Breath of life
With so much to deal with every day, breathing is the least of our worries, right? Actually, not true because if we don’t breathe, we can’t live. It’s as simple as that. We all know that if we don’t breathe, we will die; the body must have oxygen to function. Just breathing- the active taking in of oxygen and letting out carbon dioxide may keep us physically alive, but it won’t help us grow spiritually and develop. Yoga practitioners have long worked with the knowledge that the mind can affect the breath and vice versa; the scientific establishment now accepts this and uses it in many anxiety disorder clinics. Some yogis know how to position themselves to get a yes-or-no answer depending on their nostril airflow!
Smooth, easy breathing
When the breath flows smoothly and at an easy pace, the mind becomes calm and peaceful. When outside stimuli, thoughts, or emotions disturb the mind, the breath automatically changes; but when we regulate our breath with conscious awareness, the mind changes too, and we change how we cope with emotional disturbances or outside triggers. In other words, anxious or neurotic states of mind cannot exist when the breath is even and smooth. Breathing is connected to our psychological state and emotional well-being. Breathing consciously with a smooth, even flow is occasional, not habitual.
Consciously breathing
Slowing our breath, especially by making our exhale longer than our inhale, stimulates the vagus nerve. This switches off the sympathetic “fight-or-flight” response and activates the parasympathetic “rest-and-digest” mode. Breathing that is longer and slower than normal can bring up mental or emotional states that may inhibit our enjoyment of life if they are not released or resolved.
Two types of breathing
There are two types of Breathing: voluntary and involuntary. When we breathe automatically, involuntarily, we are more likely to respond to certain stimuli by acting out and reacting automatically. When we practice breathing consciously – voluntarily- we are more likely to respond from a point of conscious choice in the present. As we consciously breathe each one, we create our life, become more aware, and are free to choose.
Four types of voluntary and involuntary breathing.
We have four types of breathing: easy and relaxed, pressure breathing (breath retention, holding our breath), and over-breathing. The typical human mechanism for managing disturbing feelings, memories, thoughts, emotions, or images is suppression. We do this subconsciously by holding our breath whenever these feelings or thoughts begin to surface. Most of the time, this keeps them beneath the surface of the subconscious mind. When there is an overload or a person’s capacity to manage these feelings breaks down, this mechanism fails. The outcome is overreaction and irrational behaviour. Because the mechanism for processing feelings is to hold the breath or breathe less, fully connected, conscious breathing in Breathwork Mastery RBM sessions is successful. For example, if we prick our finger on a pin, we hold our breath so we don’t feel the pain. However, the pinprick sensation locks into the body as a charge, along with thoughts and emotions such as “stupid me” or “poor me”; a leftover remains from that event – it is an incomplete experience. If we continue to breathe normally when we allow ourselves to feel the sensation in its entirety until it fades, there is no leftover charge or side effects. It is a complete experience, though a painful one. Often, people suppress their breath and subconsciously hold it. This survival mechanism works really well. However, in survival mode, we do not feel fully alive.
Conscious breath holding
Some yoga routines consciously hold the breath for spiritual development, and they can increase the body’s life force, balance emotions, and still the mind. But the effect differs greatly from unconsciously holding our breath. When we unconsciously hold our breath, we diminish the body’s life force and suppress and repress emotions and disturbances in the mind. Until we feel safe or supported enough to change the breath-holding mechanism we use to suppress things, we will keep using it. That is, until we consciously decide to let our feelings and emotions surface, or until this suppression mechanism becomes so overloaded that everything spontaneously surfaces and creates a healthy crisis. Until then, we consciously hold our breath to suppress everything and anything.
Over Breathing – hyperventilation
Over breathing, or hyperventilation, whether conscious or unconscious, affects the brain and impacts our emotions. Feelings such as sorrow, fear, joy, grief and rage, which are authentic responses to events in our lives, are not felt in their fullness when we hyperventilate. If hyperventilation continues, these emotions can turn into certain types of vibration that are then felt as strong sensations or pain in the body, such as climbing, strong tingling, galvanised pain, and other symptoms. This is the emotional pain coming through the body to be released. It is one effective pathway to release emotions. Therefore, this type of breathing can quiet the mind. Well, I’m on level; the issues, of course, the emotions are still retained; it also turns those feelings into energy that is released or resolved through the physical body. The problem is that when emotion is released unconsciously, it can be frightening and unpleasant. If we do not understand that this is an inbound release mechanism, it can make us fearful of it happening again – and this fear in itself can become part of the problem. When we consciously hyperventilate to release disturbing emotions, it creates a release and an extreme feeling of relaxation for anyone who does not yet feel safe enough to identify their emotions.
Breathwork Mastery RBM approach
In Breathwork Mastery RBM, the instructions are to increase breathing to the fullest comfortable level, using the navel and above, the chest and the sides of the chest, the upper chest and the bulb. The movement and expansion of the lungs stimulate the nerve endings between the vertebrae. Because the spine carries the body’s major flow of energy, and the nerves in the spine connect to the body’s organs and brain, each stage of fully conscious, connected Breathing has an emotional and mental connection. The instructions are to extend the inhale to meet the exhale, and vice versa. The breath is therefore extended so there are no pauses, allowing a deeper intake into the lungs. The habitual pauses we make keep subconscious material below the level of our conscious awareness, and until we remove these pauses, the material cannot be held in a safe, supported environment; we will keep those feelings in place.
What is conscious breathing?
Conscious breathing means we are remembering to breathe with awareness. We are aware of the breath, and we are creating each breath. We can connect each breath, or breathe, without forcing it fast or slow from the abdomen to the throat. People claim that increased blood oxygenation delivers the benefits seen in breathwork. However, I believe that the mental and spiritual process of conscious breathing is just as, if not more, important as the physical change of increased oxygenation. Whether the catalyst is spiritual or physical through increased carbon dioxide and oxygen levels, the result filters into other levels – spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. Over time, research may reveal how positive this is for someone who breathes consciously.
Confidence
Every Breathwork Mastery RBM session uses conscious breathing to clear your thoughts and feelings through time spent in self-awareness and staying in touch with yourself and your body. Each session builds self-confidence and a foundation for receiving and working through unresolved mental and emotional experiences from our past. When we allow stored emotions and beliefs to surface, we release the trapped energy associated with them so they are no longer suppressed or repressed. With conscious breathing, change comes quietly, not dramatically. Breathing sessions that are subtle, as in Breathwork Mastery RBM, are just as potent and effective as the intense, dramatic ones. We have been trained to think that intensity and drama mean something is happening, when most of the time all that is happening is the intensity and drama. A person’s life can shift dramatically from a subtle, gentle, peaceful experience in a Breathwork Mastery RBM session or group.
