Can This Breathing Technique Help Heal From Childhood Trauma?

“My mom was someone I had spent nine years with. And abruptly, I had to leave her. Suddenly, my whole family broke down, and I had to stay with my dad. My mom was no longer a part of my family. It really left a very big impact on me. I was nine years old then,” says Vaishnavi Gowda. Vaishnavi is 20 years old now and is finishing her Bachelor of Management Studies, specialising in Marketing.

But she has had a difficult childhood. A child of a broken home, Vaishnavi remembers spending most of her childhood feeling unsettled and moving homes every few months. “We used to move sometimes to a village and sometimes to Mumbai. And within Mumbai, we moved around too. Sometimes to Bandra, sometimes to Nalasopara. So, we kept moving from one place to another,” she says, her voice calm and not carrying the heavy weight of the suffering she had to endure while growing up.

Research suggests that the effects of a difficult childhood can extend well into adulthood. A 2025 study (link) of more than 900 adults in Gujarat found a striking dose-response relationship between childhood adversity and mental health. Compared with people who reported no adverse childhood experiences, those who reported four to six had more than three-and-a-half times the odds of major depression. Emotional neglect, emotional abuse and witnessing violence at home were among the childhood experiences significantly associated with depression and anxiety later in life.

However, Vaishnavi seems at peace despite several adversities she faced while growing up. “A thought came to me at that moment,” Vaishnavi says. “Wherever she, my mother, is happy, let her be. The person who has left us should go. If we hold on to her, it will break more.”

What drove that change in Vaishnavi? She credits it to the Intuition Process that she did with Art of Living. After her parents divorced, she came to spend more time with “Moti Mamma”, her father’s employer, who introduced her to the Intuition Process and to Guruji, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Founder of Art of Living. Vaishnavi’s Moti Mamma got her into meditation and made her do Art of Living’s Intuition Process.

“What I am grateful for is the Intuition Process because it made my mind stable and helped me focus in one place,” she says in reflection.

Adolescence is often a challenging time for most teenagers. Academic pressure, changing friendships, and peer pressure to blend in, combined with reduced emotional support from family, often lead to social isolation. Vaishnavi is one example of how the feeling of isolation is exacerbated in adolescents with high levels of adverse childhood experiences. An adverse experience could be a result of many factors, including abuse or neglect from parents or relatives, bullying, a dysfunctional family, other traumatic or highly stressful experiences such as loss of a parent, or constant discord in the family.

Research also points out that girls, more often than boys, are impacted by adverse effects in childhood and adolescence. For instance, according to a 2023 World Health Organisation (WHO) study of approximately 280,000 adolescents across Central Asia, Europe, and Canada, more than one in four 15-year-old girls reported frequent loneliness, compared with only 13% of boys in the same age group.

This is where the role of breathing practices becomes important. Findings suggest that sustained practices combining breathing technique like Sudarshan Kriya and social-emotional learning may have a role to play in helping vulnerable adolescents feel more connected and overcome childhood traumas.
A recent study at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior confirmed this finding.

The study focused on 174 adolescent girls, aged 14 to 18, from two high schools in Southern California in the USA. The tool deployed in the study was Art of Living’s foundational breathwork program, SKY Breath (a shorthand for Sudarshan Kriya Yoga). The idea was to compare whether SKY Breath’s structured, rhythmic breathing technique brought in any additional benefits in emotional regulation, resilience and social connection, as compared to the standard techniques the schools previously deployed.

The findings at the end of the study were revealing, particularly for girls who had experienced higher levels of adversity in their lives. After eight weeks, the social connectedness score in this cohort showed an improvement of approximately 8% from baseline. More importantly, the girls who had faced the greatest challenges showed a measurable improvement in their sense of connection with others.

The role of the breath becomes particularly key here. As the global spiritual master and the force behind the SKY programme and Intuition Process, Gurudev says, “The breath is the link between the body and the mind.” Emotions and the breath are closely intertwined. For example, when we are anxious or overwhelmed, our breathing changes; consciously working with the breath can, in turn, influence how we experience stress. This understanding also informs Art of Living’s work with young people, where breathwork and meditation are introduced as practical tools for managing stress and building emotional resilience.

The impact was evident in Vaishnavi’s transition.

“Imagine where I was. I was just a person who used to get the lowest marks, sit at the back of the class and was considered one of the weakest students,” she says. “From there, I became the head girl of my college. I was the head girl for two years. As time goes by, as you start meditating and as there is more calmness in your mind, you realise that whatever bad thing has happened to you may actually become something that helps you grow in life.”

For Vaishnavi, perhaps that is what healing has meant, not erasing the past but learning to grow beyond it.

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