My Story
Andrew Ragan
We offer what we need, and I found this work because I needed it.
From the age of 13, my low back was a constant source of pain. I remember summer conditioning runs for pop Warner football—having to stop minutes in because my back would spasm.
At the time, I thought it was just physical. And part of it was. But the deeper truth was that my body was responding to an environment that didn’t feel safe.
My mom was struggling with alcoholism. Home was unpredictable—embarrassing, frightening, and chaotic. And that chaos didn’t just live in the air. It lived in me.
Without knowing it, I spent years in a state of fight-or-flight.
I clenched. I braced. I tightened my hips and carried tension along my spine like it was normal. My body learned early that vigilance was protection.
I also learned how to perform and make everyone think everything “was all good.”
At school and with friends, I wore what I now recognize as the “golden boy” mask: straight A’s, sports captain, do everything right, be liked, don’t need anything. I looked fine. I looked successful. And the cost was my vulnerability. I stopped crying. I stopped asking for help. I learned to override what I felt in order to function.
Strength training became my outlet.
I lifted ferociously. Muscle became my armor and my identity.
Training gave me structure, discipline, and a sense of control—but it also allowed me to keep avoiding the deeper pain. The stronger I became on the outside, the more disconnected I grew from my inner world. Protection slowly replaced connection, and I didn’t realize how far I’d drifted from myself.
From the outside, I looked grounded and together. Inside, I was managing, controlling, and hiding.
It was normal for me to say one thing and feel another. To think something and say the opposite in order to be liked or to keep the peace. I had learned how to survive by minimizing myself. At the time I didn’t even realize this was how I operated - self abandonment had become my normal way of being.
Fast forward over a decade and everything shifted in my early 30s, when my son River was born.
He came into the world perfect, and I burst into tears—the first time I had cried in over a decade. I remember feeling light emanate from my heart and ripple into the room. Something cracked open in me that I didn’t know was even possible.
I felt profound love from my heart. It wasn’t a conceptual idea of love, I FELT love in my heart and it rocked me to my soul.
Within days, my body followed. My low back pain returned with a vengeance. I was at my biggest, competing in power-lifting, and I couldn’t hold my seven-pound baby without searing pain.
I was strong. I was fit on the outside. And I was falling apart.
That moment forced honesty. The strategies I had relied on—discipline, strength, control—were no longer enough. I was in physical pain and emotional overwhelm at the same time.
The tears that began flowing with my son’s birth didn’t stop, and I didn’t know how to make sense of what was happening.
The years of pent up feeling and disorganization sent my life in a tailspin. The torrent of pent up feeling and confusion led to my wife and I separating, my business partnership with my best friend dissolving, and me all of a sudden living in my friend’s basement. I began seeing a somatic therapist and it gave me language for something I had never been taught: trauma isn’t just what happens to you. It’s what happens inside you when the system doesn’t get to complete what it needed to.
That insight changed everything.
I began seeking out approaches that worked with the body, not against it.
I learned how to build strength without bracing.
How to feel emotion without collapsing.
How to lead my life from my soul centered sense of self instead of protection.
Over time, my hard wired defense mechanisms softened.
My nervous system regulated. My relationships positively shifted. And a deeper sense of alignment began to replace the constant push.
That was the beginning of coming home. As the saying goes, we often end up offering what we needed most.
This work—integrating movement, mentorship, and medicine—became the bridge between performance and wholeness.
Between striving and truth. Between who I learned to be and who I actually am. And now, it’s the path I walk alongside others.
Practices that didn’t require more willpower or self-control, but instead taught me how to listen. How to slow down. How to feel without being overwhelmed. How to let my system unwind instead of override.
Strength training shifted from creating armor to practicing yoga and how to listen to my body.
Mentorship, therapy, and coaching gave me mirrors, language, understanding, guidance, and self compassion I never had.
And later, carefully held psychedelic medicine work allowed me to access parts of myself that had been protected and buried for decades—grief, fear, tenderness, truth.
The transformation didn’t happen all at once. It happened through patience, curiosity, and integration.
Modalities
I Draw From
My approach is integrative & trauma-informed.
Depending on the client, I may draw from…
Somatic Coaching & Nervous System Regulation We pay attention to what your body is doing in real time—tightening, bracing, checking out—and work with those signals so stress doesn’t immediately turn into control, shutdown, or reactivity. Apply
Strength Training as Embodied Practice Strength becomes a way to build trust with your body, not override it. We notice how you meet effort, challenge, and fatigue, and train strength that feels grounded and connected rather than armored. Book Now
Breathwork & Internal Awareness Breath is used to settle a busy system or allow held emotion and energy to move—always with choice and pacing. This helps expand your emotional range without overwhelming your nervous system. Read More
Hakomi-informed somatic inquiry We slow moments down and explore your inner experience with curiosity—tracking sensations, impulses, and beliefs as they arise—so unconscious patterns can be felt, understood, and updated rather than analyzed or forced.
Parts-informed & relational inquiry
We work with the different parts of you that show up under stress—the achiever, protector, caretaker, avoider—so you can respond in relationships with more honesty and less reflex.
TRE (as regulation and recovery)
TRE is used as a tool to help your body release accumulated tension and complete stress cycles, supporting recovery, reduced chronic tightness, and a calmer baseline after intensity.
Psychedelic preparation & integration
When appropriate, we focus on preparing the nervous system, setting clear intentions, and integrating experiences afterward into daily life. The emphasis is on embodiment and lived change—not peak experiences.
