Dasha Cheng

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 (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.
Mindfulness — which she had trained to teach, with international certification — is a profound skill, but one that takes time to cultivate. What changed everything for Dasha was watching people in moments of real crisis: when the world felt unbearable, the breath was often the one thing that could help a person live through what was happening and keep from losing their mind. It works immediately, and it does not fail. She has kept her own daily breath practice since 2021 and has worked actively with clients and students since 2022. Through the breath she explores the workings of the nervous system and the nature of consciousness.
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.