Nathalia Westmacott
Why choose to breathe?
Because there is more to being human
than we have been taught.
And your breath knows the path.
“You must fulfill the way that is in you.”
— C. G. Jung, The Red Book
I cannot remember a time when I wasn't fascinated — intrigued — and just damn curious about the nature of human experience.
My parents went half crazy trying to answer my endless questions as a child.
"Why are we who we are, Mum? Could I have been anyone, and I just happen to be me?"
"How come I'm me and I'm not a tree, Dad?"
"Why am I here, now, when I could have been anyone, anywhere, at any time?"
And so it went on. It would be many years before some of those questions began to get the answers they deserved. And along the way, I found a lot more questions too.
Sometime around the great millennial shift, in the brand new year of 2000, I found myself walking alone along a beach, contemplating how I had managed to dissolve a successful career in film production with one serious car crash and a couple of serious drug dependencies.
And there she was.
My teacher. My mentor. My friend.
For the next few years, I watched her every move. I attended every workshop. I wrote down every scrap of wisdom.
And twenty-five years later, I am still grateful.
Thank you, Christina.
Thank you for sharing what you had learned from Leonard Orr, Sondra Ray and the many others who had walked this path before us.
And thank you for initiating me into the extraordinary world of Rebirthing Breathwork.
.
When did I realise that it was more fun to get into it, rather than out of it?
One moment standing in a grocery store waiting for a pint of milk, the next moment cruising at 10,000 ft through the Inner World, surveying the wild inner landscape, propelling and orientating myself with just one conscious breath after another...
“Burning with curiosity...
Down, down, down.”
— Lewis Carroll
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
We didn't always reach our destinations, sometimes we just stopped in the liminal spaces and counted ants
My Dad was a keen archaeologist when we were young.
School holidays meant being squeezed into the back of the Passat with the camping gear and driven off to some remote site or another, where Dad would meticulously excavate the earth.
Tap, tap, tap went the archaeological hammer.
Carefully revealing part of an Iron Age settlement, a Stone Age tool, a handful of pottery shards.
I was fascinated by his patience — and by the care with which he labelled every discovery with tiny yellow dots recording where and when it had been found.
Years later, I realised I had inherited something from him
Only my excavations weren't taking place in the physical world of earth and stone.
They were happening in the Inner World of memory, experience and imprint.
Like Dad, I would travel to a site of interest. Breath, intention and sometimes ritual helped me enter the territory.
And what I found there was vast.
I encountered child versions of myself at different ages and stages of development. Some happy. Some considerably less so.
Versions of myself I'd forgotten or abandoned.
Old loyalties. Ancient fears. Unfinished grief. Peculiar beliefs. Brilliant adaptations.
And a few things lurking in the shadows that frankly weren't suitable for polite company.
The deeper I excavated, the stranger — and more fascinating my inner world became.
Gradually, the Inner World began revealing its own laws.
Very little was random.
Every fear had a history.
Every defence had once defended something.
Patterns repeated, but if I followed their tracks carefully enough, I could often discover where they had begun.
Sometimes I found myself standing amongst smoking ruins of my own creation.
Even parts of myself I most wanted to erradicate eventually revealed a reason for their existence — and, if I listened closely enough, I might even hear the strategy by which they had once tried to keep me safe.
There were archetypes jumbled everywhere.
Kings. Queens. Wizards. Owls. Alligators.
An entire internal wilderness, wrestling for the opportunity to speak through and to my soul.
And beneath all this spectacle was the body — my body — quietly keeping records like some silent cellular librarian.
That changed everything.
The realisation that I could get to know my own being through the cells of my own body — no mushroom trip required — blew what was left of my mind.
I became less interested in asking "How do I get rid of this?" and more interested in asking "What made this happen and how can I help?"
And once you get curious about what happened, another question inevitably follows, "How far back does this story go?"
So, I guess that's why Dad kept...tap, tap, tapping.
September 30, 1982: Smiling face of the NHS: Sister Ellen Willey shows some baby clothes knitted by staff at Fulford Maternity Hospital to eight-day-old James Sturdy
"Through years of careful exploration, I discovered that many of the struggles I had been trying to solve in adulthood weren't random at all...they had histories."
In the beginning, I just wanted the pain to stop.
The pain that quietly follows you through life until it starts to feel as though life itself is hurting.
I tried drowning it. I tried working harder. I tried distracting myself.
Nothing lasted.
Then, around the year 2000, I met my teacher, Christina, and was introduced to Rebirthing Breathwork.
I wanted a quick fix.
Instead, she kept inviting me back to what we jokingly called "the scene of the crime" — my birth.
I resisted at first.
But the deeper I listened to my body, the clearer a pattern became.
Again and again, the archaeology pointed towards the earliest chapters of life.
Towards birth.
Towards life in the womb.
Towards experiences that happened before memory, before language, before I even knew my own name.
Through years of careful exploration, I discovered that many of the struggles I had been trying to solve in adulthood weren't random at all.
They had histories.
Some reached back further than I had ever imagined.
That discovery changed the direction of my life.
I stopped asking "How do I get rid of this?"
and became much more interested in asking
"Where did this begin?"
The archaeology kept pointing in the same direction.
So I kept...
tap... tap... tapping.
A Little Book About Breathing
DK/Penguin Publishers
For years people asked me if I would write a book.
Eventually, a publishing house asked the same question.
So I tried an experiment.
Could I distil almost twenty years of breathing, listening and learning into something you could slip into a coat pocket?
This little book was the result.
It won't tell you everything.
It was never meant to.
Think of it as another doorway.
CLICK ON THE BOOK TO FIND IT ON AMAZON
Upcoming Event
Click on image for further details.
Date: 18-20 September 2026
Co-created by: Nathalia Westmacott - Elemental Breathwork
Neil Pinnock - 5-Rhythms Movement
& Ruana Xerri-West - Vocal Improvisation Technique
Venue: Wildways Retreat Centre, Shropshire, UK
