The Breath & Breath4Life™

01 Oct 2008

We generally take breathing for granted. Breath is a fully automatic process, beginning at birth and continuing without interruption until the day we die. It can be a fully unconscious process. There is no need to attend consciously to the way one is breathing. We expect to breathe quite adequately while sleeping each night, as we do during our time awake. Our hearts also beat continuously without any conscious effort, as we digest our food without actually doing anything about it. From moment to moment throughout our lives, there are thousands of vital processes occurring in our bodies, of which we are generally unaware and uninformed. This part of the workings of the body is driven by unconscious intelligence, so that our conscious awareness is freed for other pursuits.

With the breath, there is a difference: breathing can be a completely unconscious process, but it can also become a conscious, intentional practice. This is a unique quality of the breath, that it can be both conscious and unconscious and this quality makes it a link between the conscious and unconscious aspects of our being. You can consciously stop breathing for several moments, if you want and you can resume breathing deeply if you want. You can fill your lungs, or breathe very lightly. You can let the air out in a gentle sigh, or blow it out in a strong wind. All this is easily within your conscious control.

The act of breathing in, is known as inspiration. Looking at the meaning of the term to inspire (breath in) the Oxford dictionary definition is…Inspire (inspirare = in + spirare – breath, courage, vigour, the soul, life). 1. To breathe. 2. To infuse into by breathing. 3. To have an animating effect upon. 4. To cause, guide, communicate or motivate as by divine or supernatural influence.

There are many ‘teaching of the breath’ that teach us how to bring consciousness to the act of breathing. They have shown that it is of great physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual benefit to the human individual. Most eastern traditions state that ‘the quickest way to change your consciousness is to change your breathing.’ Conscious breathing encourages the expansion of consciousness throughout the human organism and beyond, to inhale consciously is to positively excite and expand the whole environment of which one is part. To exhale consciously is to support the relaxation of all surrounding and connecting energies. Every moment of conscious breath is an inspired co-creation with life itself.

‘The purpose of conscious breathing is not primarily the movement of air but the movement of energy. If you do a relaxed, connected breathing cycle for a few minutes, you will begin to experience dynamic energy flows within your body. These energy flows are the merging of spirit and matter.’ Leonard Orr 1

Primary Patterns We learn to breathe at birth. Those who are present: doctors, nurses, parents and friends teach us how to breathe. Because birth is such a powerfully challenging event, bursting with emotional energy, the quality of our breathing lessons is critically important. We have passed through our first experience of stress, we have survived it and within the first hour of life we have established a fundamental relationship amongst energy, breath and feeling.

Under the best of circumstances, birth is an intensely traumatic event. We have spent nine months in a warm and watery heaven, only to be suddenly thrust into an alien world. The womb that held and nurtured us becomes out attacker. We are forced into a long, arduous and often terrifying labour, an absolute struggle for survival. Our bodies undergo extraordinary pain from wave after wave of crushing contraction. For our psyches, there is equal pain: we are being violently separated from all we have known.

In our adult lives, there is little than can compare to this primal ordeal. For most of us, it is the nearest we will ever come to dying until the actual moment of our death. It may be the greatest test of our lives, the most challenging set of circumstances we will ever encounter and the answer we find during such a test will naturally serve as our answer in all future tests. The lessons acquired at birth will become the foundations of our lifestyles and philosophies.

‘As you grew up, people and events taught you to restrict the movement of your energy, the life within you. You are hedged in by energetic habits that you know nothing about and that decide what you think life is like. They limit how much life you can know, how much pleasure you can feel, how passionately you can respond. You can learn to have choices about what you’re doing with your energy. This includes becoming aware of what your energetic habits are and developing the ‘energetic muscles’ to free yourself from those habits.’ Julie Henderson2

Infants are obviously preverbal and physically undeveloped, but are beings of great mental and emotional faculties. We see, hear, touch, taste and smell; we form beliefs about the world based on our experiences; we develop attitudes and preferences; we learn to trust or not to trust, to fear and not fear, to love or not love. We are thoroughly aware of the world around us; we are positively and negatively affected by the unique qualities of our world and grow as unique human beings according to the nature of our experience.

