BREATHWORK THROUGH THE LENS OF SPIRITUALITY & SCIENCE
Sara de Clercq - 6 February 2023
Our subconscious is made up of many thoughts & beliefs which we are not consciously aware of.
However they can leave their impressions on our emotional and our physical cellular memory, and distort our way of perceiving, and therefore creating, reality.
The breath is one of the most powerful tools that we’ve found to explore the subconscious mind. The Rebirthing style of breathwork especially looks to explore the subconscious mind, meaning we go beyond the conscious mind into layers of unconscious patterning.
In this way, Rebirthing breathwork is a great tool to deepen our spiritual practice and can help us in understanding ourselves and reality.
It’s in the name: Rebirthing.
Rebirthing breathwork invites us to go back to the very beginning of our lives and explore habituated patterns of mind and body activity that have shaped themselves in our first few years of life, during our birth or when we were in our mothers belly or even before that.
As you may start to realize, there are many many layers to explore here.
Rebirthing is based on practicing sessions of connected or circular breathing. Circular breathing means that there is no stop at the breath out and no stop at the breath in. There is a circular continuous movement between breath out and breath in. This is particularly important because it allows us to move through any kinks or ‘disruptions’ in the breath. These ‘disruptions’ point to where we hold our breath, breathe shallow or are not fully relaxed and at ease. These ‘disruptions’ can therefore show us a great deal about where the work for healing lies.
The smoother our breathing, the smoother our living.
There are two stages of the Rebirthing Breathwork practice:
1. In the first stage we learn how to breathe with as much Energy as possible - life force, as air and the healing power it has. To fully breathe (most people don’t do this, we hold back or hold our breath). This means to let the energy fully move in and out of the lungs and body. To let the breath fully fill you and then also let the breath go, fully. Another way of describing this is to fully receive all of life energy and to fully give all life energy. This allows the energy to freely move through you, without constrictions.
2. The second one is Life Mastery, it is about completely healing our emotional mind, which manifests itself as blockages in the breath and body, until we reach a point where all our thoughts and emotions are immersed in Spirit. Where there is no Self & actually no Spirit either, because the two are one. It is about unraveling the birth-death cycles and fully incorporating and manifesting our natural divinity in our mind and body; in other words, embodying the divine.
Life Mastery also means that awareness of the breath is, at all times, being integrated into day to day life. Whether you are washing the dishes, doing laundry, working, talking to someone - how aware are you of the breath and the way it is behaving in that moment? Breath Awareness in day to day life is a powerful tool for overall awareness of self.
With continued practice, clearing everything that is not in (y)our highest good and with healthy integration into day to day life, the breath is one of the most powerful tools for healing.
Life Mastery means being in an ongoing practice. Being a student of life and allowing ourselves to be open and receptive to life and learning for the rest of our lives.
Alongside the spiritual, sits the science.
Many scientific studies are revealing the benefits of breathwork:
1. Breathwork provides relief from stress and allows for deep relaxation in body & mind.
A growing number of studies show that breathing techniques are effective tools to let go of anxiety and insomnia. Conscious breathing & breath awareness could be one of the fastest and easiest ways to respond to the stress of everyday life. A 2017 study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that participants who completed 20 breathwork training sessions over eight weeks had significantly lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol compared with those who did not receive the training. Cortisol is responsible for our body's stress response and high levels of it can cause chronic inflammation.
"We try all these different things for stress, but if you're not breathing in a way that tells your nervous system that it's time to relax, you won't get there," clinical psychologist and breathwork instructor Belisa Vranich, Ph.D., explains of the breath's ability to combat stress and anxiety.
2. Breathwork can train us to breathe slower, more fully and deeper, which allows the blood pressure to lower.
When we improve our breathing, our blood flows better and we improve the health of our heart & blood flow. A 2001 study found that practicing breathwork for 10 minutes a day is an effective, nonpharmacological way to reduce blood pressure and promote natural healing. Building upon those findings, a 2015 study found that patients with hypertension saw a big drop in blood pressure after practicing slow, deep breathing.
3. Breathwork can reduce symptoms of depression.
Researchers took a look at the effects of Iyengar yoga and coherent breathing on depression. What came out of this research? People who engaged in the practices for 12 weeks had a measurable decline in depressive symptoms and showed clinical improvements. The findings echoed the results of a 2016 report from the University of Pennsylvania, which found evidence that breathing-based meditation could ease severe depression in people who did not respond well to antidepressants.These techniques influence both physiological factors (by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system) and psychological factors (by diverting attention from thoughts), or allowing thoughts to come and go - realizing that you exists behind that.
Meditative breathing's mood-boosting powers could be due to its ability to actually decrease the size of the amygdala, a part of the brain that detects fear and triggers the body's fight-or-flight response, which in turn increases the prefrontal cortex’s ability to engage in complex thinking and see ‘the bigger picture’.
4. Breathwork can support more focus and less distraction.
Breathwork allows for physical benefits of CO2 activation. So if you find it difficult to concentrate on a task for an extended period of time. Breathwork can help. A 2018 study published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition found that breath-focused yoga boosted the attention span in participants.
5. Breathing can help with pain management & gut issues.
More doctors and patients are increasingly looking for safer alternatives to prescribing pharmaceuticals for pain management. Breathwork has a lot of potential and might be the answer for some to reduce pain in the body.
Multiple studies have found that deep, slow breathing and relaxation reduce the perception of chronic pain or help patients better cope with physical discomfort. The pain pathway is mediated by norepinephrine, therefore if we can balance cortisol and decrease inflammation, the perception of pain can also decrease. By simply being with the sensation in the body and not labeling the sensations as ‘painful’, ‘hurtful’ or ‘uncomfortable’ can decrease our perspective towards sensations in the body and reduce overall suffering.
Breathwork can release subconscious beliefs and unresourceful thoughts and emotions that are responsible for manifesting the pain in the body in the first place. More often than not, pain in the body has to do with a limiting belief in mind. Some story, some perspective that we are holding onto and is causing the physical illness, pain or gut issues. The mind and the gut are intrinsically connected and looking at one without the other would not be sufficient. Breathing allows for more oxygen intake, which means less carbon dioxide. Breathing into the abdomen will massage our digestive organs and increase our food nutrient uptake and detox our gut space. So you can use the breath to massage the parts of the body that are painful and relax more into that part of the body. Bringing love and acceptance into the area that is painful is more powerful than most people can even start to imagine.
Other benefits to Breathwork:
- Integrate negative thoughts about life, people and self.
- Cultivate more awareness and creativity.
- Release subconscious beliefs and unresourceful thoughts and emotions.
- Understand yourself and others better.
- Break the birth - death cycle.
- Incorporate body and mind into a conscious life of happiness with the aim of becoming an expression of it.
It’s not a surprise that breathwork is becoming more and more popular and that many have found immense benefits from working with the breath.
If you feel moved to take your next step in the world of breathwork, we facilitate 1 to 1 Breathwork Sessions and Group Breathwork Journeys in Sydney, Melbourne and Byron.
Ready for a full deep dive?
Join our upcoming YES& Breath Retreat in Bali, an 8 day immersive from 28 July 2023 - 5 August 2023.
Links:
Book: Manual for Rebirthers, Fanny Van Laere & Leonard Orr
The science behind breathwork + 5 benefits of practice by Joni Sweet: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/the-benefits-of-breathwork