Breath Curriculum is an online education platform offering breathwork courses and professional certifications in functional breathing. It was founded by Elsa Unenge, a certified functional breathing coach, yoga teacher, and Oxygen Advantage instructor based in Los Angeles, California. All courses are 100% on-demand and available globally.

Breath Curriculum is based in Los Angeles, California. All courses are delivered online and available to students globally.

We combine a thoughtful, human-centered approach with clear communication and reliable results. It’s not just what we do—it’s how we do it that sets us apart.

Elsa Unenge is an Oxygen Advantage Advanced Instructor and a YOGABODY Certified Breathing Coach. She is a 200-hour Hatha Vinyasa Yoga Teacher and holds a Bachelor's degree in Behavioral Science from Lund University, Sweden. She has served as breathwork specialist for apps such as Othership, Open, and Sleep Cycle.

Functional breathing is breathing that is optimal for everyday health and performance: slow, nasal, diaphragmatic, and well-regulated. It’s defined by three qualities: biomechanical (using the diaphragm rather than the chest), biochemical (maintaining healthy CO2 tolerance), and psychophysiological (calming rather than activating the nervous system). Functional breathing is the science-based foundation of every Breath Curriculum program.

Breathwork is a broad term for any practice where you consciously control your breath to achieve a specific outcome, whether that’s energy, emotional release, altered states, or relaxation. It can be as simple as holding your breath or lengthening your exhales. However, when most people think about breathwork, they think of more up-regulating practices like holotropic, rebirthing, pranayama, and Wim Hof-style techniques.

Functional breathing focuses on optimizing your breath to be as healthy and functional as possible on a day-to-day basis. It’s about the everyday, unconscious breathing patterns that shape your health, sleep, and performance: nasal, diaphragmatic, and well-regulated.

Breath Curriculum focuses on breathwork, breath awareness, and functional breathing.

Functional breathing and the Wim Hof Method are two different breathwork approaches with different goals. Functional breathing focuses on slow, nasal, diaphragmatic patterns that you carry through your everyday life to support sleep, stress resilience, focus, and performance. The Wim Hof Method uses cycles of paced hyperventilation followed by breath holds, designed as an activating, short-duration practice. Breath Curriculum teaches functional breathing because the goal is lasting, day-to-day improvements in CO2 tolerance, nervous system regulation, and oxygen delivery.

CO2 tolerance is the body’s ability to remain comfortable at higher levels of carbon dioxide in the blood. CO2 triggers the release of oxygen from red blood cells (the Bohr effect) and regulates breathing rate. Low CO2 tolerance is linked to over-breathing, poor sleep, anxiety, and reduced athletic performance. Breath Curriculum’s programs include specific training to improve CO2 tolerance.

Functional breathing, the practice taught by Breath Curriculum, is generally safe for healthy adults, as it focuses on slow, gentle, nasal, and diaphragmatic breathing.

That said, anyone with a respiratory condition (such as asthma or COPD), cardiovascular disease, low or high blood pressure, a history of seizures or panic disorder, or who is pregnant should consult a healthcare professional before beginning any breathwork practice.

Yes. Functional breathing techniques directly influence the autonomic nervous system. Slow, nasal, diaphragmatic patterns reduce activation of the stress response, lower heart rate, and improve heart rate variability (HRV), a key marker of nervous system resilience. Breath Curriculum’s Reduce Stress & Anxiety course covers these techniques in depth.

Yes. Chronic over-breathing and mouth breathing at night are linked to disrupted sleep, snoring, and low energy. Breath Curriculum teaches techniques that shift breathing patterns toward slower, nasal, diaphragmatic breathing, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system and supports deeper, more restorative sleep.

Yes, primarily through better recovery and breathing economy. Breath Curriculum’s Optimize Athletic Performance course focuses on functional breathing patterns and CO2 tolerance training, which can support faster recovery between efforts and between sessions, more efficient breathing at submaximal intensities, improved heart rate variability and parasympathetic recovery, and reduced perceived exertion and breathlessness during training.

Functional breathing isn’t a shortcut to raw performance gains. It’s a way to train the system that supports your performance: how efficiently you breathe, how quickly you recover, and how well your nervous system regulates under load.

Functional breathing techniques such as nasal breathing and diaphragmatic breathing have been studied as supportive practices for respiratory conditions, including asthma, but Breath Curriculum’s courses are educational and not medical treatment. Anyone with a diagnosed respiratory condition should work with their physician before starting a breathing practice and use Breath Curriculum’s courses as a complement to, not a replacement for, medical care.

