Dasha Cheng (Darya Pepelyaeva) is the founder and lead teacher of BadBuddhas Breathwork, a Russian-language breathwork school, and a GPBA Certified Professional Breathwork Practitioner.
Her path into conscious breathing began through the body. She trained as a yoga teacher — a 200-hour certification at the Blue Pyramid Yoga & Meditation Centre in Goa (2018) — where pranayama, anatomy and meditation first showed her how directly the breath changes a person's state. Before that she completed the Embodied Facilitator Course with Mark Walsh, and she went on to qualify as a Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher (CPD-accredited, 2019). Each of these gave her a different lens — the body, presence, attention — but it was breathwork that brought them together.
In 2023 Dasha completed the BreathMastery Practitioner Certification with Dan Brulé, one of the pioneers of modern breathwork. It was a 600-hour training combining home study, a 180-day practice journal, peer mentoring, weekly supervision and reporting to Dan, twenty-five facilitated client sessions with written client and sitter reports, and a week of in-person training. She continues to study within his lineage, including a month-long immersion in India (2024) and further advanced seminars.
Alongside breathwork, Dasha trained in shadow and systemic work — the Shadow Constellations module with Nir Esterman at the Constellation Path Institute (Israel) — and she is currently completing a transpersonal therapy programme and a Master's in crisis therapy. Her documented training now exceeds 1,000 hours.
Out of this came the BadBuddhas approach: conscious connected breathing set to music, combined with emotional exploration, inner-child and shadow work, and trauma-informed self-regulation. Rather than presenting breathwork as a mystical discipline, Dasha frames it as a set of accessible, science-informed tools for practical, secular self-work — the foundation of everyday mindfulness for modern urban people. Her method rests on curiosity, play, intellectual honesty, and the willingness to meet intense and even taboo emotions inside a genuinely safe container.
More than ten thousand people have breathed with Dasha — in one-to-one sessions, in group workshops and on retreats. Since 2023 she has led BadBuddhas Breathwork Teachers, a year-long facilitator training. Her focus is on building a transmissible methodology and an institution that does not depend on a single founder — holding facilitators to clear ethical standards and safe-container practice, and bringing the school toward GPBA accreditation.