Breathwork is a form of active meditation utilizing a specific breathing technique. Breathwork is a dynamic mind-body practice using conscious connected breathing techniques for inner peace, enhanced health, well-being, and personal transformation. This particular breathing pattern moves stuck energy, allows us to let go of the mind, and opens the heart. Breathwork can help you reduce stress, anxiety, grief, and depression, increase your energy levels and boost your immune system. Also, it assists in increasing self-awareness, happiness, and self-love, improves sleep, helps release trauma and fear stuck in the body, helps reduce pain, and releases toxins from the body. It is not uncommon to experience a deep sense of oneness, bliss, and a connection with the divine along with a feeling of deep safety and surrender.

Breathwork is a practice that is thousands of years old, and while there are many variations, styles, and names, all types of breathwork offer the chance for personal transformation. Our breath, or prana, is literally what keeps us alive, and yet we go through the day with chronically shallow breathing, denying ourselves our full life force which often keeps us in a state of anxiety. Breathwork, or the process of deep rhythmic breathing, moves us out of flight or fight and into the parasympathetic nervous system. It is said that how we breathe is how we live, and so to live life to its fullest, we should breathe into our fullest.

The style of Breathwork that I have studied is the Rebirthing Breathwork technique developed by Leonard Orr in the early 70s. It is also known as Conscious Energy Breathing (CEB). This type of breathing is done using full, deep breaths without retaining the breath. Typical breathing involves a natural pause between inhale and exhale. The continuous inhales and exhales create a “circle” of breath.