We were lucky to catch up with Dr. Rachel Sims recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dr. Rachel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

From the very beginning of my career, I have been driven by one core question: how do we help people truly heal, not just cope?

My path into private practice was not linear. I began as a high school teacher in the Rio Grande Valley, where I spent seven years working closely with students and families. During that time, I repeatedly saw how emotional dysregulation, trauma, and chronic stress were showing up in academic and behavioral challenges. It became clear to me that what looked like behavior problems were often nervous system survival responses.

That realization led me to pursue my master’s in counseling and eventually become a licensed professional counselor. After transitioning into school counseling in the Dallas area, I opened my private practice, Uncomplicated Therapy. Like many clinicians building from the ground up, the early phase required wearing every hat, therapist, marketer, scheduler, biller, and operations manager. Graduate programs prepare you clinically, but very little prepares you for the business infrastructure required to build a sustainable practice.

As my caseload grew, another pattern emerged. Many high-functioning, self-aware clients intellectually understood their patterns, yet their bodies remained stuck in survival mode. Insight alone was not creating full nervous system regulation. That clinical observation became a pivotal turning point in my work. It led me deeper into somatic modalities, traditional breathwork, and ultimately 9D breathwork, which integrates neuroscience, immersive sound technology, and subconscious reprogramming. When these body-based approaches were introduced alongside traditional therapy, many clients who had previously plateaued began experiencing deeper emotional release and regulation.

This evolution is what led to the creation of Breath by Design, which I co-founded with my mother, Lisa Young. Our mission was to ethically bridge traditional mental health support with evidence-informed somatic and nervous system work. We were never looking to replace therapy, but to expand what becomes possible when the mind and body are addressed together.

Building Breath by Design required significant market education. We focused heavily on maintaining trauma-informed standards, clinical responsibility, and clear differentiation in an increasingly crowded breathwork space. Establishing credibility in an emerging modality requires both strong ethics and strong operational structure. If I could go back and adjust one thing, I would have invested earlier in scalable systems and backend infrastructure. Many heart-led practitioners delay building operational foundations, but structure does not limit impact; it sustains it.

For clinicians considering starting their own practice, my advice is simple: master your clinical craft, but do not ignore the nervous system component of healing. The future of mental health is integrative, and the practitioners who will lead this next decade are those who can ethically combine evidence-based therapy with body-based regulation tools. Throughout every chapter of my career, one truth has remained consistent. When we help people regulate their nervous system, we do not just change how they feel, we change how they live.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am Dr. Rachel Sims, Licensed Professional Counselor, owner of Uncomplicated Therapy, author of Are You Love Smart or Love Stupid, certified breathwork and 9D breathwork facilitator, and co-founder of Breath by Design. At my core, my work sits at the intersection of clinical psychology, nervous system regulation, and somatic healing. I specialize in helping high-functioning individuals who intellectually understand their patterns but still feel stuck in cycles of anxiety, emotional overwhelm, or relationship distress.

My entry into this field began in education. While working as a high school teacher in the Rio Grande Valley, I saw firsthand how many academic and behavioral struggles were rooted in unprocessed trauma and nervous system dysregulation. That experience ultimately led me to pursue counseling and later open Uncomplicated Therapy, where I focus on attachment work, trauma-informed care, and nervous system stabilization. As my clinical work deepened, I recognized a consistent gap in traditional talk therapy. Many clients had strong insight but lacked physiological regulation. That discovery led me into somatic work and eventually into 9D breathwork, an immersive modality that combines neuroscience, spatial audio, and guided subconscious work to support deeper emotional processing.

