BEYOND BREATHWORK

BEYOND BREATHWORK

Human beings are overstimulated these days. Not enough rest and relaxation, not enough assimilation of good nutrition, living to work not working to live. Burning the candle at both ends.

When I work with a new group, I ask how many have difficulty releasing tension, letting go of their thoughts? Most in the group raise their hands. I then ask how many could benefit from a practice that would allow them to relax and get out of their head? They raise their hands again – but, this time, with a look of skepticism. The thought of relaxation seems foreign to them, something they’ve seen in a post on Tik Tok or Instagram, something they sense they’re supposed to know but are more likely to mimic than inhabit. 

I then share with them that if they do this breathing practice for ten to twelve minutes they will start to relax and let go. A few have laughed, and I confidently say, “If you do the breathing the way I show you then you will relax and let go, and it’s likely you will let go of lots of tension and emotion. It’s generally pretty quiet by the time I say this – because people, all people, want to relax and let go of stress.  It is a stressful world out there.  Humans have built a stressful world for themselves.  The question is can we un-build that.

I next demonstrate the two-stage breathing method that we will do in this active meditation and for the remainder of our time working on relaxation as a group. There’s quite a strange story of how this method of breathing first came to me.  Sometimes I tell it to the group.

Thirty years back, a man, Tim Heath, summoned me to Sedona through a friend to tell me that I had taught him this pranayama breathing meditation in India over two thousand years ago. He said I had been a healer many lifetimes since, and that he knew me in several of those lifetimes. He insisted that he was not my teacher, just the messenger reacquainting me with this breathing technique that I needed for my work in this lifetime.  He also insisted that I was clairaudient! He said that I needed to get up to speed with the work, because he needed me to work on him.  Needless to say, I didn’t believe him, nor did I want to believe him. I was a working actor in LA, and committed to that path.  Both of my books cover aspects of my time with Tim.  I cover it in depth in, my first book, The Reluctant Healer.

It took me a few years to move past my reluctance into a path of (much) less resistance, but eventually I surrendered to working as a healer full time. I came to accept clairaudience as a gift of hearing, an ability to help others using the voices of Nature embracing all of us at all times.

The type of healing work I do includes breathwork as a primary tool, but the breathwork is but a portion of what I teach. In these groups and in the books, we (meaning Nature through me) are teaching people how to move out of their overactive minds and move into their connected hearts. Breath is the connector, connecting us to atmosphere, and the lungs hug the heart – quite literally.  When we learn to hug our hearts, to welcome the Earth’s breath as our own, we meet how much life loves living life.  We are safe again to live.  Traumas come loose and release.  Stress does the same.  Old emotions clear.  The heart opens because - we are suddenly living inside sacred space.  It is a very experiential process.

There are many approaches to utilizing breath.  Some methods insist that we only breathe through the nose, but different breathwork techniques activate different things. Breathing through the nose is most comfortable and the best breath for everyday living. Plus “mouth breather” is a pejorative in certain circles!  But that taboo hides some intriguing facts.  Breathing through the mouth takes breath directly into the lungs, unfiltered through the nasal passages, and drives the breath deep into the body where much of our energy and emotions can get stuck. This flaring of lung capillaries and air sacs shuttle life as oxygen rapidly into and through the body, and the body responds with a detox of sorts.  It gives up its ghosts, the things that haunt us.  We let go of things that we don’t need anymore.  And this is why I advocate breathing through the mouth – but only while doing this specific meditation!  In the later phases of the meditation, as we pivot into deep relaxation, we switch to breathing through the nose. Rhythmic nostril breathing is more relaxing, more reflexive and soothing, but also provides more opportunities to move out of thoughts especially when we’ve released pent-up emotions and traumas with the prior mouth breathing.  It is an alchemy, and it naturally reconnects people to Nature where Nature can naturally heal them.

I work with people privately, in person and on zoom.  I also lead groups through the breathing meditation, and I teach groups of people how to access their gifts to guide others through this breathwork.

We hold space for the breather with the imagery and agency that the breather is doing the work. The healer is chaperoning the process but not doing that much.  Nevertheless, holding space is an artform. If the breather can take responsibility for their healing experience, then they become far more empowered than in healing themselves, a thing we can all do.  A true healer understands this, and holds space for the breather to learn this through their breath. One issue to consider with chemical or plant medicine is individuals can transfer their healing to the chemical, to the plant – and fail to embody the healing themselves. My preference is to empower the person in need of healing to understand that we heal ourselves, rather than making it about the healer who is simply reminding them of the healing tools that they possess.

The healing work I teach involves minimal touch and contact with the body allowing the intuition to bloom from an internal place in both healer and client.  As a result, remote video sessions can be as effective and deep as in person sessions. My second book, HEALING, focuses considerably on developing intuition and insight for guiding ourselves and others through blockages in our lives helping us understand how every client is unique.  Some prefer in person work, valuing human contact. Others prefer the privacy of their own home that remote work affords them for opening up and releasing deeply held pain.

The human body will always accumulate some trauma, pain or stuck emotions that become a map of its past. There are many ways to look at the past and the scar tissue associated with it. Most do years of talk therapy, recounting stories around abuse and trauma that can often feel like circling a plugged drain. I firmly believe that breathwork is one of the best ways to release the past because of the way we can move ourselves out of our overactive heads and into the life-pumping heart. Any increase in energy flow (cardiovascular, respiratory) will help shift stuck energy back into flow mode.

Knowing my work is fully supported and grounded into many unseen forces such as spirit and the collective consciousness of Mother Earth and all the life forms she maintains, allows me to trust the support and grounding as it shows up in my students and clients. We can describe this connection as indigenous or earth based. I trust this connection as sustainable, and something I can connect to and teach for the rest of my life. The support I experience is the support I heal from and teach.  I am an environmental guardian in my approach, and helping others helps support Mother Earth. With every client, student, and group, this indigenous wisdom grows.  If deep healing and relaxation is something you want, then reading The Reluctant Healer and HEALING will expand your heart in approach.