Western science gives us a totally different understanding of birth. It is thought that the foetus and newborn is somehow preconscious and therefore unaffected, in any lasting way, by circumstances of birth. Because an infant’s brain is not yet fully developed, many scientists have reasoned that the human faculties of consciousness, emotion, memory, understanding and learning are likewise underdeveloped.

‘For the baby (the manner of birth) makes an enormous difference. Whether we cut the umbilical cord immediately or not changes everything about the way respiration comes to the baby – even conditions the baby’s taste to life. If the cord is severed as soon as the baby is born, this brutally deprives the brain of oxygen. The alarm system thus alerted, the baby’s entire organism reacts. Respiration is thrown into gear as a response to aggression. Entering life what the baby meets is death and to escape this death it hurls itself into respiration. The act of breathing for the newborn baby is a desperate last resort. Already the first conditioned reflex has been implanted, a reflex in which breathing and anguish will be associated forever. What a welcome into this world.’ Dr Frederick Leboyer3

Recently, a body of research is beginning to substantiate what any mother already knows: that the newborn is conscious, intelligent, responsive and impressionable. Indeed the newborn is hyperconscious and has greater conscious awareness of the world in the first few hours of life. Over time they will then gradually develop unconscious mechanisms for screening out vast quantities of sensory input to which they are forever exposed. They do this to avoid sensory overload, as they are wide open, totally receptive and taking the whole world in through all of their senses.

The newborn will suffer, as surely and meaningfully as any adult will suffer and they will respond to their suffering like an adult, with the best of their capabilities. They learn and grow from such painful and pleasurable events and their present responses will be influenced by past experiences and will go on to influence future behaviour. All newborns will at some point experience some bad, unpleasant and thoroughly unwanted events. But they have a limited range of responses to such events – they cannot run, fight, verbally reason or intelligibly complain, or move to effectively alter a situation. Faced with a painful event and unable to take effective action, they do the only thing they are able, they constrict their breathing and contract their energy away from the source of the pain. They pull themselves in physically, mentally, emotionally and energetically, disconnecting from the cause of their suffering withdrawing from the hurtful world.

When they fail to receive such nurturing, however, and the hurt is extremely traumatic and/or often repeated, they will retain the contracted energy as a part of their experience. This fixed contraction of energy will affect them on all levels as physical tension, mental neurosis and emotional dysfunction. It will become a vital piece of the definition of their personality. It will be a primary pattern though which they experience the world and organise their responses to future events. Einstein was once asked that if he could ask one question of someone that would reveal the most about them, what would that question be. His answer was “How did that person see the world?” By asking that they would reveal primary patterns.

Habits of a Lifetime When birth happens under the best of conditions, it will involve a measure of suffering, which will contribute to the psychophysical development of the new person. It is the responsibility of the attending adults to ease the way for the birthing infant as much as possible, but providing an environment that emanates warmth, safety, support, nurturing and love. If this happened the newborn’s early lessons will be of monumental challenges, which were well met. The painful contractions give way to ecstatic release and of absolute presence of mother love. The baby will experience unconditional human and environmental support.

Such ideal conditions are rarely present, however. Most of us carry the unresolved pains of birth forward as we grow. Our culture has failed to recognize the connection between birth and human development and most of us are burdened with some painful primal memories. Twentieth-century Western obstetrics ‘techno-birthing’ dictates a traumatic birth experience, which comes with its own load of burdens.

Having said this, it is not meant to question the integrity or the good intentions of those who practice western obstetrics. They have been quite successful in sparing the mother pain and keeping both the mother and infant physically alive. All of the procedures of techno-birthing have originated as legitimate reactions to life-threatening dangers that sometimes occur during birth. The problem is not that the technology of Western obstetrics is necessarily bad, rather it is that in failing to recognize the psycho-spiritual dimensions of life, birth has been made excessively traumatic, with developmental consequences for the infant. One of the underlying assumptions of techno-birthing is that labour and birth are inherently dangerous. It is thought that from early in the pregnancy and on through the delivery, both mother and infant are at considerable risk.

For most of the world’s cultures and most of Western history, birth has belonged in the hands of women. If we believe that birth is a natural, organic process and we trust that the woman’s body knows how to conceive and carry a child, it follows that it will know how to deliver it. Therefore, it follows that other women will make the best midwives, especially if they are mothers themselves.

