Breathwork

Breathwork, also known as 'rebirthing', is a simple and safe technique for healing body, heart, spirit and soul.

This state of being is our essence and our birth right. We all have the potential to realise it and to live it.

So how come we are not like that?

Within the cells of the body is an organic memory of every experience we have ever had, from the time way back in our development when our cellular buiding blocks first began. All the feelings of our bliss, love and joy, as well as our pain, anger and fear, are remembered in the body.

Throughout our development we have powerful and intense experiences which, for many reasons, are too powerful and intense for us to deal with at the time. In order to survive, we don't allow the full expression of these traumas, and we learn to hold on. We shut down the hard bits and get on with the business of living, and as a consequence of this holding we also shut down our fullness – our whole selves. Gradually we become less available to ourselves and therefore less available to others and to our whole experience of being.

We shut down the body's natural healing mechanism. E-motion is energy in motion. When energy is not allowed its motion, it doesn’t just disappear. It becomes held energy – tension. We hold back our life force by tensing the muscles and by limiting the fullness of the breath. Unconsciously, we perform amazing feats of control, of mind over matter. We tense and tighten in order to lock the contents of the too-hard-basket in the deeper recesses of our selves where it can be safely out of the way. The unexpressed feeling or response becomes locked in the body.

We use alcohol and drugs, work, busy-ness and drama, food, fighting, sex, shopping and many other distractions to keep it all numb. We lose the knowing about who we are, about what we want and how to re-connect.

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We are self healing organisms ... 

The body automatically moves to heal wounds as soon as they occur, and will do so incredibly effectively when we do our bit by providing the right environment.

Breathwork is a powerful way to create the environment that we need in order to heal. Conscious, connected breathing, in a safe and supported space, enables the old and unresolved memories, feelings and tensions to come into awareness. Once in our awareness in the present, we can face the old business and feel it. The body's self healing mechanism allows the held energy to move - the body knows exactly what to do. It can then let go and release.

Watch children who are allowed to express themselves. One minute they will be ecstatically happy, dancing around, jumping for joy, squeeling and laughing. A small crisis will immediately throw them into a completely different space – anger or sadness, panic or whatever. They will scream and stomp and rage and cry until they have finished that expression, then it will be over. Then they will be fully in another feeling space, hungry or chattering about some completely different thing. 

We are like that – if emotions are allowed to be exactly how they are, we don’t hold on to them. They pass. We are free then, and available to the present – to what's happening now.

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What happens in a Breath session?

In its simplest form, when you have a Breathwork session, you will lie down, be comfortable, warm and relaxed. Your Breathwork practitioner will sit with you, will watch over you, and will guide you to relax and focus on the breath. You will be coached and encouraged to breathe fully, to expand the breath beyond its tightness and its holdings, into a deep, rich and complete breath. The inhale and the exhale will merge together and become circular. You will be encouraged and supported to maintain this breath for anywhere between 45 minutes and two hours.

As we develop the intention to explore our deeper selves, and we find a safe place to let go of the holding and open to what we are, we relax. We breathe. We let go. What was held and unexpressed comes into conscious awareness. It is often surprising just how close to the surface these very old and very deeply held experiences are, and the immediacy and urgency of their expression. One moment we didn’t remember a particular incident, the next moment we remember it in its fine detail, and find ourselves expressing its intense and huge feelings as if it were happening right now. 
 
Surprising too, how deeply and cleverly we find ways to hold on and hide and resist the expressions of this old business, the fear and trepidation we can experience when the stories and feelings begin to emerge. That's one of the reasons it is important to put yourself in the presence of a qualified and experienced Breathwork Practitioner. They will have the skills to guide you beyond your habitual survival skills to new ways of being with yourself, to your complete resolution and healing.

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How much do sessions cost?

Currently I am offering sessions for individuals and couples in South Hobart on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Sessions are 90 minutes long and cost $80.00. Phone me on (03) 6224 3211 or email me to make a booking or for more information.

Telephone sessions can also be very effective if you are not in Hobart. As for one to one sessions, they will take about 90 minutes and cost $80.00. Bookings are made in the same way as above. Phone costs within Australia are included in this cost if I can call you on a land-line telephone. 

If you would rather find a Practitioner in your area, go to The Australian Breathwork Association's website, or the International Breathwork Foundation, and follow the links to Practitioners. 

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Where did Breathwork come from?

In its essence, Breathwork is universal. Across cultures and throughout human history, breathing techniques have been known and used consciously to open profound pathways and keys to the unconscious mind, to access the deeper parts of our being, to expand beyond the thinking mind and find out who we really are. All the yogas, martial arts disciplines, shamanic traditions and schools of meditation have used conscious and controlled breath as a central part of  their transformational tools. 

