Practicing Breathwork offers offers numerous benefits amongst which:
Strengthening our lungs and improve respiratory system.
Make confident and positive decisions, leading to success and fulfillment.
Develop self-discipline, resilience, and consistency, empowering the achievement of personal goals.
Quiet the mind and soothe the nerves, navigating life's turbulence and challenges with grace.
Gain a deeper understanding of oneself and individual behavioral patterns, unlocking personal growth and self-awareness.
Enhance awareness of our surroundings and our own state of being.
Deepening connections with oneself and others and fostering meaningful relationships.
Embrace vulnerability and authenticity, creating genuine and fulfilling connections.
Experience deeper intimacy and satisfaction, using breath to enrich emotional and physical experiences.
Cultivate relaxation skills, recharging and renewing energy for future challenges.
These represent a mere fraction of the potential benefits of regular breathwork practice. It's important to note, however, that no list of benefits can truly capture the profound emotional release and transformation breathwork may provide.
What is “Breathwork”?
Breathwork, at its core, is the deliberate manipulation of our natural breathing patterns to influence our physiological responses for a specific duration. The technique employed and the session length can vary greatly.
An Inter2Action coaching session typically consists of three stages:
Preparation
Practice
Integration
Let's delve into each stage to provide a deeper understanding of the breathwork process.
Preparation:
Determine practical aspects, such as location (online or in-person), and prepare necessities like water and a yoga mat.
Establish an intention for the session and contemplate your motivations.
Discuss expectations and any health concerns with the facilitator.
Breathwork Practice:
The facilitator explains the chosen technique, its duration, and guidelines.
A carefully curated music playlist aids in adopting a new breathing style alongside vocal guidance and support from the facilitator.
The session concludes with a stabilizing breath as the music comes to an end and post session there is the opportunity to share about one’s personal experience in order to gain better understanding of newly acquired insights.
Integration:
Reflect on your experiences and gleaned insights.
The facilitator assists your transition back to daily life and offers support for personal issues.
Focus on grounding yourself and applying newfound knowledge to future endeavors.
Sessions can incorporate additional practices like de-conditioning exercises, deep stretching, awareness meditation, therapeutic interactions, catharsis for anger release, and countless other transformational modalities to boost benefits.
Outcomes of a Breathwork Session
Practicing breathwork increases our self-awareness and teaches us to rely on our breath for guidance and clarity in everyday situations. This results in improved decision-making and enhanced emotional tranquility. Breathwork also sensitizes us to our emotions and internal physical tensions.
By concentrating on breathing in the present moment, we upgrade our ability to experience reality authentically and acceptingly. This vital meta-skill, when combined with coaching, can be awakened within us.
PME Framework:
Breathwork fundamentally incorporates three dimensions of our existence: physical, mental or cognitive, and our emotional states.
Physical
By adopting a deliberate breathing pattern during a session, our bodies undergo acute stress. Comparable to other exercises, our bodies naturally adapt, becoming sturdier and more resilient. Our respiratory system can be refined and enhanced, augmenting lung capacity through challenging breathing patterns. The extraordinary breath-holding capacities of professional freedivers, who are often able to hold their breath for over 5 minutes and can dive deeper than 100 meters, demonstrate the potential results of training our respiratory systems. Increased lung capacity and improved regulation of carbon dioxide levels generally contribute to a more robust immune response and greater physical endurance. In essence, breathwork sessions often leave participants feeling energized, invigorated and rejuvenated, akin to the effects of an intense workout.
Mental
Concentrating on our breathing during breathwork fosters mindfulness, assisting in quieting the overactive, frequently neurotic mind, and reestablishing our connection to clarity. Upon completing a session, we transition into a state of contentment—detached from our thoughts, receptive, unadulterated, and inspired. The more time spent in this space, the simpler it becomes to revisit this state in our everyday lives.
