Breathwork Therapy
The following article is sent by our member Hümeyra TümayBREATHWORK AS A HEALING THERAPY IN OUR DAILY LIVES
By Viola Edward.
Stress
Stress is a state of inner personal anxiety and can occur in all aspects of
our lives. It triggers processes of non-communication that hinder productivity
and creativity. All of us, in someway or another, are affected by this "20th
century's illness". Symptoms like bad moods, prolonged tiredness, anxiety,
lack of motivation and negative vision are almost normal in today's world, yet
prolonged exposure to them will create serious unbalance in our systems. A major
difficulty of healing this "illness" lies in the fact that stress
continuously feeds back on itself. Once it is present in the organism, its effect
becomes a cause.
Stress inhibits breathing
One of the most devastating effects of stress is the inhibition of breathing.
With repetition this becomes a generator of hang ups which can result in lack
of creativity, low productivity or as emotional unbalance. The symptoms experienced
can be repressed emotions, frustration and lack of purpose in life, disregard
of illnesses and general disconnection with nature poor exercise. Difficulty
in expressing forgiveness, love and thankfulness. By practicing breathwork and
becoming conscious of the way that we breathe, we can reverse this inhibition,
liberating ourselves from the effects of stress.
Breathing as a connection with health and life.
Conscious Breathing techniques have been used for centuries in eastern cultures,
but its use in the west, within the fields of psychology and psychotherapy are
relatively recent. Breathing is one of the basic points in several practices
of multi-dimensional health.
Some of these ancestral practices are: Yoga, Meditation, Tai-chi and Chi-kung,
Some of the modern practices are: Primal Therapy, Reichian Therapy, Postural
Integration, Bioenergetics, Gestalt, Rebirthing and Holotropic Breathing.
Both practices acknowledge the importance of breathing in processes of transformation.
Rebirthing is a powerful tool in breathwork therapy
Rebirthing therapy is powerful because it is simple and it is efficient. It
was first developed and presented in USA by Leonard Orr in the early seventies.
Free from suggestion or coercion, rebirthing allows each individual to find
their most adequate breathing rhythm. It stimulates the emergence of memories
from our early childhood, from stages of our intra-uterine life and also from
more recent traumatic experiences. Once these experiences re-emerge from our
sub-conscious into the conscious, they can then catalyse powerful transpersonal
experiences. This conscious form of breathing is a gateway into experiencing
altered states of consciousness and thirty years of positive experience with
rebirthers around the world gives an eloquent testimony to the success of conscious
connected breathing in therapy. Rebirthing creates access to forgotten inner
spaces, heals past traumas and transforms those "limiting personal belief
systems" into new paradigms of perception, creating better choices and
greater freedom.
The following processes form the core of the work:-
Conscious Connected Breathing, The Power of Thought, and the Creation of Coherent
Actions that match up Internal Learning with Effective External Results.
Accepting stress is part of its healing.
A reflexive/active philosophy has emerged from conscious connected breathing
that encourages personal transformation through "self-understanding".
By this we mean becoming aware of "who and how I am and where I am going"
and "accepting" and "acting consequently". We go on to recognize
that the body, mind, emotions and spirit are essentially interconnected and
that changes to the state of one element causes changes to the others.
As a natural and holistic process, rebirthing uses two very human actions, breathing and thinking. These fundamental elements help each individual to understand and accept that all the resources needed to develop their creativity and holistic potential are already within them selves. Accepting that the natural state of the Self is one of peace and awareness, the relevant balanced action (neither passive nor conformist) can be discovered.
For this, we only need time, energy and space.
Stress is a state produced by a physical, mental, emotional or spiritual experiences that were neither accepted nor integrated. Such experiences did not include a satisfactory completion. They were situations generated by fear, the "I cannot do it" syndrome. Therefore, the genuine completion of any such experience is a healing in itself. Rebirthing's advantage is that it permits the completion of those experiences and we can then understand, resolve and integrate them.
As we develop a deeper understanding of our own personal nature and cultivate an "attitude of acceptance" of the cycles of our moods and of our weaknesses and strengths, we will develop a consciousness of the Self which is beyond the form and the limitations of the personality.
Essential steps to the transformation of stress.
