BREATHWORK, A STRESS

HEALING METHOD

By Michael de Glanville & 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 some way or another, are affected by this “20^th century 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 and 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, The Balance Model of Positive Psychotherapy, Rebirthing and Holotropic Breathing.

Both ancestral and modern 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 the 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 catalyze powerful transpersonal experiences. This conscious form of breathing is a gateway into experiencing altered states of consciousness and forty 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 themselves. 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.

Types of Stress

There are different types of stress. The most common one is a state produced by 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 am not good enough to…” and/or “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; it is 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 breathe 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.

If you are interested in deepening your knowledge about “Breathwork-Rebirthing” you can participate in sessions with Viola and Michael.

We would love to hear from you with your comments, experiences and questions.

FaceBook: ViolaEdward Coaching

You can download a free copy of Viola’s book “Breathing the Rhythm of Success” and find a collection of previous articles in this series from http://www.violaedward.com

About Michael and Viola

Viola came to Cyprus from Venezuela in 2002 to join Michael who was born on the Island and returned from France in 1999. Viola and Michael are both trained therapists in Breathwork and they founded Kayana Ltd in 2003. Viola specialises in Relationship Coaching, Business Consulting and Colour and Image. Michael has an Engineering background and specialises in Massage and Watsu.