During instances of physical discomfort, which are typical in the initial stages of a breathwork session, we can actively seek to confront and transform mental obstacles. By intentionally breathing into these discomforts, we practice addressing unease with empathy and acceptance, further bolstering mental resilience outside of the session.
Emotional
Whenever we face stressful situations or traumatic experiences in daily life, an emotionally charged, energy-blocking imprint is left on our inner system, which tends to subconsciously influence our natural behavior. These energetic blockages obstruct genuine self-expression and persist until the underlying issues are resolved or the trauma is released. Many of us have lost a substantial amount, if not all, connection to these imprints, causing them to remain dormant within our subconscious, where they linger unresolved.
Breathwork empowers our systems to access innate self-healing capabilities, connecting with and healing deep emotional wounds that conventional therapies may struggle to address.
Why I Breathe
I could delve deeper into the theory of Breathwork, but I feel excessive theory can be inundating. Given that Breathwork experiences differ from person to person and from session to session, the most valuable invitation is for you to try it for yourself.
Allow me to share my personal perspective on why I choose to breathe:
Is it to gain knowledge? Is it because something in my life isn't as ideal as I'd like? Could it be the enjoyment it brings me? Is there something missing that I desire or something in excess that I wish to eliminate?
While these questions resonate, they aren't the primary reasons I practice Breathwork.
Breathwork practice for me often demands effort and discipline. Resistance, either mild or intense, typically precedes my sessions, even though I know the experience will be rewarding and, at times, quite enjoyable.
Despite the initial dread and occasional despair that accompanies the thought of beginning a session, curiosity and wonder also emerge as I prepare for this deep physical practice.
Why do I practice Breathwork, especially when it's not always easy, and why do I educate others about it?
Breathwork instills within me a profound spiritual connection, and the potential for transformation surpasses any material reward. It grants me a profound bond with my inner being, as if I were undergoing relationship therapy with myself.
This heightened self-awareness enhances my connection with others, my surroundings, and the universe. Over time, Breathwork enables me to quiet my overactive mind and immerse myself in feelings, sensations, and emotions. This process untangles challenging and self-limiting beliefs and thought patterns.
On a practical level, regular Breathwork practice equips me with tools to alter my emotional state in any situation. Conscious breathing techniques help me cultivate awareness and stabilize my emotions as they arise.
When confronted with discomfort, many people shut down and become defensive, resorting to fight or flight responses and unconscious behavior. However, my Breathwork training allows me to regain awareness and control. This skill has been a blessing, enabling me to learn essential life lessons.
Others often appreciate my ability to maintain composure in ways they're unaccustomed to while navigating interactions that divert towards unconscious reactionary dynamics through steering away from conflict. When I'm triggered by reactive responses like frustration, anxiety, stress, or anger, I can choose and implement an appropriate breathing method to regain control of my emotions.
Moreover, Breathwork holds a captivating spiritual aspect. During practice, I enter a state that aligns with an inner essence I wish to learn from. By pushing my breathing patterns to the limits, I can achieve a state where only my breath and I exist.
In this state, I can reflect on my past and present behaviors, seeking answers to questions like:
What am I doing with my life? What obstacles prevent me from realizing my full potential? How can I overcome current challenges?
Supported by breath, I can address these questions with compassion, understanding, and non-judgment towards myself and others.
This perspective has been invaluable, as I often find myself in one of two states:
The thinking self, analytical and curious, striving to understand and sometimes judgmental and disconnected.
The feeling self, present, empathetic, and service-oriented, wondering about the experiences and emotions of the present moment.
The feeling self can cry, laugh, dance, sing, shout, swim, or breathe, experiencing joy, frustration, anger, pain, shame, or sadness, but always alive through emotions.
Breathing transports me from the mental spectrum to the experiential and emotional area, where I feel most at home—present and attentive to the here and now.
When the thinking self reemerges after a Breathwork session, it knows there is a place of peace, tranquility, and consciousness. In which I can immerse myself anytime and from which I can return as a more competent and whole being.