Welcome! We’re delighted that you found us and we’re grateful for your interest in who we are and what we’re up to…

Breathe First is an experiment, a project, a beckoning, and, mostly, an offering.

We are here on the shoulders of so many teachers, in so many forms, and our aim is to continue a great tradition of sustaining what serves us and re-purposing what doesn’t.

Per our founder, Emily, we now call our offerings—in aggregate— “Somatic Re-orientation.” We approach all our work through the overlapping lenses of ecology, neurobiology, poetics, and self-compassion.

Similar to—but deliberately different from—traditional talk therapy, the interplay of our offerings provides unique ground in which to take root and grow.

We work from a place that is genuinely holistic and thoughtfully varied, so as to help us all re-orient to this home we call earth. This, of course, is the only pathway for true re-integration of our fractured, disconnected selves.

In the face of our ongoing climate crisis, and the overlapping realities of devastation, our core ethics are all about love (like bell hooks taught), imagination, curiosity, awe, joy, delight, and play, to name some of our many guiding inspirations.

We believe in the power of a pause. There is much to be done. As often as possible, it’s good to breathe first.

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We were founded by Emily Thornton, in Chicago in 2016, as a collective effort to build community and invite everyone into opportunities for learning, changing, healing, and connecting.

We exist to share and metabolize all that we learn from each as we carry on in this ever-evolving journey, rooted in meandering conversation, shared discovery, wild imagination, and kinship with all beings.

We are here for you in all the ways we possibly can be as you begin, or continue, taking steps towards a more interconnected and joyful existence.