Why Breath Work Made My Anxiety Worse: Finding the Right Somatic Practice with Beverly Atkins

Beverly Atkins is the founder of pauseture, a mobile app that brings the Feldenkrais method, one of the most powerful and least known somatic practices in the world, to people who need it. She stumbled into it after putting her back out and not being able to walk upright for three weeks. What she found changed not just her back, but her relationship with her body, her food, her emotions, and her entire nervous system.

I have been using the app myself and I cannot recommend it enough. So we sat down to talk about all of it.

This episode is for you if:

• You feel disconnected from your body and live mostly in your head
• You have tried meditation or breath work and it made your anxiety worse, not better
• You are in recovery and need something gentle to replace compulsive exercise
• You carry tension, chronic pain or bracing in your body that nothing seems to shift
• You want to understand how stored trauma shows up physically and how movement can release it
• You are curious about somatic healing but don't know where to start

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Beverly's personal story of body hatred, extreme exercise, back injury and how she accidentally found the Feldenkrais method

✨ What the Feldenkrais method actually is, and why it is so different from yoga, pilates or conventional exercise

✨ Why the lessons ask you to close your eyes, go slowly and stop comparing yourself to anyone else

✨ How 24 days of gentle movement lessons changed Beverly's relationship with food at her calorie-abundant workplace

✨ Why Beverly stopped working out entirely for 18 months and what happened when she returned to movement

✨ Why traditional meditation and breath work made Beverly's anxiety worse, and why movement meditation worked instead

✨ How the method builds neuroplasticity and rewires habitual patterns in the brain

✨ Why the nervous system must feel safe before it can learn anything new

✨ The pelvis, trauma and bracing: what Beverly witnessed in her private practice with clients who had experienced sexual abuse

✨ Interoception and proprioception: noticing how you feel inside your body and how you fit in the world around you

✨ How this work can support body image and body dysmorphia by helping you sense your body accurately rather than just see it

✨ Why going smaller and slower in the lessons is where the most profound change happens

✨ How finding choice in movement quietly creates choice in every other area of life

✨ How to access the app, the free trial and how to find a Feldenkrais practitioner near you

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "The only thing permanent about our behaviour is our belief that it is."

💬 "Instead of judging yourself for falling back into an old pattern, just say: that's interesting. That's my old pattern. And now I have a choice."

💬 "I chose this food because of how it made me feel, not how it was going to make me look. That shift changed everything."

💬 "When we let go of judgment of ourselves, something profound happens. We start to meet other people, and life itself, with that same curiosity."

💬 "Your nervous system is not in a learning mode if it does not feel safe. Safety comes first. Always."

If you have been searching for something gentle, something that meets your nervous system exactly where it is without forcing or fixing, this might be it. I found it genuinely life-changing and I think you might too.

You can find the app by searching pauseture in your app store. There is a seven day free trial so you can experience it for yourself before committing to anything.

Pelvic mobility and its connection to back, shoulder, neck, and jaw pain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYMqCwZrrc

Much love. 💛

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