Essentially, breathing and thinking are two personal inner resources that are
available, simple, natural and powerful. Both open doors towards recognition
of the state of our inner Self. A third resource comes from the talents and
the natural gifts that every person possesses, part of their own raw material.
Whether developed or not, these three resources will always be people's allies
in times of crisis and in times of creativity.
Healing processes that have assimilated and developed the expression of these three inner elements, internally as externally, will always be valuable and successful.
We live breath relax and breathe live relax in a circular rhythm. Life not only has a beginning but also an end. There are multiple points, in the midst of this rhythm, that are connected to other directions of expansion. A person who keeps their intention and attention focused on their feelings, emotions, thoughts and memories, experimenting with and accepting these different phenomena will accept and heal their stress.
Such a person will develop the capacity to be relaxed, to accept and "let go". They will develop a fuller consciousness, an evolution of the Self that lives with emotions, thoughts and actions in a different perspective. This creates a new dynamic in life's process, generating conscious and joyful relationships with themselves, with others and with their surroundings.
A Rebirthing session.
With some practice, the client learns to breathe, relax and remain aware with
an attitude of acceptance. An inner atmosphere is created that allows repressed
"material" to come to the surface of the consciousness. These thoughts
and memories also have their emotional counterpart and a physical reference
point in the body. As the associated energy emerges and circulates throughout
the body and the mind, physical tensions are softened and eventually dissolved.
Emotions are expressed and conscious decisions are made. As this physical and
emotional relief is produced, breathing becomes deeper and flows fully and spontaneously.
The client is assisted to resolve and integrate past experiences and to progressively
release the old traumas and develop a breath that circulates easily and freely.
Consciousness of abundance.
Acknowledging and accepting our divine origin and becoming co-creators of many
things that we choose, will lead us to thoughts that are nourishing, thoughts
that will lead us to actions that will help us to meet our needs.
The inner wisdom of the Self is that our potential is unlimited, and by submerging ourselves in the satisfaction of creating and producing adequate results at the right moments of our lives, we become conscious of the nature of abundance. From this consciousness, it becomes easier to transform stress which is nothing else than the idea that we are short of time, resources and possibilities.
"Inhaling", "exhaling", "being present", "accepting" and "improving" are 5 fundamental elements of Rebirthing and life itself.
Viola Edward- Holistic Organisational Consultant,
Therapist & Coach, Rebirther trainer, Author of "Breathing the Rhythm
of Success" and internationally recognised lecturer.
Venezuelan Citizen, brought up in the Middle East, lived in Caracas Venezuela from 1972 to 2002, moved to Cyprus in December 2002. She is an Organisational consultant, Rebirther trainer, Holistic Coach, writer and internationally recognised lecturer.
Viola Edward is founder and Director of Kayana ltd. (Personal and Organizational Sustainable Development), Edward & Associates (Holistic Organisational Consultants), and the Centro Rebirthing de Venezuela. All of which facilitate the development of Conscious Leadership and Holistic Success in numerous public and private companies.
As a Consultant Rebirther, she has designed and developed processes of organisational supervision based on the principles of transpersonal psychology, Taoist philosophy and the principles of sustainable productivity.
She was trained by the founder of Rebirthing Leonard Orr in 1993 at the Inspiration University USA. She has lectured internationally in USA, Latin America and Europe. She has conducted professional Rebirthing and Consultancy training programmes in Venezuela, Spain and Curacao, where in total 300 students were trained to be Rebirther and Holistic Consultants. She founded the Venezuelan Rebirthing Association in 1996.
She served at the IBF - International Breathwork Foundation as:
National Coordinator 1999-2002,
Vice-President of Public Relations 2002-03,
organized the 9th Inspiration Global Conference -GIC- 29th June to 6th July,
2002, Margarita Island, Venezuela where 207 participants from 30 countries attended.
Her published works include two lecture series at Encyclopaedia Britannica Venezuela and a book entitled "La Conciencia del Éxito y el Arte de Renacer" in Spanish, which was also published in English as "Breathing the Rhythm of Success", and being translated into Turkish. Also, she is the creator of the "Alchemy of the Emotions" project.
Her professional career since 1973 includes twenty years spent mostly in the
insurance sector and, since 1993, in the holistic field of therapy, training
and consultancy.