Nevertheless, four hundred years ago, for reasons rooted in politics, religion and economics, the western world made violent swing to absolute patriarchy. Millions of women throughout Europe and the Americas were murdered for the supposed crimes of witchcraft and heresy. By the time this collective insanity had passed, the subjugation of the entire sex had been completed. There were not more women priestesses, teachers or doctors, no more women in any positions of importance outside of the home. Perhaps most serious of all was the virtual disappearance of women midwives.

The intervention of techno-birthing often begins at the beginning, rather than waiting for the infant/mother to initiate labour. Contractions may be induced through chemical means. Many babies are delivered according to doctor and hospital schedules. The foetus is continuously monitored in ways that are invasive and interfere with the mother’s labour and should the foetus’s vital signs in any way fall outside of statistical norms, it is assumed that things are going wrong and further interventions are undertaken.

The use of forceps, caesarean section and or anaesthetics are all fairly standard procedures of techno-birthing to help the woman deliver and each has its own often serious lasting side-effects for the infant. However, they make it out of the womb, they are generally delivered into a world of chaotic sensory assaults – bright lights, loud voices, cold temperatures, harsh surfaces, masked faces – the perfect environment for surgery, but inhuman greeting for one who has spent nine months in the womb.

There are other horrors that may be visited upon this tiny new person, such as the immediate separation for the newborn from its mother. The one, which causes the most long-term damage, is the premature cutting of the umbilical cord. A lifetime of continuous breathing all begins with and is conditioned by the first breath out of the womb. It is a critical first step towards independence; to be able to breathe separately from the mother is to establish oneself, in the most fundamental of terms, as an autonomous being. Breathing for oneself is the first step towards truly living free.

The newborn’s brain must receive a steady supply of oxygen and the transition from breathing with the umbilical cord, to breathing with the lungs must be as smooth and uninterrupted as possible. Any deprivation during birth can have serious repercussions for the individual. Nature provides adequate protection during this pivotal transition; the umbilical cord will continue to pulse with oxygen throughout the labour and for several minutes after the infant is born. It will continue to function until the infant has had time to discover and slowly establish full breathing with the lungs. When the umbilical cord is no longer needed it will naturally stop functioning – the child in effect cuts their own cord. They will separate from mother when they are ready.

All that is required for this first breath to spontaneously occur is patience and trust. When the process is unnecessarily aborted, an extreme emergency can result for the infant. Suddenly, oxygen is cut off, lie is acutely threatened and the infant has no innate capacity for responding to this event. They are moments from death and totally helpless. They naturally panic.

Birth, at this point, is indeed a serious medical emergency, calling for emergency procedures. The infant is grabbed by the heels, swung upside down and struck hard. Birth has been turned into a brutal torture and an initiation into violence. Learning to breathe has become the most traumatizing event of a person’s life. The terror of the moment is contained within that first breath. All of the infant’s intensely contracted energy is contained within that first breath. All their profound emotional pain is contained within that first breath. The newborn is so powerfully influenced with this experience that a lifetime of shallow breathing may likely follow. A deep cellular connection between stress and breath has been locked in to the newborn’s body as contracted breath, energy, the relevant data for the decisions, attitudes, patterns and beliefs out of which they will create their life.

‘The moment you breathe deeply, more energy becomes available in your body. Where there is energy flow, there is motion. You can experience this motion in many different ways: as sensations like tingling, numbness or vibration, or as actual body movements that go with these emotions – like crying, laughing or striking out. So, therefore, if you are afraid to feel one of the most effective ways to keep yourself from feeling is to control your breathing.’ Dr Bruno Hans Geba5

Breath We learn to breathe at birth, even as we are learning about stress, emotion and human relationships. This does not mean that we are completely determined by circumstances of birth, there will be continuing chain of new experiences, both joyous and traumatic, of new lessons, growth and development. Still, to some degree, everything that follows will be influenced and conditioned by the lessons of birth.

A traumatic birth followed by several days of uninterrupted mother love, will elicit a very different lesson than a traumatic birth followed by separation from the mother. Infants who are greeted with violence and then surrendered to the warm, soft bodies of their mothers may learn that life here has its ups and downs, along with good and not so good people. Infants who are greeted with violence and then left in a nursery containing other crying, screaming babies may find themselves wondering years later why they feel unsafe, so unwilling to trust and so incapable of intimacy.

