Breathwork is a matter of being as present as you can in the body in as relaxed a state as possible. Then, by taking awareness to the natural breath, allow the consciousness to move from external to internal. Look inside. Feel how your body is now, today, in this moment. No judgement about how it ought to be, just how it is.What’s relaxed, what’s tense, what can you feel, what’s absent or numb?
Next, imaging the in-breath moving up through the body from the soles of the feet to the top of the head and letting the outbreath flow back down around the body like a fountain returning to the soles of the feet, then entering up through the body – so the breath becomes an unbroken circle….
Because energy follows consciousness, this simple, unbroken circle of breath starts to move energy through the body. Where the body has stored material that is ready to be released, this flow of energy can open up the past to be witnessed and metabolised from unconsciousness to available wisdom.
The beauty of this tecnique is that it is gentle and respectful of the body’s own wisdom. By breathing in this way, we ask the body, “What are you holding for me? I’m listening.” And the body answers in it’s own language of sensation and feeling. Sometimes we can translate what it’s telling us into thought,for example, memories or insights, and sometimes the experience is purely bodily, for example heat, cold, quivvering, shaking or other movement. Sometimes it’s emotional, weeping or laughter, anger or fear,and sometimes spiritual, visions, sounds, knowings, deep stillness, nothingness. The experiences are unique for each person each time.
When the initial opening up of stored material has happened, there is an important phase of integration, re-programming through the whole body andmind. Now that I don’t have to hold that any more, what is now possible in this body, this personality, this mind?
The body adjusts to a new reality. The present, without the drag of the past, is immediately and ongoingly different. New possibilities start to arise subtly and sometimes life-changingly. A new sense of who I am now.
Birth is one major event that every body has been through, and how it was for us is a major factor in how we experience life thereafter. Revisiting birth is often needed to unravel our automatic responses to relationship and intimacy. Our relationship with our mother and our initial reception in the world outside her body is a primary factor in the formation of our personality.