What Ellice Boone Taught Me About Breath, Subtlety, and Befriending Your Body
I'll be honest with you: my relationship with breathwork has been complicated. I practice breathing every day, a simple four-count inhale and six-count exhale in my morning routine to bring some calm into my body. The big breathwork journeys, though, the ones with music and intensity and full-body release, have been really challenging for me. My hands tingle and cramp, emotions surge, and I feel like I'm not in control, just along for the ride. I've also been in rooms where it seemed like the facilitator had ego invested in making a transformation happen.
So when I sat down with my dear friend and sister Ellice Boone, who I met at Spirit Weavers this summer (and who feels like someone I've known for many lifetimes), I was curious. Ellice has spent years weaving breath into her work with women and integration clients, and she recently moved through a six-month immersive breathwork training. What she shared completely reframed breath for me. It isn't something you have to perform or push through. It's a portal you get to walk through gently, back into your own body.
Here's what I'm carrying with me from our conversation.
Breath as a portal
Ellice's own story with breath began with skepticism. About ten years ago, she was asked to photograph and document a breathwork retreat, walked into a room full of people breathing on the floor and having huge emotional releases, and honestly thought they were performing.
It wasn't until she and her husband, Johnny, were moving through a traumatic loss that a facilitator from that retreat invited them to breathe with her. During that three-day retreat, another participant asked Ellice something she's never forgotten: Have you tried asking the land to call you to it?
She did. In the breathwork, she had a vision of land. Three years later, she and Johnny found their property in Georgia, with a creek and trees all around. While unpacking, a journal fell out of a box. It had "Breathe" written across the front, and it opened to a page about the land.
I love using old journals as an oracle, and this is such a beautiful picture of breath as an opening. In my pelvic care work I talk about the womb as a portal. Breath is a doorway, too.
The subtle is where so much of the magic lives
Many of us associate intensity with change. Ellice gently challenges that. She first wove breathwork into integration sessions as a bridge, a way for people to take the pieces of a big experience and bring them into everyday life.
"Often some of the most beautiful work that I saw with clients was in the very subtle moments where they just came back in touch with their body, and felt connected to the earth, felt connected to themselves."
She told me about a quiet client who barely spoke after his session. A week later, he sent her one of the most beautiful testimonials she's ever read. He had worried the joy he felt would fade, but a week later he was still feeling it.
"Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs are so subtle and so quiet and so beautiful, and because it's like this slow burn, they actually can really integrate well into life."
This landed deeply for me. Modern life pulls our attention in so many directions that it can take intensity just to feel anything.
Choice, consent, and the "home breath"
I asked Ellice what she'd say to someone who hears about intense breathwork experiences and feels hesitant. Her answer is everything I want for women in any healing space: choice in every part.
In the training she's been doing (called ReWild), consent to be touched is asked for up front, and there's even a simple signal, crossing your arms, if touch stops feeling good mid-journey. Throughout the practice, people are invited to deepen, stay where they are, or slow down, and they can always come back to what Ellice calls the home breath, simply breathing in and out through the nose.
As she put it, "All guidance is invitational, just a suggestion instead of a demand."
She also reminded me of something I find so beautiful. Breath happens automatically, and yet it's one of the only things in our bodies we can actually choose to change. When Ellice notices that she's breathing shallowly and moving fast, she doesn't judge herself. She sighs it out. That pause gives her the choice to respond rather than react, and she says her family can feel the difference.
Why breath matters for women
Ellice got emotional answering this one. For her, it comes down to trust and safety in our bodies. So many women have had experiences, from assault to having their boundaries bypassed in countless subtle ways, that teach them they can't trust or feel safe in their bodies, so they step out of them.
Tuning into your breath, she says, can be a gateway to noticing all the other subtleties of your inner landscape. Starting to explore what it might feel like to be safe and fully in your body could open a path to deeper self-discovery, joy, connection, and boundaries.
And it can start so simply. When Ellice sits with women, she'll guide them through a breath and ask one question:
"What does it feel like to ask your body what she needs right now?" … "When was the last time we asked our body what she needs right now, and waited for an answer?"
Often, she says, the first answer is tears.
This is so close to my heart. In holistic pelvic care, I invite women to ask their womb and ovaries, What do you need? So much of wellness culture tells women their bodies need fixing. What if we treated our body like a friend, or a sister, someone we check in with and actually listen to? Ellice shared that she didn't befriend her own body for a long time. Now, at 44, she meets it with a tenderness she wishes every woman could feel much earlier, and hopes to teach her daughter young.
Small moments, and the chocolate-dipped strawberry
None of this requires a retreat or a single dollar. "Simple, but not always easy," as the saying goes. (I like to call the commitment blisscipline, a word I credit to my partner, Ben.) Ellice starts her mornings with an energizing practice called the breath of joy. When she feels anxious or "swirly," she lengthens her exhale for a few breaths. I've been doing the same four-in, six-out breath before my feet even touch the floor on mornings I wake up anxious, and it's been so helpful.
And yes, she says, please breathe in your car between meetings. But if you can get outside, it's even better:
"What is it like to have a strawberry? Well, it's amazing. What is it like to dip a strawberry in chocolate? Oh, it's even more amazing. That's what nature is to breathwork."
A closing invitation
Ellice's last words to all of us were these:
"You are already perfect exactly the way you are. … Everything that you want, it already exists within you. And the breath is already there, so just explore, just play, have fun, make it fun."
So here's my invitation to you this week, especially as the holidays start pulling us outward toward everyone else. Take three minutes. Notice your breath. Ask your body what she needs, and wait for the answer.
In the full episode, Ellice and I also talk about grief and joy dancing together, crying without needing the story, breath and pleasure, and teaching breath to our kids. Listen to the full episode, “What Does Your Body Need Right Now? Breathwork for Women with Ellice Boone,” on Spotify or watch it on YouTube, and subscribe on Substack for more.
With love, Taylor
About Ellice Boone Ellice Boone is a breathwork facilitator and integration guide who has spent over a decade holding space for women to explore healing, transformation, and deeper connection through breathwork, meditation, nature, women's retreats, and intentional community. She co-leads the intimate Rooted & Rising women's retreats with therapist Dr. Cheri McDonald (next retreat: February 19–21 in Malibu, California) and offers private and group breathwork sessions on her land in Georgia and while traveling. She also hosts new moon circles, works as a photographer with Boone Studios, and is a mother to a 12-year-old daughter. Find her at getrooted.love, boonestudios.com, and on Instagram at @elliceboone.
✨ Links & Resources ✨ Check out my website: taylortatum.com Birthright: Free Online Women's Community Let’s Sing Together - Free Vocal Activation