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Self-healing with conscious breathing

Breath as a Healing Tool - 

Breath work in some form or another has always been an essential part of all kinds of personal growth and spiritual trainings. We find it in Buddhism and other eastern religions, in meditation techniques. We find it in Yoga in the postures and in the movements. We find it in indigenous peoples’ rituals. Breath is still is a powerful tool to take us deeper into ourselves and to reach different states of consciousness. 

However, few people practice conscious breathing. Most breath with what is called unconscious breathing or automatic breathing.  What most people do not know is that this automatic pattern of breathing may be keeping them from living fully and genuinely. 

Conscious and Unconscious breath 

Breathing is the unique activities for the body as it is the only function that could be done either consciously or unconsciously. When breathing becomes conscious, a neurological shift occurs activating a different part of the brain, different nerves and different muscles are engaged. While there are many other body functions like digestion that happen unconsciously, only breathing we can do consciously. The part of the brain that was responsible for unconscious breathing is freed and it then takes on a new role and becomes the gateway between the conscious and the unconscious mind. Consequently, a flood of creativity and unconscious memories emerge in the conscious mind after a few minutes of conscious breathing. Deeply dense repressed memories become entrained to a mindful level of consciousness: But yet without explicit meaning because the experience was not labeled and bound when it was experienced as an infant or child.

Foundations of Conscious Breathing

As we live in a body, the only way to experience life is through our bodily senses. From birth and through growing up, events happen that are too painful for us at the time to feel and experience. In order not to feel the pain connected to those situations, we block the experiences. We stop our breathing. We do not just block it in our minds. We also create a block in the body (Reich and Grof). We train ourselves to control with our breathing what we don’t want to experience. This goes for the most happy and joyful feelings too: We can hardly stand them and block them too by holding and limiting our breath. We become masters in suppressing feelings of any kind. Everything that has been blocked in some moments in our lives seems to be "away," gone. In truth it is not gone at all. It is repressed as dense forms in the cellular level in the physical body and in our energy field. 

These dense energy blocks are simply hidden somewhere in our subconscious and unconscious, waiting for an opportunity to rise to the surface so that they can be finally experienced to its full extent, truly felt, and thus integrated and transformed. Experiencing these repressed experiences to its natural end will often hurt as much as it hurt in the past when we had to repress it. The difference is that we now have our breath and guides to journey us through the experience. We are not "small" anymore; we have more internal resources than we had when we were fetus, baby, and children. With our breath we can create a safe context to resolve these traumas. Because breath produces a powerful connection between the body, emotions and the mind, between feeling and thinking, it is the most powerful and quickest tool for helping us solve these problems. 
    

Some (Orr) have claimed that this conscious connected breath has been a Rebirthing experience because of the possibilities it gives for remembering, among other things, details about one’s birth or before, and creating opportunities for reframing the story of one’s life.  It is often called "Conscious Breathing" or "Conscious Connected Breathing". 

Integration of material from unconscious, subconscious to the conscious:

Breath is used as a means to make the connection between mind and body, and spirit, thoughts, feelings and sensations. It is such a powerful tool for opening the body and allowing the energy/prana/chi in the body to flow so we can realize that we are in truth spiritual, unlimited beings. Conscious breathing serves as a gateway between the subconscious and conscious. However, it is with the use of the Golden Triangle that the material from the subconscious that emerged can be observed. It is when we know we are not all the sensations and emotions being experience but we are the observer of all that is manifesting at all levels of out being, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Uncovering the true self and healer within through breath

 We all have the resources within to heal ourselves and take that special journey of self-discovery. Which means each of us has within her or himself all the resources necessary to have a healthy, creative, and happy life. Our true self and higher qualities, however, have been covered under layers of coagulated experiences such as repressed trauma and wounds, and childhood images and defenses.  

Breath and our “precious life story”

The basic purpose of any kind of self-growth and healing courses is to help us to recognize our thought patterns: to make it possible for us to feel our thoughts, to find our way back to our own life energy, to create a context into which it is safe enough to integrate thoughts and feelings, and thus to bring us into contact with our spirituality and with the meaning of life. It’s important to develop a personality that has access to power and creativity as well as to vulnerability and spirituality. The conscious connected breath is a wonderful tool for reaching this goal. This means we have to get past the story we have created defining our character and choices in life.

Your breath pattern is your life pattern

Breath is life, and the act of breathing is our most fundamental interaction with life. Not only does breath give us life, the way we breathe determines the way we live. The pattern of life is created by the pattern of breath. If we consider this truth seriously, we must breath in such a way that reflects our deepest worldview and advance our purpose in life.

Birth, Breath, and Trauma

A lifetime of continuous but unconscious breathing begins and patterns from the first breath out of the womb: To breathe separately from the mother establishes oneself as physically autonomous being. Breathing for oneself is the first act of taking in for oneself. It is at this time that breath pattern takes form based on the birth experience. And conversely, life begins to pattern from the breath. 

The newborn’s first breath contains everything about the birth experience. The infants intensely contracted energy, intense emotional pain, the experience of a disturbing and foreign environment and invasions - conditions the first breath and every breath that follows. Such birth experiences are integrated as breathing lessons, and lead to a lifetime of various breathing patterns depending on the nature of the birth experience and care.  If the birth was such that the infant did not feel welcome (For a variety of reasons), a common breath pattern is shallow breathing. Given the birth experience, the breath lesson imprints a deep cellular memory of the connection between trauma and breath. These unresolved implicit memories have been repressed and locked into the newborns cellular level and developing energy field. Ultimately, yet unbeknown, these hidden experiences become information for the decisions, attitudes, behavior patterns and beliefs out of which a child will create the story of their life.