Australian Breathwork College
Empathy: The New Superpower
Discover how your sensitivity is your greatest gift — and how breathwork can help you harness it to heal yourself and others.
Explore the Training ↓Are you someone who feels things deeply? Do you find yourself moved by other people’s pain, overwhelmed in crowded spaces, or drained after social interactions? You may be an empath — and far from being a weakness, your sensitivity could be your greatest gift.
At the Australian Breathwork College, we believe empathy is one of the most powerful and misunderstood human capacities of our time. In this article, breathwork facilitator and trainer Nicholas DeCostello explores what empathy really means, why empaths struggle in modern Western culture, and how you can learn to harness your empathic nature to heal, thrive, and help others do the same.
What Is Empathy, Really?
The word empathy comes from the Latin em, meaning “with,” and pathos, meaning “feeling.” Empathy literally means to feel with. It is not simply understanding what someone else is going through intellectually — that remains in the head. True empathy is about allowing yourself to be moved by what another person is feeling. It is resonance. It is the capacity to actually feel other people’s feelings.
— Nicholas DeCostello, Australian Breathwork College
Most definitions of empathy, including many you will find online, reduce it to a cognitive process — understanding someone’s perspective. But for true empaths, feeling is the language. It is kinesthetic, embodied, and heart-centred.
Are You an Empath? Common Traits and Signs
If you are reading this, there is a good chance you already know the answer. Common traits of empaths include:
- Feeling emotions intensely and being easily moved to tears or joy
- Being a naturally kind, caring, and compassionate person
- Wanting to help others who are suffering
- Being a deep thinker who reflects on the meaning of life
- Having strong intuition, a sixth sense, or premonitions
- Feeling nurtured by deep, meaningful conversations
- Having natural healing abilities — people often come to you for support
- Loving nature, animals, water, and quiet time alone
- Being creative — through music, writing, art, or other expressive forms
- Being highly sensitive to your environment, including sounds and energy
It is also worth noting the difference between being an empath and being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). A highly sensitive person has strong sensory and emotional responses to their environment. An empath goes further — they have the capacity to feel other people’s feelings and a deep desire to help. Most empaths are highly sensitive, but not all highly sensitive people are empaths.
Why Empaths Struggle in the Modern World
We live in a culture that worships the intellect and actively shames emotional expression. If you feel sad, people tell you to cheer up. If you feel scared, they say don’t worry. If you feel angry, they tell you to calm down. For empaths, this constant invalidation of emotional experience creates enormous suffering.
Without a framework for understanding and working with their emotional depth, many empaths experience:
- Chronic anxiety and emotional overwhelm
- Feeling broken, too sensitive, or not enough
- Loneliness and a sense of not belonging
- Burnout from over-giving and neglecting their own needs
- Turning to addictions or numbing behaviours to cope
Five Things Empaths Need to Thrive
Build Self-Awareness
Self-awareness means understanding the dynamic interaction between your mind (thoughts), body (sensations), emotions, and heart — and taking responsibility for your own happiness and wellbeing. Developing emotional intelligence is central to this: recognising what you are feeling, understanding the feeling’s purpose, channelling the emotion creatively, and communicating it clearly to others.
Develop Open-Heartedness
Because empaths feel emotions intensely, they need to learn how to stay relaxed and open-hearted in the face of discomfort. This is a master key for happiness and success in every area of life. In breathwork, we activate emotional intensity and learn to relax into it — building the ability to stay present and open in increasingly intense feeling states.
Stay Clear Through Regular Emotional Processing
Empaths generate a lot of emotional energy in everyday life. If that energy is not regularly processed and cleared, it builds up, becomes overwhelming, and turns into anxiety. Breathwork is one of the most powerful tools available for clearing emotional baggage — both the residue of daily life and deeper unresolved trauma.
Set Healthy Boundaries
Because empaths feel other people’s pain so acutely, it can be tempting to rescue, fix, or over-give — often at the expense of their own wellbeing. Learning to say no is one of the most loving things an empath can do. There is a difference between good hurt (acting in alignment with your truth) and bad hurt (intentionally causing harm). Confusing the two leads empaths to avoid all boundaries and end up hurting themselves instead.
Nurture Yourself Consistently
Empaths are natural givers. But giving from an empty well means serving sand instead of water. Self-care is not selfish — it is essential. Practices that nourish empaths include time alone in nature, heart-centred meditation, breathwork, baths and water, gentle movement, creative expression, meaningful community, and physical touch.
The World Needs Empaths to Step Forward
The personal, social, and environmental crises we are witnessing today are calling us to wake up to our interconnectedness. For too long, Western culture has treated the world as an object to be used. Empaths feel connection deeply. They have the capacity to heal the primal split in humanity — from head to heart — and help return us to a sense of wholeness and oneness.
Breathwork is the most powerful modality available for this reconnection. It is why we are seeing a global blossoming of breathwork practice. It brings people back into relationship with themselves, with their emotions, and with their hearts. It is the bridge from the thinking mind to the feeling heart.
Introducing the Core Clearing Breathwork Coach Training — Module One
If this resonates with you, we invite you to explore our Core Clearing Breathwork Coach Training — a professional training program designed to equip you with the skills, tools, and heart-centred presence to guide others through deep emotional healing and transformation.
Module One — the foundation of the entire training — is dedicated to self-regulation and co-regulation. Self-regulation means learning to stay present, relaxed, and connected in your own heart. Co-regulation means being able to hold that loving, open-hearted presence for others when they are in emotional turmoil — so that your calm becomes contagious and others can feel safe enough to heal.
Module One Includes:
- A one-hour teaching on self-regulation and co-regulation for coaches
- Keys to Emotional Mastery — a practical guide to emotional intelligence and validation
- A one-hour presentation on the four steps to connect from head to heart
- Heart Centering Breathwork — a core embodied breathing practice in 5, 10, and 20-minute versions
- Six one-minute breathing practices with different therapeutic effects
- A 23-minute Core Clearing Breathwork process recording
- A Heart Visioning Workshop with guided meditations and a heart manifesting practice
- 11–12 one-hour coaching teachings covering anxiety, trauma, grief, unworthiness, procrastination, performance, anger, sleep, physical pain, and confident coaching
Ready to Begin?
Whether you are an empath looking to understand yourself more deeply, a healing professional wanting to expand your skills, or someone called to help others reconnect from head to heart — the Core Clearing Breathwork Coach Training may be exactly what you have been looking for.
Visit breathwork.com.au Book a Call with Nicholas