Dr Rebekah Jade's Other Prescription
“You Can Do All the Therapy in the World - But If the Breathing Physiology Isn't Addressed, You're Working With One Hand Tied Behind Your Back”
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Two Worlds, One Practice
Dr Rebekah Jade has spent her career moving between worlds that most people keep separate — hospital wards and yoga studios, elite sport and community wellbeing, clinical medicine and the dancefloor. She's spoken about cycles of burnout going back to her teens, reaching a breaking point four years into medical school — the moment she stepped away, living alongside yoga teachers on an island off Panama. That experience became the foundation for Pana, the wellness community she founded to bring yoga, breath, music and culture together for the Black community and its allies, and later took her into elite sport, leading recovery sessions for the England men's football team at their Euro 2024 training base.
“I truly believe that the ability to manipulate the breath is one of the most powerful natural tools we carry around with us.” — Dr Rebekah Jade
A Breaking Point
The break itself came quietly rather than dramatically — not one collapse but a slow accumulation, until stepping away stopped being optional. Panama wasn't a holiday from medicine; it was the first place she'd properly stopped. Living alongside yoga teachers on the island gave her the space to rebuild her own relationship with breath and rest before she ever taught it to anyone else — the experience that would later become the seed for Pana.
Going Deeper in Vélez-Málaga
This year, Rebekah added another chapter: three days of advanced breathwork training with the Oxygen Advantage in Málaga, training alongside forty practitioners from around the world.
“As a doctor and breathwork teacher, much of the theory is already familiar to me,” she says. “But three days of immersive training… is a wonderful way to fill in the gaps, through a lens that's entirely new.”
What Stayed With Her
What she took from the three days was less about new information and more about a different lens on ideas she already knew — a reminder that the physiology of breathing sits underneath a lot of what she sees in her clinical and coaching work.
“Breathing is the most accessible tool we have for regulating the nervous system, improving performance, and sustaining attention.” — Dr Rebekah Jade
Her takeaway is a simple one: most of us aren't breathing badly by accident, just enough for it to quietly matter. As she puts it: “Three days in Spain confirmed something I already believed but now understand at a much deeper level.”
