BREATH TAPAS

What Happens When You Give Yourself Five Minutes a Day?

I’ve been practising breathwork more consistently recently, and something interesting has happened.

I started with five minutes because five minutes felt doable. It didn’t require a big rearrangement of my morning, special conditions or enormous amounts of motivation. I could simply sit down, breathe and get on with my day.

Now five minutes often feels far too short.

Not because I’ve suddenly become incredibly disciplined, or because I think everyone needs a lengthy daily breathwork practice. It’s because once I started making that little bit of space regularly, I began to notice how much I enjoyed having it.

And that got me thinking about how we build practices that actually stay with us.

We often start too big

There’s a tendency in wellbeing to turn everything into a project.

We decide we’re going to meditate every morning, exercise five times a week, journal every night, completely overhaul our sleep and somehow become a different person by next Tuesday.

Then life happens.

The practice becomes another thing on the list of things we should be doing, and eventually we stop.

I’m increasingly interested in the opposite approach.

What happens when we make something small enough that it can genuinely fit into our lives?

Five minutes of breathing.

That’s it.

Why Breath Tapas?

In yoga philosophy, tapas is often translated as discipline, commitment or the willingness to keep showing up.

I like that idea, but perhaps not the version of discipline that tells us to push harder or beat ourselves up when we don’t manage something.

For me, this is much more about returning.

You practise today. You come back tomorrow. If you miss a day, you come back the day after that.

The interesting bit isn’t whether you can maintain a perfect streak. It’s what you begin to notice when you stay with something for long enough to experience it for yourself.

That’s why I’ve created 30 Days of Breath Tapas.

A tiny daily commitment, made together

Starting on 1st September, we’re going to spend 30 days committing to a short daily breath practice.

And it’s completely free to join.

When you sign up, you’ll receive an introductory video and three guided breath practice videos.

You can choose whichever practice feels useful that day, stick with one you particularly enjoy, move between them, or completely ignore my practices and use one of your own.

This isn’t about following a rigid programme. The commitment is simply to make the space and breathe.

Five minutes is enough.

Morning, lunchtime, after work, before bed. It doesn’t particularly matter when you do it. What matters is finding somewhere it can realistically live in your day.

Why are we doing it together?

One of the things I found particularly helpful during my own breath training was accountability.

There is something about knowing other people are practising alongside you that makes showing up a little easier.

Not accountability in the sense of someone checking whether you’ve done your homework. Nobody needs another person making them feel guilty about their wellbeing.

It’s much simpler than that.

When you join Breath Tapas, you’ll be added to our WhatsApp group, where you can check in after your daily practice, share what you’re noticing, ask questions and meet other people doing the same thing.

Some days you might have something interesting to say.

Other days your entire contribution might be: Done.

Both count.

The group is simply there to remind us that we made a commitment and that we’re not doing it alone.

What might happen after 30 days?

I don’t know.

And actually, I quite like that.

I’m not going to promise that five minutes of breathwork will transform your nervous system, change your life or turn you into a permanently calm human being.

Perhaps you’ll sleep better. Perhaps you’ll feel calmer. Perhaps you’ll notice your breathing more during the day. Perhaps five minutes will gradually become ten because, like me, you find you don’t particularly want to stop.

Or perhaps the most useful thing will simply be discovering that you can create five quiet minutes in your day that belong entirely to you.

That’s enough.

Because this isn’t really a 30-day transformation challenge.

It’s an experiment in consistency, curiosity and showing up.

Thirty days.

A few minutes each day.

Three practices to explore.

A community doing it alongside you.

And absolutely no requirement to do any of it perfectly.

30 Days of Breath Tapas begins 1st September and is completely free to join.

Come and breathe with us.