What is Rebirthing Breathwork?

So, rebirthing breathwork is different than many modalities you may be familiar with. It is not just an exercise or practice, but it an experience. A deep one.

It is not something like meditation where the practice fades as the day goes on.

Each session is an experience that changes you. It changes the way you feel in your body, how safe you feel, how present you are, the perception of yourself, etc. etc. It deepens your capacity to breath, your ability to take in and let go of air, and therefore take in and let go in life. 

This expansion and contraction is the movement of life and every living thing. When we can balance and heal the way in which our lungs expand and contract, we are able to live life in a whole new manner.

Physically, it is quite simple - you breath, connecting the inhale with the exhale and vice versa. No pause and with a good pace. Typically, you do this for about an hour with someone guiding you through the process, leading your breath to optimal energy flow and holding the space for you to dive into yourself.

The instructor holds the space of gentleness and clarity, as sometimes, going through a session can feel chaotic and confusing. The instructor sees what's going on by the way you are breathing, and guides you through changing your breath, and therefore your life. 

Breathing in such a way takes you on a journey through the subconscious mind and brings you into your body. It is a merging of the mind / body and soul. 

I see each breathwork session as an awakening of the soul. Like when you blow on a fire and it lights up and grows. And on this journey to merging the mind / body and soul, all that is preventing this oneness in your conscious mind and everyday life comes to the surface and is highlighted.

The beautiful thing about this breathwork is that you do not need to think your way through and analyze all that is coming up for you. The breath does it for you. The breath is allowing you to move through it and let it go. The breath is cleaning you emotionally. Just as water cleanses the body, the breath cleanses the energy body.

When we learn things about life and ourselves, especially when it is a lot of information, it takes time to integrate the information from our brain to our body. This breathwork allows for understanding through both the mind and the body. The body first, and the mind just usually happens to pick up on it too. 

Instead of a top (brain) down (body) process (like typical talk therapy for example), this breathwork is a bottom (body) up (mind) experience. 

The lungs store everything.

They store every moment we have experienced since birth (our first breath).

We have been breathing continuously from that moment. 

The way we breath in this moment reflects our emotional state, not just on the surface, but on all levels. 

If there are emotions that we did not fully move through in our past, they stay stuck in our body. Part of us stays stuck in the past, waiting for it to be resolved, which reflects in the way we breath. Our lungs cramp up, stuffing down whatever we fear will come to the surface if we let go. This "stuffing" then creates a loop of this emotion in our life called an energy cycle or energy dynamic. We constantly repeat this trauma, this emotion. We constantly act it out unconsciously. Because, deep down, it feels quite pleasurable to get this ALMOST release of emotion. I say almost because it is a never-ending loop, like an addiction. But once we become conscious of it, and actually have the safety and space within to face the truth of our hearts, of what we are feeling, then can we begin to change. 

Conscious connected breathing allows all of these "cramps", both emotionally and physically, to come to the surface. It brings you face to face with all that lives inside of you. Facing the way that you breath is literally facing all of those energy dynamics in your life that are keeping you stuck.

Now it is not just you facing this alone during a session. The instructor, through the way that you are breathing along with intuition, can see what you are moving through, and which emotion is at the core of it. The breathwork doesn't just bring all of it up to the surface inside of you, but it is actually directly reflected externally as well. 

The way that you breath is a reflection of your emotional tendencies, patterns, and loops you live through in your life, the energy cycles / dynamics. Through this breathwork, which allows for a deep subconscious dive into gently facing these patterns, and then in the midst of it, changing the way that you breath (which magically somehow just happens naturally during a session), these patterns lose their power as the emotion at the core of it resolves.

It is quite magical work. 

And the way you breath changes from then on. You breathe differently now, and therefore are living and experiencing life differently. 

The amount of space I have in between my thoughts these days is special to me. In every moment, I have the space to back up and observe. And I give so much credit to this breathwork. It has truly changed my life.

Clip from a rebirthing breathwork session of mine