Let’s talk breathing - that thing we all do all of the time, with an incredible influence on every part of ourselves - body, mind and spirit.
How you are breathing can be influencing your thinking, your emotional state, stress levels, the impacts of stress, blood sugar levels, blood pressure, sleep, weight, oxygen levels, heart rate, immunity... and that is really only the tip of the iceberg.
There is not a system in your body or a body function that is not influenced or supported by the way you are breathing.
We also tend to either take for breathing for granted (it is autonomic after all) or these days even over think it ( it's the only autonomic body function we have ready influence over) - neither being very helpful in the scheme of 'you'.
There are two elements to breathing - biology and psychology.
Your breath dances with both.
Your breathing mechanism is at best a self correcting feedback loop that fine tunes your body and mind to 'meet the moment".
It can also get side tracked into creating the repeat of old patterns, continuing behaviours that served us once or once upon on a time (really well!), but we just don't let go of - we are stuck in the pay off that we got when we developed the behaviour, effectively keeping us trapped in the past.
The best thing we can really do for our breathing is let our body breathe.
Adding demands onto our breathing patterns will only cover-up or cover over our existing dysfunctional patterns - we need to let go of those old patterns more than introduce new ones.
but we cant always get there....why?
This is where trauma and our breathing intersect.
Together they can have a huge influence on our health, state of mind and life in an ongoing manner and can also be harnessed for our own self healing for the very same reasons.
Trauma can arise from any life event or moment that is overwhelming - i.e more than we are equipped to handle at the time that it occurs.
[ Which gives some insight into why its possible for human beings to thrive through horrific events, and also possible to get 'trapped' in something that to our mind or another person might seem benign or be arguably insignificant. This is where we are saying things like "others have it worse than me" which doesn't help us heal. ]
Bottom line here: if it happened in a moment that has passed, and it's impacting (such as limiting or controlling) the way you respond in life NOW, then it can fall into the realms of 'trauma'.
As we control and constrain ourselves in an attempt to deal with life situations, we often adapt, control or otherwise alter our breathing as a part of that process. Sometimes we don't return to prior breathing patterns even if they were 'healthier' - especially when there is an emotional charge to the new pattern, such as it being coupled with a return to safety, or protection from pain or harm ( physical, emotional, psychological).
For example - your mother had to adapt her breathing when she was pregnant with you (breathing for you). She lost the full free range of diaphragmatic movement as you grew, and her body adapted it's way of breathing to make the most of what was available. So your first impression of breathing (that potentially imprinted on your nervous system in utero along with many other things), was probably a bit limited, and could be the very pattern your body draws on when you take your first breath 'earth side' in your brand new human body.
It's both simple and complex when literally everything about you can be influenced by the way you are breathing!
Fast forward to today, and you are breathing your own breath on your own, except are you? How is your life situation influencing the way you are breathing? Why is something that your partner/sibling/dear friend finds easy or even fun perhaps anxiety inducing, terrifying or painfully hard for you??
even when you 'know' it makes no sense...
It's not even what did or didn't happen in your life - it's how you were equipped to respond to it, or not - aka your resilience - that makes all the difference. And this can hinge on how you are breathing.
Your breath and your body are 'supposed" to be able to respond and adapt, but things often go awry when life gets overwhelming and we take on what we might call an emergency or compensatory pattern to cope.
Then it feels safe and that's what is retained in the body. It can become a new even if dysfunctional coping mechanism - such as if mum's breath doesn't return to its natural fulness after giving birth, and we might continue to learn shallow breathing from her, familiar is so often mistaken for safe & healthy.
With Rebirthing Breathwork, the most important thing we do is learn a breath technique that supports your body to release unhealthy patterns ( known or unknown), and return to its natural, resilient and responsive state.
This breath technique also helps usto process emotional material (past and present) and past trauma's along the way. It is especially helpful for resolving patterns that originated pre-verbally and in our first few years, that show up in our breath, nervous system and subconscious. They can influence the mind, but rarely resolve fully from that level i.e. from the mind, what we call top-down therapies, such as talk therapies. Rebirthing Breathwork is one of the embodied or somatic forms of therapy, referred to as bottom-up, which we need to heal the trauma stored in the body.
Next weekend I am running my July BREATHE: an Introduction workshop, to introduce you to the Rebrthing Breathwork Technique - which you can begin using right away, and start your own inner reset for a more natural breath. [ cant make July ? come along in August ].
We will look at what breathing is, and isn't -
What good breathing is, and isn't - we are at a point in time where breathing is being spoken about a lot, and breathwork in particular, but a lot of the information and techniques are inappropriate, misunderstood or simply wrong.
Much of what I learnt as a yoga pranyama teacher i now understand to be inappropriate, or wrong. At least largely unhelpful without clearing baseline patterns first....
The thing to know is that your breath is a powerful tool - learn how to use it for its deepest healing benefit, not focussing on a quick fix or clearing out 'stuff', or getting rid of things. Rather we go gently, slowly creating safety and self wisdom ( knowing your body and breath through experience) so that what is not natural and supportive falls away - easy!
This can and will literally change your experience of yourself and life - how you breathe is how you think & live. Give yourself an opportunity to bring these things into alignment through your breath.
WHAT: BREATHE ::: An Intro workshop
WHEN: Saturday 23 July, or August 27 | 1-5pm in Camp Mountain/ Samford
BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL
For More info + to book - CLICK HERE