About · Meet Laura
Laura Barlow
Exploring the relationships between breathing, sleep, recovery, and human function to help people understand the patterns shaping how they feel and function.
RDH · CBBA · CSOM · INHC
Breathing Behavior Analyst
Orofacial Myologist
Trauma-Sensitive HeartMath Practitioner
Integrative Nutrition Health Coach
Yoga & FlowFit Instructor
Self-Myofascial Release Practitioner
I have spent much of my professional life learning to see the human body from different perspectives. My earliest training in dentistry taught me to observe closely. The years that followed widened that view through breathing science, orofacial function, sleep, movement, psychophysiology, recovery, and human performance. What has held my attention throughout is not any one of these disciplines, but the relationships between them.
I am interested in what becomes visible when we stop looking at a symptom, structure, or system in isolation and begin asking how it relates to the whole person. How is this person breathing? How are they sleeping and recovering? What has their body adapted to? What capacity do they have for what is being asked of them? And what might we understand before asking something to change?
I bring clinical experience, education, and objective measurement into the room, while remaining aware that none of those gives me access to what it is like to live inside another person’s body. My role is not to have every answer or impose a predetermined path, but to help make what is happening more understandable, offer what I know with care, and remain curious enough to let new information change what we do next.
After more than two decades in healthcare, I have become less interested in asking the body to perform according to an ideal and more interested in understanding the conditions that support its capacity to adapt and respond.
How I found this work.
My earliest understanding of health was fairly straightforward. When something was wrong, you identified the problem and did what was needed to correct it. I trusted the expertise of the people caring for me, followed their recommendations, and believed that if I worked hard enough at getting better, eventually I would.
My own health complicated that understanding. After years of fatigue and disrupted sleep, I underwent a sleep study and was recommended CPAP. It was a reasonable recommendation based on what was known about my sleep, but I remained curious about what else might be contributing. That question led me into myofunctional therapy, breathing science, and a deeper exploration of my own airway and oral function. Following a tongue tie release and the work surrounding it, I experienced meaningful changes in my breathing and sleep. More importantly, I began asking different questions.
I became interested in practitioners who noticed things I had not been taught to see. Rather than abandoning what I already knew, I wanted to understand what their perspectives could add to my own. As my work expanded beyond dentistry, each new area of study changed what I could see in the others. If I was going to ask someone’s body to change, I wanted to understand as much as I reasonably could about the system receiving that request.
Formal education was only one part of that learning. The people I worked with showed me where theory met the complexity of an individual human being, while my own body taught me to pay closer attention to how I responded to the things I was doing in the name of health. I gradually understood that more intervention, effort, or information was not always what allowed change to take place. Sometimes what was missing was enough space to notice, integrate, recover, and respond.
Those experiences changed my understanding of expertise. I still value rigorous study, objective information, skilled intervention, and the knowledge of people who have devoted their lives to a particular field. But I no longer expect any single perspective, including my own, to tell the whole story. I have become more comfortable with what I do not yet know and more willing to let new information change my understanding.
Why Breathe Colorado Exists
Breathe Colorado grew from a desire to create the kind of practice I had come to value through my own experience: one with enough time to understand what is happening before deciding what needs to change.
What someone is experiencing rarely exists in isolation. A recommendation that makes sense when we look at one part of the body may look different when we consider the person receiving it. This does not mean avoiding intervention. It means becoming more thoughtful about what we ask of the body, when we ask it, and what might need support first.
Breathing offers a particularly valuable place to begin because it is something we can both observe and measure and experience from within. It responds to physiology, movement, environment, emotion, exertion, rest, and habit. Understanding those patterns can offer useful information about the larger system without assuming that breathing alone explains everything.
This is the kind of practice I want Breathe Colorado to be: one where education and objective information can exist alongside lived experience, and where the goal is not to make the body conform to an ideal, but to understand what is happening well enough to determine what support may actually be useful.
My hope is that the people who come here leave with more than exercises or recommendations. The work is an opportunity to develop an understanding of themselves that they can carry forward. This may include recognizing what their body is communicating, becoming more aware of the patterns shaping how they feel and function, and developing greater confidence in responding to what they notice.
Credentials
Professional education and experience.
A selection of Laura's post-graduate training. Each course added another piece of the puzzle.
2026
- MSc Human Performance Optimization (in progress), Buckinghamshire New University, United Kingdom
- Optimizing Respiration for Achieving High Performance, Dylan McKay
2025
- ALF 101 Intensive, Dr Lemke
- Anatomy Trains: Hyper/Hypo Mobility, A Trainer's Perspective, Chris Clayton
- Anatomy Trains Live Dissection: TMJ and Sleep Disordered Breathing, Todd Garcia and Dr Dania Tamimi
- Anatomy Trains: Balancing the Diaphragms, Julie Hammond
- Speaker, Proximity Collective, Vail, CO: "Breath: The foundational tool in optimizing human potential"
- Health Sciences University, United Kingdom: Performance Psychology; Advanced Performance Psychology; Psychology of Injury, Pain, and Recovery; Leadership for Performance
2024
- The Voice and the Pelvic Floor, Ginger Garner, PT, DPT
- The Breathe Institute, Breathe Myo Workshop
- Optimizing Respiration for Achieving High Performance, Scott Sonnon
- Dao Masters, Daoist Healing Arts, Wu Dang Chen
- Anatomy Trains Live Dissection: The Anatomy of the Breath
2023
- Speaker, BreathWerx Conference, Clinical Applications of Educational Capnography
- Roll Model® Method Practitioner Training, Jill Miller
- FlowFit Level 1 Instructor Certification, Scott Sonnon
- Anatomy Trains Live Dissection: Above and Below
2022
- Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, AADP
- Professional Diploma in Applied Behavioral Breathing Science
- Origins of Sleep Disordered Breathing and Sleep Apnea
2020–2021
- Certified Breathing Behavior Analyst, Professional School of Behavioral Health Sciences
- Trauma-Sensitive Certified HeartMath Practitioner, HeartMath Institute
- Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, Institute for Integrative Nutrition
- Two-month residency, Himalayan Institute, Vishoka Meditation
- Introduction to Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy, AOMT
2009–2019
- Certified Specialist in Orofacial Myology, Sandra Coulson
- 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training, South Boston Yoga
- Registered Dental Hygienist, public health, general dentistry, pediatrics
- Certified Dental Assistant, orthodontics, pediatrics, special needs
Abridged. Full record available on request.