Without willingness [to hold your feelings up], awareness in detail often moves away from your body, complete relaxation often returns to resistance, and circular breathing often yields to unconsciousness. ~ Vivation
You might be new to Breathwork or even a seasoned experiencer. No matter, the process can sometimes become a struggle and your journey to greater self-knowledge, expanded love and healing can veer off the desired path and get tangled up in the weeds! As you try to maintain the conscious connected breathing pattern, your thoughts race ahead of your experience, you push against the emotions that are coming up, or you find yourself simply falling asleep and unable to stay present.
So, what can you do about it? How do you find your way back to the profound process you deeply want?
A Helpful Review of the Breathwork Process:
Knowledge is power so it might first be helpful to know how the process progresses:
1. Relaxation –Using the Conscious Connected Breathing technique as taught to you by the Breathworker begins to calm and relax your body.
2. Physical Sensations– As the breathing pattern continues, physical sensations begin to occur. You might feel very hot or very cold, experience muscle spasms, cramping, jerking or twitching, heaviness or pressure in the chest, shortness of breath, tingling or vibrating sensations, light-headedness, dizziness, headache, nausea or any other unusual five-sensory experiences.
3. Emotions – Emotions such as anger, rage, fear, terror, sadness, confusion, laughter, or claustrophobia may come up for release. You might encounter extremes of emotions that range from sadness to euphoria and bliss. You could also have an out-of-body, spiritual or telepathic experience.
4. Thoughts – Your breath is the vehicle that takes you closer and closer to your heart and essence. In the course of that journey, thoughts and memories (some you know and some you don’t recall) will arise. You might even witness moments from your birth or have experiences of remembering other traumas in your life. Remembered experiences or memories may generate ‘aha’ moments that help connect the dots to issues that have been difficult to resolve or understand.
5. Heart – After the releases, blocks have been cleared and it is time for a beautiful reunion with your essence. Access to the love in your heart offers an intimate understanding of the true meaning of universal oneness. At this point, you may have experiences of your deepest truth and sacred nature that opens you to your limitless potential. Here, you can experience senses of deep peace and feel your connection to Universal Life Force or Divine Healing Energy, the World Wide Universe (WWU).
The process moves you through many stages of awareness, release and deeply personal inward connection and it does so without any direction needed from you…
What Do You Need To Do?
Simply put, just breathe…but the more complete answer is:
• Continue to breathe – Keep breathing in the conscious connected breathing pattern you were shown. It is the way the energy of the breath gets moved through you and it is key to the release process that follows.
• Allow – Don’t Resist – Remember that each memory, emotion and physical sensation that surfaces is part of the release and healing process you are seeking. Resistance stops the process and obstructs the full flow of energy throughout your body.
• Bring your curiosity and your inner explorer with you – Commit to remaining aware of all experiences and be willing and open to all of it as a transformative process. As much as possible, welcome and love whatever shows up.
• Nothing is fake or made up – Every part of your experience (even your perceived lack of experience) is an integral part of your return to love and being able to accept your wholeness. Trust that they are part of what you are letting go of and release the need to understand the detail.
• Allow integration and transformation – Let yourself fall into the bliss, meet the emotion, move through any pain and let it become part of your transformation.
Breathe fully…stay awake…and you will have a profound experience ~ John Stamoulos
