics, different types of students, one-on-one and group facilitation, and how to prepare ourselves to guide others without losing our own grounding in the process. It was deep, complete, and very thoughtfully organized.

But what made this training truly exceptional is that Daniella does not teach breathwork as just a technique. She teaches presence. She teaches responsibility. She teaches how to listen, how to accompany, how to close a session, how to care, and how to facilitate from the heart while still holding a clear and safe structure. That is gold.

I also loved that she gave us a strong foundation without locking us into a rigid formula. She encouraged us to find our own voice, our own themes, our own sensitivity, our own style, and our unique way of serving. We practiced a lot, facilitated real sessions, received feedback, and came out of the process with the kind of confidence that only comes from actually doing the work.

Daniella is a natural teacher. She brings experience, depth, pedagogical intuition, somatic sensitivity, and a beautiful ability to guide transformational processes with both warmth and professionalism. I recommend this certification with absolute enthusiasm. If you love breathwork, want to deepen your own practice, and want to learn how to facilitate in an ethical, trauma-informed, compassionate, and powerful way, this training is a gift.

For me, it was so much more than a training. It was an experience of healing, learning, confidence, and expansion.

— Carmen

I completed the Breathwork Teacher Training course and highly recommend to all to sign up and receive this education. The focus was Trauma informed Breathwork. My classmates were brilliant, consisting of Doctors, Clinicians, Nurses, and licensed therapists. Everyone in attendance was there to expand their knowledge for their personal practice as well expanding their skills for the benefit of their patients. The classes were professional, informative, and interactive. All of us walked away confident in our abilities to facilitate breathwork for our individual communities.

— N