In this episode, Verity Jo Coonan explores the real cost of holding space and how that cost changes as capacity grows.

Holding space is one of the most powerful skills a facilitator, coach, therapist, parent, partner, or friend can develop. But when it’s done without nervous system support, boundaries, and embodiment, it can quietly become exhausting.

Verity reflects on the early years of facilitation, when holding space meant absorbing emotions, carrying stories, and needing to find ways to release after every session. She shares how this work transformed once she built real internal support and how holding space shifted from something that drained her to something that genuinely lights her up.

In this conversation, Verity speaks to:

• Why burnout isn’t failure, it’s a capacity issue

• The emotional residue that often goes unspoken

• How the nervous system determines what can be held safely

• Why knowledge without embodiment isn’t sustainable

• And how holding space becomes energising when practitioners are truly resourced

This episode is for the big-hearted humans the ones people naturally open up to, the ones who are often “the safe one,” and the ones learning how to hold others without losing themselves.

Holding space isn’t about fixing or saving anyone.
It’s about creating safety, presence, and sustainability for everyone involved.

🎧 Listen now and be sure to share this episode with anyone who needs to hear it.

Connect & Train with Verity

● @verityjocoonan @vidya_certification

● Join Breathwork & healing ⁠APP @vidya.app

● Follow us on @thedarksidewithverity

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) isn’t about how deeply you breathe, it’s about rhythm, regulation, and safety in the body.

In this episode, Verity Jo Coonan breaks down what HRV actually measures, why it’s one of the strongest markers of longevity and nervous system health, and how Breathwork directly influences emotional resilience and stress recovery.

You’ll learn the science behind HRV, how it reflects the balance of your autonomic nervous system, and why steady, simple breathing patterns are more effective than intense techniques. Verity shares practical, trauma-informed ways to integrate HRV breathing into daily life, without tracking obsession or over complication.

This episode is an invitation to build capacity, not force calm. To trust your body’s rhythm. And to remember that resilience is created through consistency, not intensity.

🎧 Listen now and be sure to share this episode with anyone who needs to hear it.

Connect & Train with Verity

● @verityjocoonan @vidya_certification

● Join Breathwork & healing ⁠APP @vidya.app

● Follow us on @thedarksidewithverity

Grief doesn’t end, it expands.

In this deeply personal episode, Verity Jo Coonan shares a raw reflection on living with grief fourteen years after the death of her partner. She speaks to what it means to experience life “backwards,” how loss reshapes priorities, and why acceptance isn’t about letting go, it’s about learning to hold more.

Verity shares a powerful dream that marked a turning point in her grief: imagining her partner grown, happy, and moved on, and how that dream became an unexpected moment of permission to move forward herself.

This episode explores grief through the lens of the Nervous System, Breathwork, dreams, and daily practices like meditation and journaling, reminding us that healing doesn’t come from pushing pain away, but from meeting it with curiosity, compassion, and presence.

If you’ve ever felt like you needed permission to move on, this episode is for you.

🎧 Listen now and be sure to share this episode with anyone who needs to hear it.

Connect & Train with Verity

● @verityjocoonan @vidya_certification

● Join Breathwork & healing ⁠APP @vidya.app

● Follow us on @thedarksidewithverity

In this episode, Verity Jo Coonan explores a powerful reframe in healing and Breathwork: intensity does not equal transformation, safety does.

In a wellness world that often glorifies peak experiences, emotional release, and catharsis, Verity invites a slower, more honest conversation about what actually creates lasting change in the nervous system.

Drawing on trauma-informed principles and real-world facilitation experience, this episode unpacks why regulation matters more than how “deep” a session feels and how integration, consistency, and daily practices are where healing is truly embodied.

Inside this conversation:

• Why safety must come before intensity in breathwork and healing

• How a regulated nervous system creates sustainable transformation

• The difference between catharsis and integration

• Why grounding after intense experiences is essential

• How daily practices build resilience, capacity, and self-trust

• When intensity becomes escapism rather than healing

This episode is for anyone navigating healing, breathwork, or personal growth, especially those who feel drawn to “more” but are craving stability, safety, and integration instead.

Because your body already knows what safety feels like.
Healing begins when you listen.

🎧 Listen now and be sure to share this episode with anyone who needs to hear it.

Connect & Train with Verity

● @verityjocoonan @vidya_certification

● Join Breathwork & healing ⁠APP @vidya.app

● Follow us on @thedarksidewithverity

In this episode, Verity Jo Coonan speaks openly about one of the most important and often avoided conversations in the breathwork space: safety.

- Not safety as a checkbox.
- Not safety as a certification.
But safety as something that is lived, embodied, and practiced.

Drawing from personal experience, facilitation work, and years of holding people through deep emotional states, Verity explores why being “trauma-informed” isn’t something you learn once, it’s something you become.