No dogma. No forcing. We meet the system where it is.
Learn more about my training & experience here.
Read More
Breathwork
Breathwork is the practice of consciously working with the breath, generally for relaxation, meditation, or therapeutic purposes, and to unwind tension patterns in the physical, mental, and emotional body.
While conscious breathing practices have roots in indigenous cultures and traditions, the term breathwork now encompasses a wide variety of practices designed to affect the body and consciousness, from yoga pranayama and anxiety-reduction techniques, to breathing exercises for enhanced oxygen delivery, and practices that catalyze expanded states of consciousness.
As a breathwork facilitator and teacher of yoga and meditation, I draw on a wide variety of breathing practices to support holistic wellbeing for my clients. However, the primary modality I offer is conscious connected breathwork to access the deeper dimensions of the body, psyche, and spirit; in support of therapeutic healing, insight, and self-discovery.
Somatic Healing & Embodiment
Without conscious awareness, the breath is constantly responding to the events and conditions of life.
In experiences of overwhelm, fear, and stress, the breath becomes rapid and shallow, or suspends, as if frozen – a response of the “fight, flight, or freeze” system. In experiences of safety, comfort, and ease, the breath flows more freely and completely, signaling to the body that it can “rest and digest.”’
Throughout a lifetime of chronic and acute stress – including early childhood experiences that were overwhelming, traumatic, and exceeded our ability to cope – most adults have developed chronic tensions patterns in which the movement of the breath is restricted, contributing to a baseline of stress in the system (allostatic load) and some manner of dissociation and disconnection from the body.
The pendulum swings between anxiety and depression, often with reduced capacity to engage with the world and others, and often with increased physical ailment and ‘dis-ease.’
Done in a safe and supportive setting, conscious connected breathwork helps actively discharge accumulated tension.
In a breathwork session, you will be guided in a 3-part breathing technique – a 2-part inhale into the abdomen and chest, followed by a relaxed exhale.
Adjustments to the baseline breathing pattern are welcome as you explore the relationship between your breath and embodied experience, and you will be invited to explore breath holds and retentions, to pause and rest in awareness, and to welcome any body movements or sounds that want to express.
I offer guidance and support with verbal invitations for awareness, touch (optional), and energetic attunements.
A thoughtfully curated soundtrack will support you in getting out of your head, and into the deeper dimensions of your body, psyche, and spirit.
Why Breathwork? While talk-based therapy can bring about meaningful self-discovery and awareness, more than an intellectual understanding of our psyche and experience is often needed for healing.
The body can (finally!) enter a state of deep rest and relaxation, and reclaim the vital energy that was previously bound in those tension patterns. Benefits include:
+ An experience of coming home to one’s body and inhabiting it with greater ease, joy, and comfort
+ Completion of unprocessed emotional energy in the body
+ Reduced anxiety; release of accumulated stress
+ Alleviation of depression; increased physical vitality, energy, and inspiration
+ Enhanced nervous system regulation and greater capacity to consciously respond to “triggers” instead of unconsciously react
+ Alleviation of many physical ailments including gastrointestinal issues, headaches, insomnia, and more
+ Respite from mental rumination; deep relaxation and stillness
+ Greater mental clarity, more ease and authenticity in relationships and expanded states of Consciousness.
Experience the Benefits of Breathwork
Heightened self-awareness, perspective, and insight; new possibility
Creative inspiration (personal projects, work, life’s purpose, etc.)
Release of energetic weight and the burdens and pains of others
“Soul retrieval” and re-integration of aspects of our innate self that have been exiled
Embodied experience of the energetic field of life and one’s own body
Connection to the Source/God/Nature/Spirit. Less fear and existential anxiety.
More awe, delight, and ability to live from the heart
Breathwork is a form of experiential therapy in which the patterns and memory of the body, nervous system, and psyche can be accessed, with the potential to effect profound transformation in our day-to-day lived reality and experience.
Through the process of conscious connected breathing – and with the care and guidance of a skilled facilitator - breathwork supports Somatic Healing & Embodiment.
As an expanded-state therapy, breathwork provides an accessible way to explore non-ordinary states of consciousness…
…in which profound insight, clarity, and inner-wisdom can be discovered and embodied.
While expanded states can be accessed through deep meditative states, chanting, rituals like sweat lodge, taking plant medicines and psychedelics, or even through flow states induced by activities like running and surfing, breathwork is one of the easiest and most accessible ways to shift patterns of the mind and open the doors of perception so that you can see yourself and life from entirely new perspective.
In contrast to psychedelic work, breathwork is accessible, safe, legal, and can be dialed up or down in real-time to ensure the experience is one that can be productively integrated for the highest outcome possible.
Breathwork Considerations
Are there any precautions to Breathwork?
While this kind of breathwork is valuable to anyone interested in healing and personal growth, there are some conditions that may require modification or additional support and some conditions in which it is not recommended.
These include:
pregnancy
high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, or glaucoma
epilepsy
bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or dissociative identity disorder
history of severe PTSD or complex trauma
active spiritual emergency
If any of these apply to you, you are welcome to contact me to discuss potential modifications and to assess whether this work will be beneficial.
Trauma & Breathwork | While breathwork is a somatic healing modality that can be supportive in trauma resolution, it may NOT be appropriate for some histories of significant trauma. Please contact me if you have any questions about how to proceed mindfully and compassionately in your breathwork journey.