Breathwork and Optimal Breathing

Mike,

Thanks for the reference. I am wondering about how and what you are doing and describing relates to shock, trauma, and emotional release.

Dear Doug

Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks PhDs focused a lot on pre and perinatal aspects in my Radiance Breathwork trainings I took in 1990 and 1991. It mainly addresses what someone thinks or feels what was going on then. Though that can clearly guide I am more interested in what is happening in real time and how it can be resolved moment to moment by a grounded, balanced, consistent breathing pattern and how we can manage that.

I am trained in, among others, Rebirthing, Radiance Beathwork (Hendricks) and Reichian techniques. I have been studying the breath for some 44 years. Too often these "breathwork" emotional releases come too quickly and cause the individual to suffer from over or under exposure to energy they have no way to process/integrate/deal with or never get to in the first place. You can't just tell someone to "integrate the experience" It might take years for some people. Some never integrate it and seem weird or too different. I can not, as an accountable professional, trust the process to so much luck or wide swings of results.

I find that when people integrate the mechanical breathing improvement approach with the energy work, the client transitions easier, smoother and with more groundedness, inner strength and peace. And the work sticks better because I have rearranged the way the hundreds of internal influences/mechanisms of the breathing drives the nervous system. Plus they "stay in their body" a lot more and they like that because it feels right and whole.

The body was was designed to breathe in a certain way. Some people believe I mean that in a mechanistic way. This could not be further from the truth. You must have the rhythm and internal coordination working to optimize breathing's flexibility and maximum potential. If you build a tuba and try to play it like a guitar you are going to have difficulty. Few really know what optimal breathing looks, acts, sounds and feels like. (The belly breath idea is a kindergarten level approach.)

Optimal Breathing's modality design implies sensitivity (without fragility), flexibility ( without overcompensation), expansion (at individual tolerable levels), spontaneousness, focus and internal strength. One must not only release the negative energy. One must also rebalance the nervous system. It does not rebalance by itself with just the emotional release process, though there is often progress in that direction. On the contrary, the release process often opens up energetic, respiratory psychological cans of worms that need professional assistance with, especially after decades of unbalanced breathing.

The mechanical breathing function either aids or inhibits emotional/nervous system balance, including catharsis. It absolutely must be addressed in a clear and accurate, non-hyperbolic fashion. Plus when it is improved quickly in the way it was designed to function optimally, the body stays in balance and is not so subject to wild swings of emotion. This helps ALL modalities as all modalities are in some way affecting or effected by the way we breathe. I am particularly fond of Optimal Breathing because I can replicate it from person to person. So could you too, with my training. www.breathing.com/pages/consulting