6-month BREATHWORK PRACTITIONER CERTIFICATION
You learned how to facilitate Breathwork. Now receive support as you become a Breathwork professional.
If you’ve completed the foundational 3-month Activation Breathwork Training that provided you with the foundations of understanding the somatic and nervous systems, science of breath and the mechanics of breathing, being trauma informed, how to facilitate individual and group sessions, introduction to energy work, ethics of somatic and breath work, peer practice sessions, a practicum, and leading a group session.
The next step is to upgrade your facilitation foundations with the professional 6-month Activation Breathwork Practitioner Certification. The 6-month program answers a different need: Anyone can become trained in Breathwork in a weekend workshop or through AI. But very few are true practitioners with mentored experience and value they give to their clients. This track supports facilitators who want to go from being trained to facilitate Breathwork to becoming a GPBA skilled, experienced, ethical practitioner who can build a sustainable practice and business.
In the 6-months of advanced practitioner mentorship, you will receive supervised client experience, business development and professional mastery designed to help you move from newly certified facilitator to confident practitioner with a sustainable body of work.
Completion of 3-month Activation Training + 6-month Activation Practitioner Certification = GPBA Ethically Compliant Practitioner
you don’t need more information. YOu need practice and mentorship.
why another 6-months?
What we have learned from our own experience and being mentored for 3 years after completing initial Breathwork Training, that it took time to gain the experience, knowledge, and mastery to have an ethical and trauma aware business in the healing arts.
We have also observed from past and current students since 2021, that they don’t need more information after they graduate the 3-month Activation Breathwork Training. They would come to us in emails, texts, and the Activation Alumni asking questions, challenging cases, or requesting coaching support on how to grow an ethical, sustainable, and successful business doing the work they are called to do with the natural gifts and capacities that were awakening within them.
They needed and wanted more practice and mentorship.
Unfortunately, our modern society and technology, has normalized weekend certifications and video only certifications before sitting with someone in their most vulnerable state - somatic awareness, emotional processing, breath and energy expansion and altered states of consciousness. This requires training and certification, as well as mentorship and supervision.
Our ancestors spent years of study and practice before serving others. Other professions require supervision, internship with case study review, and mentorship before and after entering their field. Why would Breathwork be any different?
We have been cultivating the 6-month certification over the past several years to ensure it meets requirements and you all of the support we felt ethical practitioners require. You will receive supervision, lived experience from mentors who have built thriving Breathwork practices, a safe container to practice, learn, stretch, cultivate your unique professional identity, and receive business mentorship - a true mastery as a practitioner.
THE PATHWAY
LEVEL I — Activation Breathwork Training
Activation Foundations Facilitator
3 months
Learn the method.
Step 1 of 2 toward GPBA Ethical Certification
LEVEL II — Activation Breathwork Practitioner Certification
Activation Foundations Facilitator and Practitioner
6 months (9 months total) + 50 documented hours
Practice the method professionally + build the business.
Step 2 of 2 toward GPBA Ethically Compliant Breathwork Facilitator Certification
LEVEL III — Activation Breathwork Advanced Practitioner Certification
Activation Foundations Facilitator and Advanced Practitioner
15 additional months + 400 documented hours
Advanced supervision, assisting, client hours, personal breathwork, continuing education and mentorship.
Aligned with GPBA Professional Breathwork Practitioner Certification
6-Month practitioner certification includes:
Professional Masterclass
Each month we will review different aspects on how to set up your business, find a way of operating that works for you and is sustainable, especially according to your Human Design.
practitioner Supervision
Each month we will review real cases, difficult situations, ethics, facilitation questions, advanced concepts in energy healing and integration.
Peer Practice Integration Lab
Each month you’ll engage and lead live group practice sessions to understand frequency field, group dynamics, and leadership while a mentor observes.
MEET YOUR FACILITATORS
Gwen is a consultant, coach, and initiator for her clients. She blends a 25-year career in pharmaceutical and biotech research and consulting, 20-years as a coach for executives, entrepreneurs and a wide variety of professionals, teams, couples, and families to go beyond the noise and use their human experiences to heal, grow and remember why their soul incarnated here, in sustainable and soulful ways. Through blending a Masters in Spiritual Psychology, Certifications in Professional Coaching and Life Coaching, Quantum Human Design Analysis and Coaching, Usui Reiki Mastery, Breathwork, Shamanic Energy Medicine Practitioner, and Safe and Sound Practitioner through PolyVagal Institute, Gwen has created the Somatic Medicine(TM) process, Activation Breathwork Training(TM), Moon and Menstrual Mastery Course, Grounded Group, Human Design Embodiment Group, and RISE Group Coaching. Gwen lives in Santa Monica as a single mom with her 11 year old son and 14 year of daughter.
