Breathe with Kevin

I had no intention of becoming a breathwork facilitator. My intention was simply to get back to helping people.

The reason I became a breathwork facilitator is because it provided an answer to a question that had been sitting in my mind for nearly 30 years:

How do we help someone before they reach a crisis point?

At 21 years old, I worked as a front-line worker for The Union Mission for Men in Ottawa, Ontario — now known as The Ottawa Mission. My regular shift was from midnight to noon every weekend, along with additional shifts during the week.

Like every front-line worker, past, present, and future, there is very little we have not seen.

It would be easy to tell dramatic stories about the worst things that happened, but those were not the moments that stayed with me most. What impacted me most was watching people in crisis at 2:00 a.m. — angry because they missed a welfare appointment, unable to see a public health nurse to clean a wound, and now forced to sleep in a dorm with 110 people on a scorching July night.

What do we do when someone is escalating?

We do what we can with what we have: juice, coffee, cigarettes, walking around the block a few times, and listening.

When it worked, you were grateful.

When it didn’t, you knew there was a good chance you would be calling 911 before sunrise — and making sure you had an extra pair of latex gloves in your pocket.

Now that I’m trained in breathwork and practice it regularly, I often think about what impact these tools could have had back then.

Do front-line workers have access to these skills now?

Could breathwork become another tool in the back pocket of a front-line worker — instead of just extra gloves?

— Kevin