Western Breathwork began with the work of Austrian scientist and psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in about 1940. Reich’s work was based on his understanding of the basic life energy which pulses through us, and through all living organisms: in the earth, the atmosphere and in space. He understood that all human neurosis and illness is caused by disruptions to the natural flow of this energy because of traumatic experiences.

Reich’s most simple therapeutic tool was to stimulate the breath. He found that when he could encourage people to breathe deeply and consciously, their physical energy would become highly charged, and tensions would become more obvious. The tension could then be brought to awareness and worked with. The first step in working with tension is learning to feel it.

Use yourself to experiment … Are you able to feel what’s happening in your body now?  Can you pinpoint a place where you’re holding yourself tightly?  What happens when you bring your awareness to it?  You may find that you can go into the contraction or tension simply by choosing to feel it, rather than to avoid it.  It may change if you were to take a deep breath and let it go. If the tension is deeper and more entrenched, stay focused on it. Feel into it, using your full breath to explore what impulse is held there.

With this awareness, some tensions can be released simply by breathing - think of the kind of heavy breathing that moves the big energy of an orgasm through the body, or that helps a rush of anger or fear to move through you. Another way is to encourage the body’s organic response towards the physical movement which would be automatic if we had been encouraged and allowed to express big feelings – watch how children allow their feelings to move physically before it is trained out of them, by yelling, kicking, thrashing or punching.

Reich found that when the ‘muscular armour’ was released, so too was its emotional content. Intense emotions would surface, and where people had the capacity to stay with them and keep going through them, they would be more able to feel good. He developed the understanding that the tensions held in the body were very influential in forming character traits and personality, so he worked with the body to encourage active release and catharsis. His was the first model that linked the body to the emotions – he moved away from the dominant models of analysis therapy that relied on talking and thinking to access and transform trauma.

The re-emergence of Breathwork happened through many streams in the 1960s and '70s. Modern Breathwork was founded in America by Leonard Orr in 1974-75. At around the same time on the other side of the world, Stanislav and Christina Grof were developing Holotropic Breathwork, and many others internationally were continuing the work pioneered by Reich. This was the beginning in the West of a new way to access our inner realms, a safe and organic method for not only getting in touch with our old wounds and unresolved business, but also for resolving and healing it. Here was way of achieving profound and deeply altered states of consciousness, without the aid of drugs, and within the safety of a normal human process. Conscious breath revealed easily accessible doorways into spiritual experience as well as a profound physical healing tool.

Now 30 odd years later, Breathwork and Rebirthing are slowly becoming more acknowledged within the national and international mainstream. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are consciously Breathing!  For more information, including how to find a practitioner in your area, check out the Australian Breathwork Association and The International Breathwork Foundation.

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Why do we do this stuff?

Trauma happens. It's no-one's fault necessarily – it seems to be the nature of Life. Adversity strengthen us, builds our capacity to deal with Life's sometimes wild, wondrous and harsh ways. There are times when our survival needs us to 'get over it' and 'get on with it' now ... This is not wrong - it's in our best interests to be able to do this when necessary. We close down that bit of our hearts and get on with surviving.

It is in the Heart that you know who you really are. Through the heart you will access your connection to Existence, to All-That-Is. When you are able to open your heart unreservedly, you will know your natural state, that you are simply Love. Uncluttered, uncomplicated, undramatic. 

This simple truth of who we are feels joyful and blissful and ecstatic.

We have a deep yearning to feel this love and connectedness. And our culture encourages us to seek it in consuming stuff, either orally or materially, or through romantic love or doing and being something very important and special, always more.

Lucky we have the perfect inbuilt indicator that we are on the wrong track - Any feelings other than joy, bliss and gratitude are our guides.  Feelings are symptoms, highlighting what is not love, nudging us to heal this so we can Be our true Selves.

So Breathwork invites you to Welcome your feelings!  To reclaim the Heart, we need to revisit the reasons we closed off our hearts, to be willing to go there. In doing this we allow this incredibly clever organism that we are, to do what it knows how to do - and that is to self heal. When we get out of the way, the body, the spirit, the soul will heal.

 . . . As the makers of the film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” so eloquently expressed it: “How far down the rabbit hole are you prepared to go?”.

The beauty of Retreat-ing is that you step outside of your normal life and its demands on your attention. There is no need to 'pull yourself together' and function as you normally do. You are cared for and looked after so that you can go as deeply as you need to. You can try out new ways of living, relating to others, listening to yourself. You can establish new habits. You can rest and replenish.

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Check out the website of the Niche Yoga Retreat Centre for yoga and other retreats at this most beautiful venue.

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