This conversation challenges the belief that technique equals readiness, and instead invites facilitators, coaches, and space-holders to reflect on their own nervous system, self-awareness, and capacity to truly meet another human.

Inside this episode:

• Why certification alone doesn’t make you a safe facilitator

• What trauma-informed facilitation actually requires

• Why technique should never come before nervous-system safety

• How lived experience shapes real leadership and presence

• The human element that can’t be taught only embodied

This is an honest, grounded conversation for anyone working in healing, coaching, or Breathwork and for anyone who has ever trusted another person with their vulnerability.

Because transformation doesn’t happen through methods alone.
It happens through presence, humility, and safety.

🎧 Listen now and be sure to share this episode with anyone who needs to hear it.

Connect & Train with Verity

● @verityjocoonan @vidya_certification

● Join Breathwork & healing ⁠APP @vidya.app

● Follow us on @thedarksidewithverity

In this threshold episode of The Dark Side of Verity, Verity Jo Coonan invites you to slow down, breathe, and meet yourself in stillness.

Inspired by the Lighthouse Principle, this is not a “how-to” conversation it’s an embodied reflection on leadership, boundaries, nervous system authority, and what happens when you stop chasing connection and start anchoring into yourself.

Verity explores how over-explaining, over-giving, and over-availability often stem from people-pleasing and trauma responses and how self-abandonment can quietly lead to resentment, burnout, and disconnection from your own body. Through breath, lived experience, and grounded insight, she shares why safety comes from consistency, not urgency, and why the most magnetic leaders don’t move, they hold.

This episode is for you if:

• You feel exhausted from always being available to others

• You’re learning to set boundaries without guilt or aggression

• You’re stepping into leadership, in life, relationships, or facilitation

• You’re ready to lead from regulation, not rescue

If something softened in your body while listening, that’s your nervous system recognising safety.

You don’t need to chase.
You don’t need to explain.
You don’t need to abandon yourself.

You just need to decide if you’re ready to be the lighthouse.

Ready to lead with breath? Apply for VIDYA Breathwork™ Facilitator Training (100% online) or book a 1:1 with Verity. Share this episode with a friend who needs Nervous System safety and hope.

🎧 Listen now and be sure to share this episode with anyone who needs to hear it.

Connect & Train with Verity

● @verityjocoonan @vidya_certification

● Join Breathwork & healing ⁠APP @thevidyawellnessclub.app

● Follow us on @thedarksidewithverity

Motherhood, mum rage, guilt, grief and… Breathwork.

In this episode, Verity sits down with shadow work + Breathwork coach Steph Beers, mum of three, to talk honestly about what really happens behind closed doors in modern motherhood.

They dive into:

• Mum rage, shame and yelling (and why you’re not a “bad mum”)

• Gentle parenting vs reality at 5pm

• Why your kids aren’t attacking you, they’re learning boundaries

• How shadow work + Breathwork (“shadow breath sessions”) help regulate your nervous system

• Steph’s journey through loss, sobriety and finding herself again in motherhood

If you’ve ever put the kids to bed, scrolled their photos and cried because you felt guilty for how the day went… this one will feel like a deep exhale.

🎧 Listen now and be sure to share this episode with anyone who needs to hear it.

Connect & Train with Verity

● @verityjocoonan @vidya_certification

● Join Breathwork & healing ⁠APP @thevidyawellnessclub.app

● Follow us on @thedarksidewithverity

In this episode, Verity guides listeners through her end-of-year ritual, a powerful process of releasing, reflecting, and preparing the body for what’s next. As 2025 comes to a close, she shares the mixed feelings that come with looking back on a rollercoaster year while craving new energy and a fresh start.

Verity opens up about the importance of closing loops, acknowledging both the beautiful and the difficult moments, and using practices like rage journaling to move emotions out of the body. She explains how unprocessed feelings get stored physically, and why emotional housekeeping is essential before stepping into a new chapter.

From clearing what’s unresolved to sitting in stillness, visualising the future, understanding what’s in your control, and taking small actionable steps, Verity walks listeners through the exact practices she uses to shift her state and call in what she wants for the year ahead.

She also dives into the power of mantras, future-paced language, and preparing the nervous system to hold the reality you’re trying to create whether it’s love, fertility, abundance, or a completely new season of life.

This episode is grounded, real, and deeply supportive, a reminder that December is a portal for release, renewal, and becoming the version of yourself who can fully receive what you’re calling in.

🎧 Listen now and be sure to share this episode with anyone who needs to hear it.

Connect & Train with Verity

● @verityjocoonan @vidya_certification

● Join Breathwork & healing ⁠APP @thevidyawellnessclub.app

● Follow us on @thedarksidewithverity