Carla McGreevy
Integrative Somatic +
Breathwork Practitioner.
IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT YOU
End current unwanted patterns by the root cause
Heal through your breath and your body
For resistant over thinkers who have done the talk therapy and are ready to feel what needs felt for their healing, their freedom.
Healing lies in feeling not intellectualising it and strangling your emotions to death with questions.
I work with people whose adaptation to trauma resulted in high career success
Yet struggle with intimacy, restlessness and being able to connect and listen to their bodies.
Clients access new oceans of intelligence that lie in their bodies through this work.
“What you are seeking is seeking you”
— Rumi
My Story
I always knew what I wanted, highly driven then at 28, then everything stopped working. I believed at the time I had no passions, I cared about nothing, and it was incredibly frightening to not be able to see a future. I was still highly functioning with depression which I did not identify at the time.
In my 20s I was addicted to being the busiest person you ever met.
I really felt I loved being that busy, the (false) self-worth it gave me. I resisted any idea or advice of the ever giving that up, I was very attached to this pattern which had served me to a point in my life.
At 28, I started therapy as I was in cycle of dating people with addictions and I yearned for true connection where we could both meet each other.
I was prescribed yoga and breathwork which I was disgusted at. It was very off brand for me. I had no mobility and I didn’t care I had no mobility, yoga was too woo woo and airy fairy for me. Yet despite training in gym 6/7 days a week I was completely disconnected from my body. I could not for the life of me believe people could feel sensations in their hands and feet or inhale past the count of 2. My mind was blown.
In peak brat mode I started Yoga. Yoga was impossibly hard, I didn’t know my arm from leg, my left from my right. I felt like I was playing Simon Says blindfolded and I looked it too. I was so used to trying very hard at everything and that had been working for me. Then in Yoga the more I tried, the more I held my breath and the more tense I got.
I had to finally learn to soften for things to work.
To try the feminine approach after years of being in toxic masculinity.
I hated yoga and I was shite at it. Yet. I don’t know what it was, but something kept me showing up. There was a part of me who knew this was the path for me. One day, my therapist asked me to give up my intense exercise regime. My first reaction? Are you high?. My secondary reaction? ‘She’s trying to make me fat.”
But she planted a seed and a few months later, I decided to stop all high intensity workouts. For around 6-9 months I practised yoga and walked. A complete 180 from the woman who trained even when she had kidney infections to prove how good she was, who pushed herself to her absolute limit every time as a way to unconsciously cope with emotions and to escape herself, which I loved to do.
“Teaching breathwork is a ridiculous concept Carla”
(My Da)
We all breathe all the time - it’s what keeps us alive.
So why would you learn to breathwork when your body naturally, and more thankfully automatically breathes?
It’s the way that we breathe that makes all the difference.
The research shows 70% people breathe poorly, which means they over breathe, and unconsciously mouth breathe fast and quite shallow.
It finds people don't fully exhale, don’t fully let go (ring a bell?) which impacts the ability to inhale. It is the inhale that energises the electricity in the 37 trillion cells of your being. For the love of god pay that more attention or equal attention to your water, food, sleep.
It is the exhale that triggers the automatic response to breathe, the need to release the stressor Co2, not the need to take in 02. When you release what you no longer need, you take in what you do. The breath teaches us so much about how to live.
Every inhale teaches us how we receive, accept, connect, allow
Every exhale shows us how to let be, surrender, let go with grace
Breathwork is a practice where you bring attention to your breath and manipulate how you breathe, ranging for longer inhales, exhales, fast breathing, breath holds. There are an array of ways you can change the way you breathe and each practise gives different results.
“I hold my breath.”
is the most common thing I see in people when life gets hard or when trying something new. Which is why yoga and meditation can cause more stress in the start than relaxation.
A big issue for the majority of people (research indicates 70% of us- James Nestor), (including ‘past me!’) is that we unconsciously engage in shallow breathing and mouth breathing which lowers O2 levels in the blood and triggers our sympathetic system (fight/flight mode). Which makes sense if you think about the way you breathe when you are scared.
Now, we’re only supposed to be in this state when we need to survive, we should be in rest and digest the majority of the time. This isn’t our reality, for most of us it’s the opposite. A high majority of people spend most of the time unconsciously in the sympathetic system and very little time in the parasympathetic.
The research also shows that this means our systems don’t work very well so even when we are in rest and digest, it’s often not as restorative as it should be.
When the body can’t truly relax and replenish, we end up with ill health, fatigue, and hormone imbalances.
