The benefits of breathwork will vary as you work through the different layers of emotion that are held in your body, and everyone has their own individual experience. The mind can become fixated on getting particular outcomes: “if I do X then Y will happen”, and having specific expectations about what will happen can be counter-productive. Using the breath to explore the body asks us to let go of our ideas about what will happen and to enter into the mystery of ourselves.
Here are just some of the experiences that are possible:
- Feeling connection with self and others in a new way
- Gaining awareness of the inner sensations in your body
- Re-connecting with emotions that might have been supressed for many years
- Increasing the ability to be present in the body, rather than distracted or dissociated
- Increasing capacity to feel emotions that you might find more difficult to feel, such as anger or love, for example
- Getting to know the defences that have been developed for self-protection so that they can fall away when no longer needed
- Creating relaxation in the body where previously there has been tension and contraction
- Developing an increased sense of self
- Resolution of old energetic patterns that may run through several generations
- Building new boundaries from within the body
- Accepting “what is” and encountering life more fully
WHAT MIGHT AFFECT THE BENEFITS OF BREATHWORK?
Although this work is very powerful, there are other factors that may affect outcomes, including:
- How much work you have already done using other modalities
- What has happened in your past, how much trauma you have experienced and how old you were. There is a difference between developmental trauma caused by abuse and neglect over a period of many years, versus a specific instance experienced in adulthood, for example
- How actively you can work with what comes up – it can be very helpful to have the support of a good counsellor or psychotherapist
- How much of this work you do: there are always new layers to meet and for some people this will be a life-long practice, like meditation
I am able to adapt the sessions to meet you where you are in your own process. To learn more, read this article.