Trish Brewer is a certified trauma-informed breathwork coach, Reiki Master Teacher, and Practitioner. She helps individuals committed to deep inner healing transform their lives by releasing trauma, reducing stress, and reconnecting with their authentic selves. She’s a co-author of Hot Mess to Hot Mom: Transformational Tools for Thriving After Childbirth and Beyond, We Lead Volume 2: Building Connection, Community, and Collaboration for Women in Business, and 100 Poems and Possibilities for Healing Volume 2. Certified in Breathwork coaching, Usui Holy Fire III Reiki, and trauma-informed practices, her unique approach blends these modalities with shamanic wisdom and ancestral healing traditions. She resides in southern Maryland, with her son, husband, and rescue dog, Max. Her daughter, lives in Newport, RI. Trish is a facilitator of Activation Breathwork Training in Annapolis, Maryland.
Frequently asked questions
How many students?
8–12 through application-only
Requirements: Completion of 3-month Activation Breathwork Training and application
Why do you have to apply? GPBA standards call for programs to assess someone's readiness and suitability for professional training through application.
Who is this training for?
If you are feeling called to create sustainable income from Breathwork offerings but don’t know how. If you want to take your Breathwork offerings to the next level. If you are just starting out. If you want to uplevel your current business and add Breathwork. If it is important to you to have certification.
The training is for someone who completed 3-month Activation Breathwork Training that wants to take what they learned to level of mastery and create a business. We’ve had therapists, coaches, healers, space holders, as well as stay-at-home-parents, executives, lawyers, accountants, architects, doctors, and more.
How often do we meet?
There are three live, virtual touch points per month:
1 × 2-hour Professional Masterclass / Mastermind - Gwen and/or Trish teach that month's professional topic and coach businesses.
1 × 90-minute Practitioner Supervision + Case Consultation - Gwen and/or Trish review real cases, difficult situations, ethics, facilitation questions, feedback.
1 × 60-minute Peer Practice / Integration Lab - Live practice sessions as a group to continue learning about facilitation, group dynamics, and maintaining soverign leadership
That's 3 live experiences/month × 6 months = 18 live sessions. Plus client hours, assignments, peer practice and recorded material.
Once during the six months, each student will facilitate while you or an approved mentor observes them and receives structured feedback.
What is the cost?
The tuition is more affordable than most trainings we have researched.
For the 6-month professional mentorship + clinical-style supervision + business mastermind + advanced training the investment is $4800. We offer a discount if you choose to pay in full $4800. We also offer 6, 9, and 12 month payment plans.
HOw much time should i expect to block off?
Mastery = practice.
Psychologist Anders Ericsson studied elite violinists in 1993 and found that, by age 20, the top performers had accumulated an average of around 10,000 hours. In recent years, author Malcolm Gladwell featured the concept in his book Outliers, stating that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is the magic threshold required to achieve world-class mastery in any complex field. When we look back to the ancients and indigenous cultures, the wise ones spent an entire lifetime mastery their craft.
We want to ensure you are practicing these concepts in your daily life, scheduling practice sessions, completing homework assignments, reading required materials, and providing case studies. Please expect to block off at least 5 hours per week for the training (live calls, practice sessions with partners, case studies, homework, and reading).
IS the training certified?
The short answer is yes.
When you completed the 3-month Activation Training + 6-month Practitioner Certification, you will meet the training requirements to be considered a Global Professional Breathwork Alliance (GPBA) Ethically Compliant Breathwork Facilitator, which you will apply for directly with GPBA after the training.
Currently there is no official governing body for Breathwork Certification, like there is a governing body for professionals like doctors, lawyers, therapists, or yoga instructors. We encourage all of our graduates to join the International Breathwork Foundation (IBF). But IBF does not “certify”. The only true certification for Breathwork facilitators is with (GPBA).
