Counselling or Meditation & Breathwork – Which Is Right for You?
A gentle look at how stillness, breath, and therapeutic support work together.
This blog explores how counselling, meditation, and breathwork can support each other – helping you regulate your nervous system, integrate what arises in stillness, and create steady, grounded wellbeing.
Many people assume meditation and breathwork are supposed to feel effortless – yet the truth is, there are seasons when stillness becomes hard. You might try to meditate but find your mind racing. Perhaps you were once a devoted meditator and can’t seem to access that ease again. Or maybe breathwork classes feel incredible in the moment… but afterwards you’re overwhelmed, emotional, or unsure how to make it part of your everyday life.
Sometimes you leave a session with pages of insights you don’t know how to integrate. Other times, you avoid practice altogether because it brings up feelings you weren’t expecting. None of this means you’re doing it wrong. It simply means that stillness is revealing what needs support, not just release.
In this article, we’ll explore:
Why meditation and breathwork can feel difficult, confronting, or inconsistent
How counselling helps you understand and integrate what arises in stillness
How breath and stillness regulate the nervous system when it’s ready
When counselling, meditation, or breathwork might be the best place to begin
If you’ve been trying to build a practice, returning to one you used to love, or needing a gentler way to understand what stillness is stirring inside you, this guide offers a grounded, compassionate look at how breath, awareness, and therapeutic support can work together.
Why Stillness Brings Things Up (Even When You Don’t Expect It)
Meditation and breathwork calm the body, but they also lower the internal “volume” that keeps deeper feelings quiet. When you stop rushing, the unresolved parts of you finally have space to speak.
These shifts can look different for everyone:
waves of emotion rising
thoughts getting louder
old memories resurfacing
feeling raw or unsettled later in the day
difficulty relaxing, even when trying
This isn’t failure. This is the nervous system doing exactly what it’s designed to do – reveal what has been held when there’s finally space to feel it.
Counselling can help hold this unfolding in a deeper way. While facilitators often check in after sessions, there isn’t always space in a group setting to explore everything that arises. Counselling offers the one-to-one support to unpack and understand what your practice has opened.
How Counselling and Meditation/Breathwork Each Support Healing
Both approaches help regulate the nervous system, but they do so in different ways.
Counselling
Counselling helps you make sense of what’s inside – the emotions, thoughts, patterns, and pressures shaping your experience. It offers:
a safe, steady space to explore what arises
support when feelings surface during or after practice
clarity around the stories and beliefs behind tension
guidance for boundaries, rhythm, and self-trust
emotional integration so your body can settle more easily.
Meditation & Breathwork
Meditation and breathwork speak directly to the body. They help:
settle stress responses
slow racing thoughts
release tension
restore presence
regulate breath and vagal tone
create pockets of inner spaciousness.
For many people, meditation feels like a return to quiet clarity – a soft reconnection with presence. Breathwork, on the other hand, often feels like something inside has opened or shifted, giving the body space to complete what stress has interrupted. Both are forms of nervous-system communication, inviting the body and mind back into relationship with one another.
Together
When meditation reconnects you with presence and breathwork creates more space in the body, counselling provides the grounding needed to turn those moments of clarity into meaningful change. Counselling helps you explore what surfaced, make sense of emotional shifts, and weave the insights from your practice into daily life.
When these three supports work together, healing feels steadier, more sustainable, and easier to carry with you – even when life grows full again.
What If Meditation or Breathwork Makes Me Emotional, Anxious, or Restless?
Meditation can sometimes make you feel emotional, unsettled, or suddenly aware of what’s been pushed aside. Stillness has a way of bringing forward the things stress has kept out of view. These moments are signals that your system is processing something important, and may simply need extra support if challenging emotions or states persist.
You might notice:
unexpected emotion or tears
waves of thoughts or mental “noise”
restlessness or agitation
feeling “off” or unsettled afterwards
fatigue or heaviness
wanting to avoid the practice altogether
These responses are usually signs that something inside is asking for attention – not that you’re doing it wrong.
Sometimes this happens because:
IFS protective parts (like the Manager who fears losing control, or the Protector who keeps emotion at bay) may step in and try to pull you out of stillness.
Your system has too much activation or energy to move straight into meditation, and needs movement, grounding, or breathwork first.
Old emotions or memories are surfacing, and the body doesn’t yet feel safe enough to stay with them alone or in the environment you are in.
All of these are normal human responses to slowing down.
Counselling can provide steady support between sessions, helping you:
make sense of what’s being stirred
feel grounded when things feel raw or unfamiliar
understand the deeper patterns behind the emotional waves
explore which parts of you are trying to protect you
move from overwhelm into integration
turn insight into gentle, lived change.
