We all breathe. But are you doing it with intention (other than to simply stay alive?). I've been breathing (consciously) since 2017 and facilitating and leading breathwork classes since then also.
WTF is breathwork?
Breathwork is a self healing modality. So what is self-healing you might be asking? Well, it's healing the body, the emotions, and the mind without any external force or influence.
With breathwork, the really cool thing is that the body and the breath do the work! We breathe all day, everyday. And doing Breathwork invites us to use this automatic practice with INTENTION. We're healing our body using nothing but the inhale and the exhale.
Breathwork does incredible healing on a physical level, but also brings us insight, wisdom and intelligence that is far beyond the intellect of the mind.
With breathwork, we benefit on three different levels:
Physically: Breathwork teaches how to better use our entire respiratory tract in a more optimal way. And this offers benefits like better sleep, improved digestion, increased heart rate variability, increased lung capacity, vagal tone, immune function, it stimulates neuroplastic processes, rewires the brain, it increases our focus and attention. Breathwork helps us establish an anchor with our breath so that we can then pause and respond to life with less reactivity.
It helps with integration of grief and loss. It can process and release trauma.
Emotionally: Breathwork shifts your state, thereby shifting your energy and your mood. Breathwork also helps with our mental and emotional load. We've long used our breath as a way to control our feelings and our emotions. Has anyone ever told you to take a deep breath? When you're stressed people say, “just breathe! Take a deep breath.”
Think about this. Have you ever found yourself holding your breath? When you're scared? We naturally try to shift our state or respond to what's going on around us by adjusting our breath.
Emotions are simply rnergy in motion and sometimes when we hold our breath, when we squeeze our breath, we trap these emotions, and they get stored in our bodies and our tissues in our muscles, and breathwork helps to move this energy up and out of us, releasing it. Why would we want to be storing stress? Why would we want to be storing fear and shame and guilt in our body?
Spiritually: Obviously there's a spiritual component (you know if I'm talking about it then there must be SOMETHING spiritual going on, right?). Breathwork helps us clear out old low-frequency vibrational emotions and helps create a clear channel connecting us to the Divine. To SOURCE. To God. Breathwork helps us remember how perfect we are. With breathwork, we are entraining our consciousness with the frequency of LIFE. We release old patterns, trauma, belief systems while re-patterning our nervous system responses.
Overall breathwork offers improved well-being.
Chronic shallow breathing (which is the way most of us are breathing naturally through the day), keeps us anxious.
It denies us of Life Force, which can lead us to feeling super tense, on edge, unhappy, confused, and stuck. Breathwork is a technique that helps us move out of fight or flight mode, which is a space that many of us are living in because of the culture of the world; this hustle mentality. So, so many of us have small traumas seemingly happening to us all day long day in and day out. So our body is in a super stressed-out mode all the time.
Breathwork helps bring us out of the sympathetic nervous system and into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for our body's ability to rest and digest. This is the state we need to be in. This is the state where we heal, repair and regenerate.
When we are living in a chronic state of tension, our bodies remain in this fight or flight mode even when there's no real danger. This leads to digestive issues, anxiety, depression, insomnia, headaches, and so many other problems. But the beauty of breathwork, is that it allows us access to the body's natural intelligence to heal itself.
Now this is just a little blurb, a little blip, the tiniest little scratch on the surface about breathwork and what it is capable of. If you are still curious about this amazing tool I want to offer you to continue reading/ listening over the coming weeks as I'm going to be sharing a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot about breathwork and its benefits and how it can work for you.
Don’t forget you can still jon my FREE 5 Day Breathwork for Life challenge where I will send you a daily breathwork video to learn and practice and reap the benefits starting today! And the best part is that the videos are all only 15 minutes long or or less)!
I hope this has shed some light. Breathe deep, rebel soul. There IS another way to do this thing called Life. <3
Learn more about my signature 3 month virtual breathwork program, Breathe Alchemy Circle
Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is for educational purposes only. Please consult with a qualified professional before implementing any breathwork or nervous system regulation techniques. Breathe responsibly and rock on!
Listen to this blog as a podcast HERE.