If you would like to be a GPBA Certified Professional Breathwork Practitioner, you would continue beyond the 3 and 6 month track, and enter into a paid mentorship with Trish or Gwen for an additional 400 hours of training over two years as listed below:
GPBA Certified Professional Breathwork Practitioner status requires at least 400 hours of training over a minimum of two years, including at least eight hours of ethics. Their standards allow those hours to include classroom training, supervised client practice, assisting training, observing sessions, receiving Breathwork sessions, readings and written assignments. They also require professional training to include personal development, supervised client work, theory and peer support, and specifically call for trainees to take at least three clients through ten sessions each under supervision. Our Activation Advanced Practitioner Apprenticeship Track meets these requirements.
What are the training dates?
See below for dates.
Dates are currently being confirmed. Please return by Dec 1st for all dates.
All calls are required attendance in order to receive your certification (other than a bonafide emergency).
TESTIMONIALS
The training was a gift that I gave to myself to trust beyond the mind and traditional practices. The practices and new awareness I have implemented through our work together are supporting and witnessing a person's breath therapeutically has been significant. The impact that implementing these practices or awarenesses has on my life is that I have a deeper internal trust in surrendering to the unknown while also feeling very clear in stability. As a result of the training, I feel more deeply. I feel safe allowing myself to go to the raw, tender edge of my own emotions. This has helped me as a therapist and person. Feeling safe to feel deeply has had a prominent effect on me throughout the training and since I graduated from Breathwork training. What I liked most about the training with Gwen was the safety I had and felt to let down my guard, be fully myself, and be present. I was able to release “knowing” and allowed myself to be led and guided. I was curious and in a space of learning, but not mental learning. It was soul and heart learning. Gwen's openness was key for me. Gwen's connection to something greater than herself was very healing for me. Gwen's teaching and gifts are embodied and not performative. I was so moved by Gwen's personal shares within the teachings of what she has learned over the years, which helped a lot as a student.
Jenna Laski, MA, LMFT, Licensed Psychotherapist, Epic Family Therapy
I took Gwen’s Activation Breathwork Training after attending one of her Breathwork sessions in my community and was so blown away I had to learn her technique myself.
I have been trained in Breathwork before and have knowledge in this area as a certified yoga instructor but the depth of understanding about Breathwork and the ways that I am able, now, with this much deeper and more comprehensive understanding that I got from taking Activation Breathwork Certification, to use Breathwork as a therapeutic tool in my holistic psychiatry practice is invaluable.
I am so thankful I took the Activation Breathwork Certification. Thank you, Gwen!
Dr. Erin Griffiths, Holistic Psychiatrist, WHIP
Working with Gwen during the Activation Breathwork Training was a wonderful experience and investment in myself. I signed up for this deep dive with Gwen's coaching after seeing the benefits of breathwork in her New Moon and Full Moon circles in both my overall peace of mind and the insights I received during this powerful practice. The Activation Training was meaningful in both the time spent learning in a small group setting.
The changes I see in my busy life when I make the time to pay attention to my own inner wisdom and practice moving energy through my body using breathwork. The training is clearly organized, trauma-informed, and Gwen does a wonderful job of bringing in outside experts to add knowledge. I made deep connections with others in the group and felt incredibly supported throughout the entire training. I recommend this training to those who want to deepen their own breathwork practice and invest in their mind-body connection.
Ashley Richardson, Managing Principle Architect, EYRC Architects
“I was craving community, mentorship, and knowledge. I wanted to explore my intuitive abilities. Gwen crafted a beautiful journey of lectures, questions and answers, partner work, inner reflection, group sharing, and guest speakers. Breathwork is a powerful tool that will help you change your life and the lives of the people you do it with. Call it divine timing or fate of Gwen’s expert eye in attracting the people who are meant to work with these tools, this container will give you who and what you need as soon as you join. Whether you are looking to facilitate Breathwork, discover your intuitive abilities, connect with others on a healing journey, or catalyze your own self growth, Activation will come to you when you need it the most. Answer the call and say yes.”
HERE’s YOUR NEXT STEP
The 6-month certification involves:
Attendance at all live trainings, completion of all homework assignments and case studies
Support from Gwen and the community between live training calls in the private virtual community
Partner practice sessions between live classes
YOUR Investment means:
You are committed to attending and completing all live class sessions, practice sessions, group and 1:1 case studies
The investment for the training is non-refundable, so you continue regardless of what surfaces, because material will surface
Use it all for your healing, learning, and growth
training commitments:
This is a highly experiential modality therefore live attendance is required for the in-person or virtual sessions
Live practice sessions with your partners are completed during the training sessions and in your own time
You will receive powerpoint slides, homework and reading assignments and case studies
Gwen and Trish live support and guidance on all live calls and between sessions