Stillness shows you what needs tending. Counselling simply helps you tend to it at a safe, human pace – one that honours your protective parts, your body’s rhythms, and your readiness.
When Is Counselling the Right Place to Start?
If you’re finding it hard to settle into meditation or breathwork – or noticing the same emotions resurfacing again and again – counselling can be a grounding first step.
You might realise that stillness is revealing more than you expected, yet you’re not sure how to work with what comes up. Or you may simply feel that you can’t relax, can’t drop in, or don’t feel entirely safe being with your inner world on your own.
As these patterns repeat, you may notice:
you keep meeting the same emotional patterns in meditation
stillness makes you restless, activated, or uncomfortable
breathwork leaves you feeling tender, overwhelmed, or raw
insights arise, but you don’t know how to integrate them
you want clarity around boundaries, confidence, or decisions
something deeper is asking for attention, but the practice alone can’t quite hold it
Counselling offers a steady, relational space to pause, reflect, and make meaning of what the practices are showing you. It helps you understand why certain emotions or patterns keep appearing, explore which protective parts may be resisting stillness, and gently build the internal safety needed to deepen your practice at your own pace.
Stillness reveals what needs tending. Counselling helps you respond to it – slowly, safely, and with support.
Can Counselling and Meditation/Breathwork Work Together?
Absolutely – and often this is where the deepest, most sustainable healing unfolds. Each practice supports the other in its own way.
Meditation can soften your body before a counselling session, allowing you to drop more easily into the emotional landscape beneath the surface. Breathwork can regulate and steady you after a session, helping your body complete what stress has interrupted. And counselling can give shape, context, and meaning to the insights that arise during meditative or breath-based practice.
In the therapeutic space, I often use guided visualisations, direct experiencing, and body-led emotional processing. These practices help you access the same inner states you might touch in meditation or breathwork – except with relational support, grounding, and gentle pacing. Over time, many clients find they can move into these states more easily on their own, not by forcing a practice, but by learning how to feel safe enough to be present with themselves.
You may notice:
meditation softens your system before a counselling session
counselling brings clarity to what comes up in breathwork
breathwork helps integrate what was explored emotionally
you can drop into visualisation or presence more naturally over time
your practice becomes easier as your nervous system feels supported
protective parts resist less as internal safety grows.
Healing isn’t a straight line.
It’s a rhythm – between awareness and breath, emotion and presence, release and reflection.
Meditation, breathwork, and counselling simply offer different entry points into the same inner conversation. Together, they help the shifts you feel in practice become shifts you can live.
How Do I Choose What’s Right for Me (and My Budget)?
There’s no perfect sequence – simply the place that feels most honest for where you are right now. Depending on what you’re needing most, different supports may feel more helpful at different times.
Choose counselling when…
- you need to talk things through
- emotions feel tangled or heavy
- stillness brings up more than you expected
- patterns keep repeating
- you want clarity and direction.
Choose meditation/breathwork when…
- your body feels tense or overstimulated
- you need to settle your nervous system
- you’re craving quiet over conversation
- grounding feels more helpful than insight
- you want a practical way to calm your body.
If you’re unsure, start with whichever feels most doable today. You’ll know when it’s time to add the other in.
For Practitioners: How We Can Support Clients Together
If you’re a meditation or breathwork facilitator, you may have heard clients say:
“I feel emotional after class and I don’t know why”
“I can relax here, but it doesn’t last once I’m back in everyday life.”
“I just can’t let go – my mind takes over.”
These are signals that your client may benefit from a companion space to explore and stabilise what is opening for them; or stopping them from the receiving the benefits of the practice.
Counselling complements your work by offering:
integration between sessions
support with emotions or patterns stirred in stillness
grounding during stress or life transitions
gentle, non-clinical therapeutic reflection
If you’d like to support clients more holistically, you can download my Counselling Alongside Meditation & Breathwork Fact Sheet or get in touch for light-touch, supportive referral pathways.
Closing Reflection: When Energy and Emotion Meet
Before we finish, it can help to remember that each modality plays a different role:
- Meditation softens the edges.
- Breath brings you home.
- Counselling helps the meaning settle.
You don’t have to choose one path or get it perfect. You simply need spaces that help you meet yourself – in breath, in awareness, and in gentle understanding.
If you’re curious where to begin, you’re always welcome to reach out.
Meet The Author
Amy Doyle
Amy is a Holistic Counsellor who helps her clients move from this idea that they are broken or missing pieces of their own puzzle, to owning their story, claiming back all parts of themselves and merging together as one team to allow them to rest and be in their deepest expression.
Blog Reference Sources
Lindahl, J.R., et al. (2017). The Varieties of Contemplative Experience: A Mixed-Methods Study of Meditation-Related Challenges. PLOS ONE.
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