I Didn’t Expect To Love Open’s Breathwork Classes – Now They’re My Secret To Stress Relief

‘That was healing,’ was genuinely the first thought that slowly surfaced in my mind at the end of my introductory breathwork class at Open’s Venice, LA studio. I was admittedly caught off guard by how much lighter I could feel in just 60 minutes – and I’ve been equally surprised by the overwhelmingly positive feedback I’ve received from so many people I’ve mentioned the studio and the Open app to:

“Everyone’s talking about Open!! People at work, people at this bday I went to, my gay circle,” my friend Nic texted me. 

“I LOVE Open. It’s so good.” Via another friend, Miles.

“Every Sunday,” someone answered when I asked a dinner table full of local friends if any had been to the studio. 

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised: the classes are deeply transformative, and the studio itself is stunning – and then there's the app, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people around the world who get to experience the same thing, from anywhere. Open seeks to bridge the gap between science and spirituality to help regulate the nervous system via breathwork, meditation, movement, and sound techniques. 

Their classes, both IRL and digital, are designed by experts in neurobiology, and they’re exactly what most of us need right now. I just wasn’t ready for how approachable the practice would be, and how open I’ve quickly become to relying on breathwork and simple movements to radically change my mood, stress levels, and sleep. 

The Big Idea

While words like breathwork, meditation, and sound techniques might sound a bit ~woo woo~ there’s actually a lot of science behind their impacts on the nervous system and brain. In fact, your breath is one of the most direct and scientifically-supported ways to regulate your body and improve your mood. 

How, exactly? Controlling the pace, pattern, and direction of your breath alters the activity in your brain and both branches of your autonomic nervous system. By quieting certain regions of your brain, stimulating others, and learning to balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic activity of your nervous system, you can do incredible things – like enhance cognitive performance (e.g. focus, concentration, memory), reduce markers of stress (cortisol levels in blood, inflammation), diminish anxiety, improve sleep quality, increase energy levels, and strengthen stress resilience.

Or, perhaps I can just say this: Dr. Andrew Huberman is a huge advocate of breathwork. He found that brief (as short as 5 minutes) breathwork outperformed meditation for improving mood and autonomic regulation and lowering stress. 

So It’s…Breathing?

In short, yes. But there’s a routine to it. Breathwork involves active breathing with a conscious emphasis on the pace and length of each inhale and exhale. The classes that I’ve attended in person focus on three-part breathing: one inhale fills the belly, a second fills the chest, and the third part is an intentional exhale. Inhale through your mouth for a more intense experience, or ease into things through your nose. 

The IRL classes include around 35 minutes of this breathwork set to incredible music (Open’s app, by the way, boasts industry-leading music programming, including partnerships with Grammy-nominated artists like KAYTRANADA, Blood Orange, and PARTYNEXTDOOR – pretty cool), while breathwork sessions on the app (more on those below) can be as short as a few minutes for resetting and refreshing.

This Sounds Great In Theory…

But how do you actually get started on a practice? I had the same question after years of yo-yoing between a serious commitment to meditation, yoga, etc. and falling off the wagon. As one of my instructors recently explained, ‘Breathwork is work,’ and carving out the time and energy to focus on it is no small feat!

That’s where Open shines. In addition to their studio, which guides such welcoming and transformative classes that it’s easy to get hooked, they have tons of digital classes and programs on the Open app – Nervous System Rest, Mental Detox, Stress Cleanse, Heart & Heartbreak, Dear Mama to name a few fan favorites – that keep you accountable without requiring an intimidating commitment. Plus, features like badges, push reminders, daily inspirational quotes, and a well-curated Community tab both hold you accountable, and connect you with an incredible community of individuals also leaning into the power of breathwork and movement. 

Open’s programs are taught by the same instructors who guide the in-person experiences, and they’re designed for just about any experience or concern you may have. Each series has a number of episodes that hover around ten minutes and lead you through a really lovely meditation or breathwork experience. The episodes make it easy to set aside a little time each day to ground yourself in the now, hone in on the current moment, and release every other concern, worry, or thought that could be on your mind. 

Over the course of just days, prepare to notice small, but important, changes: a different response to stress, enhanced mental clarity, better sleep quality to name a few. 

Inhale, Exhale

I remember when, a few years ago, I finally ‘got’ the point of yoga. While talking to my mom (who’s an amazing yoga instructor) I realized that the emphasis on your inhales and exhales and intense focus on engaging your muscles is to ground you entirely in the present moment. When you’re paying such close attention to how your body is moving and feeling and  breathing, you’re forced to hop off the hamster wheel of worrying about work projects and relationship drama and whatever’s coming next in your day and only think about right now. 

It’s also called a ‘practice’ because while engaging in your breathwork or meditation or conscious movement, your thoughts will likely drift to that project or relationship time and time again. The practice of it all is in recentering your breath, refocusing on the here and now. 

Over the past few weeks using the Open app (while working, traveling, and prepping for bed) I’ve enjoyed reprioritizing this practice and noticing its immense benefits. Open is such an approachable and impactful reminder that the path to feeling – moving, sleeping, engaging, working, and being – better is right under my nose. All I have to do is breathe… 

‍Join me on the Open app. Here’s a free month!