To have more energy, better health, balances hormones we must breathe consciously, slowly and deeply.
Which as simple as it seems, is very difficult in today’s world yet the most powerful thing we can learn to do is truly relax.
This is where I can help… through education, movement and breathwork.
‘Wise yourself Up’ Podcast
Healing can seem so hippy dippy, out there and not relatable in the slightest. If you are anything like me…. can’t identify an emotion to save your life, too attached to chasing, and tired of not knowing where any of your belongings are, listening to my shares on controversial and uncomfortable topics should help.
Join me for raw, honest, vulnerable shares about my journey of healing, with a good stick of Belfast humor. Covering topics of abuse, fuck boys, being disorgansied chaos and addiction; with education around the tools that support healing and why they work. Listen and you’ll understand why this podcast is growing so fast and making such a big impact.
Hiya, I’m Carla
Somatic & Breathwork Therapist
Who began as an absolute brat who thought healing was a load of tripe. But desperation to not feel empty and blank made me try anything.
I came to this work completely skeptical, and very vocal about my cynicism to the trained professionals who were trying to help me.
I was diagnosed with CPTSD at 27, yet I was unaware that there was anything wrong with me or that I had ever experienced trauma previous to this. “Not real trauma”.
Yet I am childhood sexual abuse survivor and was separated from both biological parents at a young age. I was a straight A student, then had a successful fast-paced corporate career and trying too hard at everything got me everywhere.
Until then it didn’t. At 27 I couldn’t see anymore. I always knew what I wanted where I wanted to go then the rug got pulled from underneath me and I don’t know why. I felt empty, lost, and couldn’t see a future for myself. I felt I had no passions and nothing I cared about. It was very scary time.
A great friend bought me a Christmas book “How to find your North star” which said if you had big trauma, i.e. sexual abuse, you had to go therapy. I had tried before but I decided to try again.
I wanted to work with the best psychologist, and looked up Queen’s university to see who was leading research around abuse, healing and impact of abuse on development. I spotted a woman with my granny’s Scottish middle name Kavanagh and chose her. She was the perfect fit. After benign accessed I was diagnosed with CPTSD.
Then she prescribed me yoga as I had completely disconnected from my body to the point where I couldn’t register sensations in my hands. I couldn’t believe others could feel their hands.
Yoga is a practise that connects you to your body as you pay attention to your breath and move to feel sensations in your body.
My favourite definition from my teacher Tara Judelle is, asana are music notes, your body the instrument, the order in which you place the notes creates different melodies and the different instruments create different songs.
My worse fear on this earth, was to be still, silent and relax. Would rather die, was my younger response.
I did not take to yoga like a duck to water, more like sheep to water. The resistance was at an all time high as was the amount of tension in my body. I looked like a 60 year old rugby player trying to do yoga.
It was through yoga that I realised I was sniffing my breath. Rushing my breath like I was life. No wonder I was so disconnected and tense.
Then on my yoga teacher training (listen to podcast if you want hear the full story), I experienced my first breathwork session where I felt things I never thought possible. Simply by conscious breathing.
It was my first time trying breathwork, yet I had a full blown psychedelic experience and that was enough get me hooked on the mystery of the breath for life. And yes, I have tried psychedelics, DMT and ayahuasca included.
That’s what I offer: helping you to learn to listen to your own body though somatic movement, breathwork and inner work. It is often the next step after talk therapy, yet not everyone needs talk therapy as it can keep people attached to their stories.
Ultimately we need feel to heal.
To feel any unprocessed emotions that lie in our bodies for freedom and clarity.
More we make the unconscious conscious, the more autonomy we have over our lives, and body is map to the unconscious- Carl Jung.
This work has changed my life and I hope in time, it will change yours too.
Work with me online
Let’s get out of your head and into your body…
1:1 Breathwork & Somatics Therapeutic Sessions
Ready to surrender the thinking and get into the feeling? Start to lead life from your own inner compass to live your most authentic and connected life. Available online & in London.
Breathwork Classes: Belfast, London & Online
These breathwork sessions are deep dive into your inner oceans. Join me bi-weekly for my online Full Moon & New Moon Movement & to see what is being revealed to you.
20 hours online Breathwork + Somatics training
Learn how to heal the root cause of emotional trauma - next course beginning 16th May 2026.
Only 1 in 5 people who purchase online courses complete them, in my last 2 online courses 100% completed the course. I have created something that really works.
How My Clients Feel
