ABOUT
About SVARA
SVARA is a school for breathwork and somatic facilitation in Portugal that has been growing and changing since 2018.
It began with breathwork, but over the years it has become much more than a training in how to guide a breathing session.
The way we work today has been shaped by years of facilitating people, by our own personal processes, by studies in the nervous system and Somatic Experiencing, by bodywork, and by a deep relationship with nature, ritual and the elements.
Some things have changed a lot along the way. Others have stayed at the heart of SVARA from the beginning.
We care about the breath, but we care just as much about the person who is breathing.
We care about what happens in a session, but also about how it is held, what happens afterwards, and whether the experience can actually become part of someone's life.
And we care deeply about the people who choose to facilitate this work. Not only about what they know, but about how they relate to themselves, how they meet other people and how willing they are to keep learning.
SVARA is the result of that ongoing exploration.
HOW SVARA BEGAN
I never planned to create a breathwork training.
The name SVARA actually came to me years before the training existed. I was deep in my own yoga practice at the time, and during one of my practices the name simply came to me. I didn't know yet what it would become.
Breath had already been part of my life for many years. I had been working with people for a long time, first through my background in psychiatric nursing and later through yoga, nutrition, breathwork and different forms of therapeutic and personal development work.
Then people who had experienced my breathwork started asking me if I could teach them.
That was really the beginning.
In 2018, I started the first training group in Switzerland. It was a small group and a very different format from the SVARA training that exists today. Later, I began offering intensive trainings in Portugal, and little by little, SVARA started to take its own shape.
I didn't have a finished concept of what this school was supposed to become. It grew through teaching, through working with people, through what I was learning, and through questioning my own way of doing things.
And it is still evolving today.
A TRAINING THAT CONTINUES TO EVOLVE
The way I work with breathwork today is not the same way I worked with it when I started SVARA, and naturally, the training has evolved with me.
For many years I was fascinated by the depth of breathwork, by strong emotional experiences, catharsis and the places the breath can take us. I still see the value in these experiences, but with time my understanding of what creates meaningful change has become much broader.
My own personal process, my studies in nervous system work and Somatic Experiencing, and many years of working closely with people have changed the way I facilitate. I have become much more interested in pacing, in the capacity of the person in front of me, in what the body is communicating, and in creating enough space for an experience to actually be received and integrated.
Katrin has become an important part of this evolution. Her background in bodywork and her understanding of the nervous system have brought another depth to the training, especially in the way we work with the body, touch and what can be perceived beyond the breath itself.
SVARA continues to evolve because we continue to evolve. We learn through our work, through the people we meet, through our own processes and through staying curious about what we teach.
At the same time, the essence has remained: a deep respect for breathwork, for the individual person, and for the responsibility that comes with working with another human being.
OUR VISION
We want to contribute to a culture of breathwork where depth is not measured by intensity, and good facilitation is not measured by how much happens in a session.
We believe breathwork can be a powerful way of working with people. But the breath alone does not make someone a skilled facilitator.
We want to train facilitators who can think, feel and respond for themselves. Who understand the nervous system and trauma informed practice, but don't reduce a person to a nervous system state. Who can work with structure without becoming rigid, and with intuition without losing discernment.
We want facilitators who can stay present with intensity, but also with silence, uncertainty and the moments where nothing seems to happen.
Nature, ritual and the elements remain part of this work because we don't see human beings as separate from the wider living world.
Ultimately, we want to contribute to a field where breathwork is practised with more maturity, responsibility and respect for the individual person.