I was recently asked about our BREATHE workshop - is it based on scientifically based breath techniques - questions like this are great, and really help me to think more about the how’s and why’s of what I do.
The short answer is no! We also doesn’t ignore science - we find a beautiful synergy in the places where science can illuminate the breath and our experience of ourselves.
I don’t teach or practice from a scientific foundation - I don’t flat out ignore ‘the science’ which is a strange term in itself, but I do trust my body, and feel that centering on ‘the science”, while we can make some amazing discoveries, can also miss so much of ‘life’ and the bodies natural intelligence.
It focusses on the seemingly predictable rather than the adaptive reality that I experience and see life, our bodies and the breath to be,
While science tries to find ‘the breath for stress’ etc etc…. The breath is not a problem to be solved. There is no one way to breathe.
What saves me may do you great harm, and what works today, may not work tomorrow.
Everything changes, or at least it’s nature is to change, and your breath is naturally designed to respond to your individual changing needs….. if we, our fears and our habits aren’t getting in the way.
Spoiler alert: they most likely are.
The breath, your breath my breath, breathing - so simple, so natural, so messed up for most of us in this modern world, and when our breath is not ‘healthy’, our bodies and minds can’t be healthy - the breath impacts EVERYTHING that your body is either doing or trying to do.
Thinking, digesting, hormonal balance, energy levels, flexibility, headaches, stress levels…. everything. And more natural breath (not a more scientific one) will best support your body to do what it is trying to do.
Breathing did not begin a lab - breathing is a beautiful natural and ESSENTIAL bodily function, and when it comes to exploring the breath, I personally do not go to science. Yogi's, Taoists, Shamans and other spiritual traditions have been utilising the breath for who knows how long and have an embodied understanding and individual approach; rather than attempting to codify something that is SUPPOSED to be unique to each of us and adaptive to the moment, into something to produce a specific result in EVERYONE, everytime - which is frankly quite impossible.
So, yes, I have explored the science, the art, the medicine and the magic of the breath.
No I don’t teach 'scientifically based techniques' assuming this to mean scientifically 'verified' as in published studies in a reputable journal - which really means someone had the money to set up a study and collate the results they were looking for. I don’t grasp for ‘prescriptive’ breath techniques, and rarey even use yoga pranayam’s these days either, but will sometimes use them largely as a learning tool, to broaden our experience of our breath in our body andi ts potential. They are in that context akin to training wheels.
No technique is the 'right' one for any one condition or even one person, all the time.
I focus on teaching people to get to know their own body and their own breath, to better know what works for you, to trust your body and your breath to give you what you need, to open to and trust your own self healing ability - to breathe and move towards a more embodied and self driven or self created if you like, life experience.
I also no longer teach meditation specifically - although I would say breathwork is meditative, even more than meditative. Meditation is a mind practice - embodied breathwork is a whole being experience - mind, body and beyond.
Our BREATHE workshop includes a 1 hour rebirthing connected breathwork session, which goes way beyond meditation and among other things begins the process of restoring natural healthy breathing patterns, via the bodies own intelligence. A part of this is the integration of early developmental experiences and birth trauma that has impacted our breath.
The impact is restoration of the nervous and other bodily systems, awakening our bodies natural responsive breath, increased health and vitality, and a freeing experience of our own ‘aliveness’.
Breathing is one of the simplest and most powerful things we can do.
Less, I find, is certainly more in breathing,….