Meet Jesse Coomer

​

Jesse Coomer is a breathwork educator, bestselling author, and one of the leading voices bringing scientific rigor to the practice of breathing. He is the founder of The Language of Breath School, the co-founder of Breathwork//Tactics, and the author of three books on breathwork. Based in Chicago, Illinois, he has spent the past decade teaching people that the breath is not merely automatic. It is trainable, and it is the most direct lever any of us has on our own nervous system.

From the Classroom to the Breath

For more than fifteen years, Jesse was a college English professor teaching research and rhetoric. He was also, by his own description, a mess of anxiety and stress — suffering from what he now calls The Modern Human Condition, the mismatch between our physiology and the world we've built for ourselves.

​

In 2009 he began a deliberate mission to fix it. That search led him to breath training in 2014, and to a realization that shaped everything since: the field was full of powerful techniques and almost entirely lacking a framework to explain why they worked. So he did what a researcher does. He studied under masters across multiple traditions, read the primary physiological literature, and started translating it.

He left academia to teach breathwork full time. The professor never quite left, though. He still reads the studies himself, still cites his sources, and still refuses to say something is proven when it isn't.

Author

Jesse's three books trace a deliberate progression — from physiology, to principles, to responsibility.

A Practical Guide to Breathwork (2020) gave readers a clear, concise understanding of how human physiology and breathing are interconnected. It has sold thousands of copies worldwide and remains one of the most recommended resources on the science of breathwork.

The Language of Breath (2023), published by North Atlantic Books, made his central argument: breathing is not a catalog of methods but a grammar — a set of principles beneath every technique, in every tradition. Learn the grammar and you are no longer dependent on any one brand of breathwork.

Becoming the Ethical Breathworker (2026) addresses what comes with guiding another person's nervous system — the responsibilities most of the field has been slow to name.

What He Teaches

Jesse's work is secular and evidence-based. He does not ask anyone to adopt a belief system, and he is direct about the limits of the research, including when a controlled study of a popular technique returns a null result and he has to say so on camera.

​

But the science is the method, not the point. Every session and every book distinguishes between three things: what research shows, what tradition holds, and what he has observed teaching real people. He considers keeping those separate a matter of intellectual honesty rather than style, and it is why students who arrived skeptical tend to stay.

His specialties include functional breathing mechanics, autonomic nervous system regulation, CO₂ tolerance training, cold exposure, and breath training for high-stress professions.

The Language of Breath School

Jesse founded The Language of Breath School to teach the unified philosophy his second book laid out, and to certify breathworkers to a standard the field had been missing. The curriculum combines self-paced study, live instruction, and in-person practical training, with an emphasis on respiratory physiology, interoception, and the autonomic nervous system. He serves as its Faculty Chair.

​

He is a certified Vivation Professional, trained in the method developed by Jim Leonard in 1979, and was a certified Wim Hof Method instructor from 2016 to 2022. Over the past decade he has taught close to 20,000 people through workshops, retreats, and live trainings, and more than 3,000 students through his online courses and certification programs.

Breathwork//Tactics

Jesse co-founded Breathwork//Tactics with Jared McKee, a United States Marine combat veteran and retired police officer with more than twenty-two years of service, to bring structured breath training to law enforcement, fire, EMS, and emergency dispatch.

​

Their argument is specific. The breathing instruction currently standard in policing:  box breathing, widely known as "Tactical Breathing," is a sound technique taught inside an incomplete framework, with no attention to breathing mechanics, dysfunction correction, or applied practice under physiological load. Breathwork//Tactics closes those gaps across five areas: nervous system education, functional breathing assessment, a sequenced set of regulation techniques, applied practice under controlled cold-water stress, and early placement in academy training so the skills are internalized across a career.

​

In 2026 the two published Breathwork//Tactics: A Rationale for Structured Breath Training in Law Enforcement, a white paper reviewing the peer-reviewed evidence for breath training in policing. It is free to read at breathworktactics.com/research.

​

Teaching, Speaking, and Broadcasting

Jesse hosts Decoding Breath on The Breathwork Channel, a research review series where each episode examines a single peer-reviewed study on breathing and states plainly what the findings do and do not support. He also leads weekly live guided sessions on the channel.

He speaks and delivers workshops across the United States for first responders, athletes, military personnel, corporate teams, and general audiences, and has appeared on numerous podcasts discussing breathing science, cold exposure, and nervous system regulation.

​

Where to Practice with Jesse

• Online courses and guided practice — jessecoomer.com/online-courses

• Breathwork certification — languageofbreathcollective.com

• First responder and agency training — breathworktactics.com

• Free guided sessions — The Breathwork Channel

• Books — A Practical Guide to Breathwork · The Language of Breath · Becoming the Ethical Breathworker

• Speaking inquiries — jessecoomer.com/speaking