Ep 194. How Breathwork Can Fast Track Your Healing, with Megan Ashton

My guest this week is Megan Ashton, founder of Unity Breathwork and a leading voice for raising safety standards in the breathwork industry. Megan spent most of her adult life escaping herself, first through alcohol and bulimia as a teenager, then later through constant travel that let her outrun her feelings entirely. It took a devastating breakup, and a breathwork session in Bali, for her to finally crack open decades of unprocessed grief, so that she could start the long journey of finding a way back to herself.

In this conversation, Megan and Ash unpack what conscious connected breathwork actually is, why it so often brings up trauma the body has been holding for years, and what it means to build a practice around genuine safety rather than chasing catharsis. Megan speaks candidly about the childhood wounds that shaped her patterns of numbing, the importance of proper preparation and integration when facilitating breathwork, and her mission to make this kind of healing as accessible and understood as yoga. This conversation invites you to think about acknowledging the feelings you’ve spent a lifetime avoiding.

Episode chapters:

00:00 Introducing Megan Ashton

05:24 The Photo: Hiding Behind the Smile in Nicaragua

07:32 Travel as an Escape Strategy

09:33 A Sensitive Childhood and the First Time She Numbed Out

11:17 The Slow Slide Into Bulimia

12:59 The Breakup That Broke Everything Open

19:57 Trying Everything Before Breathwork

20:27 The Bali Session That Changed Her Life

22:17 Discovering Her Mission in Conscious Connected Breathwork