Life begins in a sea of sensation, gradually giving way to a mental area (Ferrari 2004). Therapy begins in this mental realm, working with thoughts and feelings related to experience. Yet there are excluded realms of experience, either noted only somatically, or physicality pushed away or ignored. Theorists such as Aulagnier (2001), and Ferrari (2004), have recognized the importance of our “continuous encounter” throughout life with a “physico-psychical milieu” in developing a “felt” sense of experience (Aulagnier 2001). Neuroscientists as well, are looking beyond a primary focus on cognitive and affective processing to information coming from the body, which has contributed to a more complex understanding of emotional experience (Paulis, 2013). Specific breathing patterns associated with emotions, for instance, might not develop in children whose breathing is chronically more shallow, effecting their overall emotional development (Phillippot, 2002, Krause, 2000). I will use the important (and often overlooked in psychoanalysis) phenomenon of breathing to illustrate how the mind uses bodily experience to make conscious mental representations, or avoid them altogether by finding a somatic equivalent of the psychical. I will explore the role that breathing patterns play in psychological development, with clinical material and implications for technique.