Is Breathwork a New Avodah?

By Moshe Kesler

Recently, I’ve been noticing something that feels new in Crown Heights. You start hearing it in conversations, you see it mentioned in articles—breathwork, trauma, emotion code. Suddenly, everyone seems to have an opinion.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. I figured, okay—there are always these kinds of things going around. Maybe it’s just a certain type of more “modern” crowd looking for something they can feel a little more, something a bit more… “spiritual.”

But recently, I started looking into it more carefully—and what struck me was that it’s not just that crowd at all. Many of the people involved are Chassidishe Yidden. People who learn Chassidus, who daven, who come from Chassidishe homes.

And I didn’t really get it.

If Chassidus has so much to offer—and it does—then what exactly are people finding there that they’re not finding here?
The way people talk about this usually goes in one of two directions. One side is: if you were just learning Chassidus properly, you wouldn’t need any of this—which is basically saying, “if you were a little more Chassidish—like me—you wouldn’t need it.”
The other side is usually stronger. It’s not just some kind of funny spiritual thing—it’s like, what is this? This sounds like avodah zarah. This is not something we get involved in. And to be fair, that second reaction doesn’t come from nowhere. People hear where some of these ideas are coming from, and they’re not wrong to be uncomfortable.

But even with that, the more I’ve been listening to this, the more it feels like we’re missing the point—what’s really going on. At some point, I started thinking maybe this isn’t really a Chassidus question at all. Maybe we’re just looking at this wrong.
Just think about a normal day.

You wake up and you’re already behind. Before the day even starts, the phone has pulled you in—WhatsApp, messages, the noise of everyone else’s lives. It follows you everywhere. It’s there in the background while you’re learning, while you’re davening, even at a farbrengen. You see it in the way people schmooze; they’re physically there, but their minds are half-somewhere else. There is always something to take care of, someone to help, something you should be doing.

And you feel it. You’re a little on edge all the time.

So when a person is in that kind of state, it’s not that Chassidus doesn’t work. It’s that it’s very hard to access anything that needs calm, focus—even just sitting for a few minutes and thinking.

You see this very clearly on Shabbos. People are overwhelmed during the week—and then Shabbos comes, and they’re just… different. It’s not like they suddenly started doing breathing techniques. They’re just off their phones, eating a hot meal, and schmoozing with friends after davening. Nothing crazy happened. They just had some space.

And once you look at it that way, a lot of these approaches start to make more sense. They’re not crazy. They’re doing something real. They slow a person down, they take the edge off, they give a sense of relief. And honestly, when a person suddenly feels calm after being so overwhelmed, it can feel like something major just happened.

Take holotropic breathing—basically hyperventilating until your normal sense of consciousness shifts. It can feel incredibly powerful, like you’re finally going beyond yourself.

But what’s actually happening is simpler: you’re stepping out of the experience. You’re getting space. You’re finally calming down. And that matters. It’s real. But it isn’t change.

Because a few days later, you’re back in the same life, dealing with the same pressures and the same patterns. That’s why you have to keep going back. It’s relief, but it’s not a different way of living.

This is why the Chassidic approach feels so different. It’s not interested in helping you “manage” your issues or find a temporary escape. It’s asking a much harder question: What kind of change needs to take place in me for this issue to stop being a problem?
If the issue is not the problem, but the way I relate to it, then the only real change is a change in me.

Modern culture is built on control—figuring things out, managing everything, making sure nothing feels overwhelming. Chassidus is the opposite. It’s about letting go of that control. It’s about coming in with a certain sense of innocence, with a sense that there is something higher than me that is running things—and that I’m not in control in the way I think I am.

Once that shifts, the same problem doesn’t hit the same way anymore.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t use these tools. If something helps you slow down, that’s a good thing. But they have to be understood for what they are: a means, not an end. They give a person space—and sometimes that space is exactly what you need for something deeper to finally land.
But part of what’s going on here is that people are trying to hold onto a very intense, very modern lifestyle while trying to avoid the internal cost of it. They look for something that will relieve the feeling without really changing the structure that’s creating it.

And that’s where the tension is. Because once the moment passes, you’re back in the same life. Same pressure. Same patterns. Same way of relating to it. So you go back again. And again.

And at a certain point, you start to realize—you’re not trying to change your life. You’re trying to survive it.