About Leif Bjelland | Breathwork Facilitator & Founder of Heroic Breath

I’m Leif Bjelland—breathwork facilitator, TEDx speaker, and founder of Heroic Breath, a sound-driven breathwork experience designed for busy minds seeking clarity, regulation, and self-compassion.

My path to this work was unconventional. For nearly two decades I was known as an artisan baker, founding Le Petit Outre in Missoula, Montana and earning a James Beard Award nomination. I chased flow through business, snowboarding, and ultra-endurance cycling, including finishing the 1200km Paris–Brest–Paris, the world’s oldest bike race.

Despite the achievements, I reached burnout. I got sober and began looking inward for something deeper than performance and accomplishment.

In 2021 I trained with Michael Stone, Greg Girlando, and Saemi Nakamura at the Neurodynamic Institute, part of the second cohort of facilitators they trained. Their lineage draws from decades of Holotropic Breathwork practice. The training was both rigorous and personally transformative, teaching me how to safely hold space for people entering expanded states of awareness.

Today I guide breathwork journeys that combine music, rhythm, and conscious breathing to help regulate the nervous system, quiet the thinking mind, and reconnect people with their own inner intelligence.

Heroic Breath is designed for people who feel overwhelmed, mentally overloaded, or disconnected from themselves—and who are ready to rediscover ease, presence, and clarity through the breath.