Today, through Uncomplicated Therapy and Breath by Design, we offer:

• 9D breathwork group and private sessions
• Nervous system reset workshops
• Corporate wellness and athletic performance programs
• Therapist-led international retreats
• Ayahuasca & plant medicine retreats
• Plant medicine preparation and integration support
• Customized regulation and healing plans

One of the most meaningful aspects of my work is our focus on ethical plant medicine integration. Years ago, ayahuasca played a significant role in my personal healing journey. That experience shaped my commitment to ensuring clients receive proper psychological preparation and post-ceremony integration support. Through our Reclaim Your Light retreats, in partnership with Arkana Spiritual Center, we help clients bridge insight into sustainable real-life change. Many people have profound experiences in ceremonial settings but struggle with integration afterward. Our model helps close that gap.

What sets our work apart is the combination of doctoral-level clinical training with advanced somatic technology. Every experience we create is filtered through a trauma-informed, ethically grounded lens. I am especially proud of the measurable nervous system shifts we are seeing across our programs, as well as our Breathe Like Champions youth initiative, where we teach young athletes visualization, breathwork, and emotional regulation skills early in life.

If there is one message I want people to understand, it is this: Healing accelerates when we work with both the psychology of the story and the physiology of the body. Everything we build at Breath by Design and Uncomplicated Therapy is created with deep intention, clinical responsibility, and respect for the nervous system.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing my clientele has been prioritizing trust before scale. In the mental health and somatic healing space, people are not simply purchasing a service, they are choosing who feels safe enough to hold their story. Because of that, our growth has always been outcome-driven rather than volume-driven.

Early on, exceptional client results naturally generated strong word-of-mouth referrals, which remains one of our highest converting channels today. When individuals experience meaningful nervous system shifts and emotional breakthroughs, they tend to share that experience within their personal and professional networks. Education-based marketing has also been a major driver of growth. Instead of leading with promotion, we consistently teach about nervous system regulation, attachment patterns, and the neuroscience behind 9D breathwork. This positions our work as both experiential and evidence-informed, which significantly increases trust and engagement.

Strategic partnerships have further expanded our reach. Collaborations with wellness studios, corporate teams, youth athletic programs, and aligned practitioners allow us to enter warm audiences rather than relying solely on cold marketing. We are highly selective with partnerships to ensure strong value and ethical alignment. Another key factor has been creating multiple entry points into our ecosystem. Some clients begin with therapy at Uncomplicated Therapy, others through group breathwork, workshops, or our Breathe Like Champions program. This layered client journey supports both accessibility and long-term retention. Operational consistency has also been critical. Clear communication, reliable scheduling, and strong follow-up systems build trust faster than many practitioners realize.

If I had to summarize our growth strategy, it would be this: deliver measurable results, educate consistently, partner intentionally, and build systems that support long-term relationships rather than one-time transactions.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the most important lessons I had to unlearn was the belief that insight alone creates lasting change. My early clinical training, like many therapists, was heavily rooted in cognitive understanding. As a teacher, school counselor, and later private practice clinician, I became highly skilled at helping clients identify patterns, understand attachment dynamics, and connect the dots in their stories.

Insight is powerful, but over time I noticed a consistent clinical pattern. Many highly self-aware clients could articulate their trauma clearly, yet in moments of stress their bodies still shifted into survival mode. They were not stuck because they lacked awareness. They were stuck because their nervous systems had never fully learned how to feel safe.

This realization challenged one of my core professional assumptions. It required me to expand beyond purely cognitive approaches and explore somatic and nervous system-based modalities.Both clinically and personally, experiences with somatic work and later plant medicine reinforced how much healing occurs at the physiological level. This ultimately led me deeper into breathwork and the development of Breath by Design.

Unlearning the “insight is enough” model reshaped how I structure sessions, design programs, and support integration.Today, my clinical philosophy is simple, cognitive awareness opens the door, but nervous system regulation allows the change to stick. When we address both the mind and the body, transformation becomes significantly more sustainable.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.breathbydesign.net
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/breathbydesign_
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/breathbydesigndfw
• Other: Tik Tok: @breathbydesign Instagram: @areyoulovesmartorlovestupid Instagram: @uncomplicatedtherapy Instagram: @reclaimyourlightretreats Instagram: @uncomplicatedtherapyproducts

Image Credits
Dr. Rachel Sims