Breath Curriculum offers four online programs: The Essentials of Breathing ($99), foundational functional breathing for everyday health; Reduce Stress & Anxiety ($125), tools for pressure management and nervous system regulation; Optimize Athletic Performance ($125), CO2 tolerance training for endurance and recovery; and The Breathing Program ($499), a full professional certification for coaches, athletes, and practitioners. All courses include unlimited access for as long as the course is available.

The Essentials of Breathing is $99. Reduce Stress & Anxiety is $125. Optimize Athletic Performance is $125. The Breathing Program professional certification is $499. All courses include unlimited access for as long as the course is available.

The Essentials of Breathing is Breath Curriculum’s beginner course. It covers the fundamentals of functional breathing through 12 video lessons, 5 guided practices, and a weekly breathing schedule. It’s 100% on-demand, includes unlimited access for as long as the course is available, and requires no prior experience.

Yes. Breath Curriculum offers The Breathing Program, a $499 online professional certification designed for coaches, yoga teachers, physical therapists, athletes, and health practitioners who want to integrate functional breathing into their professional work. The program is 100% self-paced and includes every course on the platform plus a private 1:1 coaching session with founder Elsa Unenge.

The Breathing Program certification covers the science of breathing, practical functional breathing techniques, CO2 tolerance training, nervous system regulation, and applications across performance, sleep, stress resilience, and overall health.

It also includes how to guide and design your own breathing sessions, so you can confidently build sessions tailored to your clients. You’ll also learn the most common mistakes people make in their everyday breathing, as well as the mistakes coaches make when guiding others, so you can avoid them in your own practice and recognize them in your clients.

Certification includes every course on the Breath Curriculum platform plus one private 1:1 coaching session with founder Elsa Unenge.

The Breath Curriculum breathwork coach certification typically takes between one week and one year to complete, depending on your pace. The program is fully self-paced and on-demand, with no deadlines or expiration on course access for as long as the course is available.

Most students complete the breathwork certification in one of three ways:

Fast-track (under one week): This pace suits experienced yoga teachers, breathwork practitioners, athletes, or wellness professionals who already have a strong foundation in breathing techniques and anatomy.

Standard pace (four to eight weeks): This is the most common timeline for the breathwork coach certification. It allows time to absorb each module, practice the techniques between lessons, and integrate the material into your own breathing.

Extended pace (several months to a year): This pace suits busy professionals who prefer to spread their learning out and apply each module gradually before moving on.

No prior breathwork experience is required to enroll in The Breathing Program. The certification teaches functional breathing from foundational principles upward, making it accessible to coaches, yoga teachers, physical therapists, athletes, and health practitioners with no background in breathwork.

The Breath Curriculum breathwork certification is grounded in functional breathing science, including peer-reviewed research on CO2 tolerance, the Bohr effect, nasal breathing, diaphragmatic mechanics, and heart rate variability (HRV). The curriculum draws on respiratory physiology and sports performance research, so each technique is taught with a clear understanding of how and why it works in the body.

Where modern science has not yet been fully applied to a given technique, the program also draws on long-established breathing traditions whose experiential knowledge remains valuable for practitioners.

We also teach students to hold the science with appropriate humility. Research reflects the best understanding available today, and the field of respiratory physiology continues to evolve. New studies regularly refine, and sometimes revise, what we thought we knew. A good breathwork coach stays curious, keeps learning, and updates their practice as the evidence develops.

Breath Curriculum is built around functional breathing, the everyday patterns that affect sleep, stress, focus, and performance. The certification is taught by founder Elsa Unenge, who has worked with leading breathwork and sleep apps such as Sleep Cycle, Open, and Othership, performance organizations including Red Bull’s Athlete Performance Center, and corporate clients applying breathwork in high-stakes environments. That direct, applied experience shapes every module.

The program also draws on a broad foundation across multiple breathing traditions and modalities, including Oxygen Advantage methodology, pranayama, and contemporary respiratory science. Rather than teaching one narrow style, the certification gives coaches the underlying principles so they can adapt their practice across contexts: athletic performance, sleep, stress regulation, focus, and everyday breathing health.

The certification combines peer-reviewed respiratory science (CO2 tolerance, nasal mechanics, nervous system regulation) with practical techniques that can be applied immediately. It is fully self-paced, includes a private 1:1 session with Elsa, and offers unlimited access for as long as the course is available, making it well-suited for coaches, athletes, and practitioners who want a flexible, depth-first program.

Every Breath Curriculum course, including The Breathing Program certification, comes with unlimited access for as long as the course is available. Once you purchase, you can return to the lessons anytime, repeat the practices, and receive any updates the program releases.