Any event that infants dislike endangers the same fundamental response, energetic contraction away from the event. They do this initially to survive. With time and repetition they learn that energetic contraction is also a successful strategy for eliminating unwanted feelings. They find that by contracting energetically (by suppressing breath) they, in the present moment lessen the intensity of the unpleasant emotions.

If an infant is struck they will instinctively contract away from the violating hand, they will contract energetically from an unacceptable event, emotionally from the feelings of shame, anger and hate and will contract their breathing as a way of retreating, becoming small and hiding inside. They will do all of this immediately and automatically because they have no other means of response.

If this pain is not resolved and they are not encouraged and assisted in fully releasing from contraction, they remain scarred by the event. Their nervous system will be imprinted with circumstances and with their reactions to those circumstances. They will carry the pain forward in the body as contracted energy, as emotional content, as conscious reflection and as a specific manner of shallow breathing.

Hopefully I have used an extreme example and not many infants will experience the last scenario. But life will always provide unpleasant events, have moments of hurt, and contain the experience of pain. The challenge of birth, infancy, and early childhood is not that children be spared negative events, it is that they be taught to breathe and thus to fully resolve their pains, to release their contracted energies, to balance their emotions and to consciously embrace life and all it offers.

If birth is indeed so formative, then what can we, the aging misborn do about it? In deeply understanding birth, it is important that we, the parents and midwives of a coming generation, give children a more humane and spiritually conscious beginning. It is not however necessary that we remember our own actual births or that we attempt to somehow deal with that experience as a past event.

Just as it is breath that specifically locks in the negative experiences of birth, so it is breath that can free us in this present moment. All of the contracted and unresolved patterns of our past are manifesting now, in present time and they can be touched, felt and transformed now in present time, through simple conscious connected breathing. It is the continuing habit of shallow and contracted breathing that sustains our continuing habits of negatively contracted energy.

(Rebirthing or Breathwork), ‘Is not teaching a person how to breathe. It is the intuitive and gentle act of learning how to breathe from breath itself. It is connecting the inhale with the exhale in a relaxed intuitive rhythm until the inner breath, which is the spirit and source of breath itself, is merged with air, the outer breath.’ Leonard Orr6

There are a few approaches to conscious breathing each of which will tend to have a specific technique and some unique effects. Most conscious breathing approaches are alike in that they stimulate an increase in quantity and flow of breath, therefore an increase of energy throughout the body and mind.

In conscious connected breathing, the increased in moving energy leads to a direct experience of any stuck and unmoving energy. The individual breather becomes aware of how he or she is most critically blocking the free movement of energy. The person feels it now, in present time. The present time awareness of a block can be unpleasant. It can hurt physically, emotionally and mentally. The individual directly experiences habits of the past and the capacity for change in the present moment. In conscious connected breathing even for a minute or so, a person increases the free movement of living energy throughout the many levels of self, which allows him or her to tangibly feel, in present time, specific patterns of contracted energy.

Conscious connected breathing is simple, gentle and very effective when dealing with suppressed emotions, past trauma, limiting patterns and helps integrate the lost parts of oneself, so that one is whole, alive, full of vitality, creativity, clarity and able to give and receive love. In conscious connected breathing one breathes in a continuous flow, without interruption or pause, for an extended period of time. The inhale leads directly to the exhale, without the breather stopping or holding the breath in and the exhale leads directly to another inhale, without any pause between breaths. The inhale and exhale are connected, flowing easily from one into the other, allowing for one continuous flow of breath.

On the inhalation the breath is drawn into the lungs with some force, the exhalation is just allowed to fall away. It is important to remember not to force the exhalation out as this would lead to a build up of tensions within the lungs and the body, therefore defeating the purpose altogether. Within just a few minutes of connected breathing, the breather may feel a warm tingling sensation in the hands, face or feet, which may spread throughout the body. Or the tingling may intensify, typically into a tight and sometimes painful tingling in the hands, legs and face. The breather may become light-headed, but because breathwork is conducted when one is lying down, there is no danger of falling over.

The sessions tend to take on a life of it’s own and will complete with time to talk about the process that you’ve just been through. There is usually time for questions to been asked and answered.

If you have booked an appointment please arrive on time and wear comfortable clothing.

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