By Rabbi Aryeh Siegel

Rabbi Shea Hecht raises an important conversation. He is not arguing against breathing, nor against the fact that many people today are overwhelmed, anxious, or carrying unprocessed trauma. He is pointing to something deeper and more subtle: the way simple physiological techniques are being packaged, framed, and delivered inside systems that borrow heavily from Eastern worldviews and New Age ideologies.

That distinction matters. I say that as someone with an unusual vantage point. In the 1970s, I was a Transcendental Meditation teacher. I underwent intensive teacher training, taught the technique professionally, and was deeply involved in a movement that promised relief, belonging, and personal growth. It took me years to understand how something that begins with a calm, neutral technique can become intertwined with hierarchy, metaphysics, and dependency. I do not say this theoretically. I lived it.

So when Rabbi Hecht describes the structure of certain breathwork programs, I recognize the pattern. It is familiar, even predictable. But something else in the responses to his article is also familiar: the voices of people who are hurting.

Below the article, several commenters wrote about anxiety, trauma, isolation, and pain. Some wrote that breathwork helped when nothing else did. Others explained that they did not find tools or emotional support within their families or communities. These comments must be taken seriously. The pain is real and must not be ignored.

Both truths must be acknowledged at the same time:

Truth One: Breath regulation is a legitimate, evidence-based clinical tool.
Many therapists and trauma specialists use some form of controlled breathing to regulate the nervous system. Basic techniques like slow nasal breathing or prolonged exhalations have a significant body of research behind them. There is nothing inherently problematic about this.

Truth Two: “Breathwork journeys” often add layers of meaning, identity, and spiritual structure that are not neutral at all.
This is where people get confused. A frum woman may attend a session because she feels anxious. She thinks she is learning a simple breathing exercise. Instead, she is guided into a “journey”, given language about stored trauma, energy release, somatic awakening, or tapping into inner light. The breathing is safe. The added framework may not be.

In the 1960s and 70s it was mantras, gurus, and chanting. Today it is somatic journeys, energy cycles, and consciousness work. The vocabulary changes, but the dynamic is the same. Something simple and therapeutic is blended with a worldview that subtly shapes a person’s identity, dependence, and spiritual imagination. People do not always realize how far they have drifted.

This, I believe, is the core of what Rabbi Hecht is warning about. Not the technique, but the surrounding system. Not the breathing, but the ideology. Not the relief, but the dependency that can follow.

However, a warning alone is not enough. Several commenters asked a simple, honest question: If people are suffering and struggling with anxiety, what should they do? Where should they turn? If breathing helps them feel calm and present, why shouldn’t they do it?

This question must be answered directly. Because it is the question the Rebbe himself addressed almost fifty years ago.

In December 1977, the Rebbe issued a confidential memorandum to 50 Jewish psychiatrists psychologist urging them to develop a kosher, clinically sound meditation method specifically designed to reduce stress. The Rebbe saw the pressure that young Jews were under. He also saw tens of thousands of them entering Hindu systems in search of relief. He called this a matter of urgent communal obligation, in his words, “a sacred obligation.” The work, he wrote, must be done “most expeditiously,” because delay could lead to “untold harm.”

That memorandum changed the direction of my life. First of all, I had no idea the Rebbe believed meditation could play an important role in relieving stress. I also realized that our community had a generational gap. The Rebbe called for something crucial, and it was never developed or delivered at scale. Meanwhile, New Age frameworks have flooded the frum world.

So, over the past eight years, I worked with rabbis and mental health professionals to build as closely as possible what I believe the Rebbe wanted: a therapeutically effective, halachically safe meditation technique that reduces stress without Hindu mantras, foreign initiation ceremonies, metaphysics, “energies,” journeys, or anything that resembles Eastern ideology. It is simple, calm, evidence-based, and can be learned in 15 minutes from an animation, without dependence on a teacher, a group, or an emotional hierarchy.

This is the key point: A kosher therapeutic method must be free not only of prohibited content but also free of systems that create dependency. Once you learn it, it belongs to you. You do not become part of a community, a lineage, or a spiritual identity. There is no ongoing initiation, no “levels,” no worldview, no metaphysical claims, and no spiritual messaging disguised as wellness.

The commenters who wrote “breathwork changed my life” are not imagining their relief. They needed help regulating the nervous system, and they found it wherever they could. But the same regulation can be achieved through clinically validated breathing sequences and simple meditation protocols that do not come from a New Age worldview. The tool is not the problem. The wrapper is the problem.

There is also a second point raised in the comments: Some wrote that the community needs to address the emotional challenges that lead people to seek healing in the first place. I agree. Strong families, healthy communication, mashpiim, farbrengens, and community connection are not optional. They are essential. But even when those needs are met, many people still need tools to manage stress. Our nervous systems are shaped by life experience, trauma, environment, and neurobiology. Torah teaches us how to live. It does not replace the physiological processes of calming the body.

The question is not whether people will seek these tools. They already are. The question is whether we can offer them a version that is kosher, safe, grounded, and free of foreign ideologies.

Rabbi Hecht is right that we must be vigilant. And many commenters are right that Jews need real tools for nervous system regulation. The Rebbe addressed both sides of this issue decades ago. He urged us to provide kosher therapeutic methods precisely so Jews would not have to choose between “unsafe” and “nothing.”

Breathing works. Therapeutic meditation works. What does not work is embedding simple tools inside systems that quietly pull Jews toward non-Jewish frameworks of meaning.

We can do better. We must do better. And the Rebbe told us how.

If anyone would like to learn more about kosher, clinically grounded tools for stress regulation, you can visit KosherCalm.org or the bilingual app at app.KosherCalm.org. The goal is not to replace farbrengens or mashpiim. The goal is to give Jews safe and effective tools that support their emotional health while strengthening their Yiddishkeit, not weakening it.