Who is Breathe with Joy?
Hi I’m Joyce, pleased to virtually meet you.
I’m a trained breathwork facilitator in the Elemental Rhythm modality, as well as the founder of Breathe With Joy. I’ll be accompanying you during your breathwork journey.
I appreciate your interest in breathwork and the desire to change your life. Breathwork has changed my life for sure, and the roots of my work reach back to childhood.
Childhood Breathing Problems
Looking back at my childhood now, through the lens of breathwork, I realize I wasn’t the healthiest kid. My lungs and I have a very special relationship now. Why?
Because I had asthma as a child. I was constantly using an inhaler. I underwent medical treatment for asthma from age 8 until age 15. Every month I made a trip to the hospital for my treatment. Sometimes, I would also get pneumonia.
More often than not, my lungs betrayed me, and they felt more like enemies than friends. I viewed my physically-challenged childhood as a blemish, instead of a beauty mark. As adulthood dawned, I left thoughts of my asthmatic childhood behind and pursued a career in tech.
My Professional Career in Tech
For over 10 years, I have worked as a program manager in tech, including experience with digital transformation projects and Web3 technologies. I’ve enjoyed working in the Web3 field because it’s fast, unpredictable, and I collaborate with super intelligent people. The culture helps me learn about abstract concepts in blockchain product development, cross-functional team management and operational process optimization. The tech world always challenges me.
I know this world well. The tech world makes demands, from the always-on pace, to the context-switching, and being the person others rely on to hold things together. However, with a corporate career come costs that are often overlooked.
High-performing environments demand a lot of your nervous system and take a toll on the psyche. Most of us never learned how to maintain a healthy nervous system, nor how to replenish our emotional battery. Often the corporate world has an inability to see and respond to intangible, health problems that go well beyond the naked eye.
This isn’t just my personal observation either. The workplace is indifferent to our mental health. Consider this data point- job burnout at 66% in 2025. The burnout figure reaches 62% for C-suite executives and 78% for middle managers.
Thus, my interest in and passion for breathwork comes as no surprise. In fact, even though biological breathing is a natural physiological process, structured breathing methods and tools that manage respiration are considered breath technology.
So my career in tech continues, albeit with a focus on people now, instead of software. My career pivot towards people and the health of their mind, body and spirit began taking shape a few years ago.
How Breathe with Joy Manifested
Breathwork began breathing new life into me around five years ago. A sequence of events took place that demonstrated the power and vitality of breath to me. The first event happened thanks to a simple day of swimming.
Swimming in the Danube
When I lived in Vienna, Austria, on a beautiful summer day, a friend and I went to swim in the Danube river. We always went to the same spot and our swimming afternoons became a ritual. Then one day, the ritual gave me a glimpse of the vitality of breath.
My swimming friend had been doing Wim Hof breathwork exercises in the morning, before starting the day. While swimming, my friend said, “Hey, I can hold my breath for three minutes. I can go underwater for 3 minutes.”
I found this hard to believe. My friend enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle that included unhealthy habits like smoking. My incredulity got the best of me and I said, “Yeah, sure, you know, like you smoke and everything.”
My friend promptly held his breath underwater for three minutes and proved me wrong. I was in near disbelief. “How did you do that?” My friend told me that he had been doing breathwork every morning. So this experience was a breath of fresh air, and it stoked my competitive nature.
I said to myself, “If this dude can do that, I can do it too.” I began my own breathwork practice in the morning and tried to catch up. But my new interest in breathwork didn’t initially become a habit. Although after some time passed, I began participating in breathwork sessions with friends that led to a second, unique breathwork experience.
High on My Own Body
I didn’t know that I was about to discover a new experience within myself. I got invited to do ketamine breathwork with friends. But I chose not to do ketamine. I just did the breathwork.
During the session I reached an altered state of consciousness. The state I entered granted me a unique perspective on a memory of suffering. The experience twisted my reality and felt like years worth of therapy in one night.
In response to the altered state I entered I said, “Oh my God. I just got high on my own body!” My experience shocked me, and it felt crazy. I wondered, “How could I enter an altered state without taking any kind of substance?”
A meditation followed the breathwork session, and I soon realized I had practiced Elemental Rhythm. Elemental Rhythm is the breathwork practice that I facilitate and teach now. The breathwork session served as a message I felt I had to listen to.
I got hooked and started doing daily breathwork. In the days and weeks following the experience, I benefitted from sharper focus, deeper rest, more presence. My breath became the counterbalance I didn't know I needed.
I started bringing breathwork to my friends. I conducted casual sessions for them while lying on the floor, with the music on, and cycles running. Afterwards we debriefed what came up, what shifted and what we hadn't told each other yet. Those sessions deepened our friendships in ways years of conversation can’t. That's when I realized I wanted to share breathwork with others, so that they could discover new experiences within themselves.
The Sound of Silence
My personal journey going inward continued, and I took an interest in silent retreats, but didn’t think much about the impact. I went to my first silent retreat with no expectations in January of 2024. When I entered total silence, I met my destiny.
At the end of the retreat, a dialogue unfolded in my mind.
“What am I doing? What am I investing my time and energy in?”
“I can't continue living like that, it's absolutely not fulfilling me.”
“I'm not made for this.”
“I know the girl who's drawn to the depths of the mind is still alive in here.”
I had a wake up call to follow my passion to reduce people’s psychological suffering. I was already doing breathwork sessions with friends who deeply trust me and open up to me. I thought, “Ok, I’m going to start chasing what is calling me.”
I Breathe with Joy Too
Now, I realize the impressiveness of my altered state of consciousness experience. I feel enormous gratitude and respect for the capacity that my lungs have now. Considering my asthmatic childhood, to now have the ability to experience an altered state and connect to my body using my lungs is an amazing feeling.
I’m grateful to share the gift of breathwork with you. Perhaps the most often asked question when meeting someone for the first time is, “What do you do?”
When in this situation, I answer that I’m a project manager in tech. Even though most people say, “Oh, that’s cool,” I feel awkward. I make myself feel small.
Now when people ask me the same question, and I reply, “I’m a breathwork practitioner” and I feel proud for the first time in my life.
I want to make you feel the best you can too.
Thanks for coming to Breathe With Joy, and taking the time to learn about me. Please check out my Services page to learn more about Elemental Rhythm and my sessions.