Most people are familiar with the benefits of deep and slow breathing to reduce stress, handle intense emotions and lower blood pressure and cortisol ( stress hormone) levels by providing more oxygen to our bloodstream and brain.
Many corporations provide yoga classes for their employees because of the undeniable health benefits yoga and pranayama offers.
However our society is just beginning to understand the true healing potential and benefits of breathing.
What is Breathwork? What is the difference between deep slow yogic breathing and breathwork techniques that can take us much further?
Breathwork is usually a specific technique of breathing that allows us to access non ordinary states of consciousness and work with our subconscious and intuitive material to receive healing and transformational benefits on many levels.
Within the transpersonal branch of psychology breathwork is widely used to heal deep psychological traumas, reduce anxiety and depression, develop resilience to stress, gain clarity of mind and develop strong skills of emotional intelligence.
Consistent breathwork practice helps practitioners gain deeper awareness of who they are, what their talents are and how they can make responsible and conscious choices in their life, relationships and career.
Besides these powerful psychological benefits, breathwork provides a number of physiological benefits, helps improve our physical health and heal psychosomatic disorders.
Psychosomatic disorders are now a proven scientific fact that shows a direct impact of stress and anxiety on our physical health.
Psychosomatic disorders can cause migraine and headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, pelvic pain, respiratory problems, hypertension, impotence, frigidity and other various physical ailments.
Breathwork assists us with so-called psychosomatic transmutation.
Psychosomatic transmutation is about establishing a healthy interaction between our psyche and our physical body to avoid psychosomatic disorders, develop healthy patterns of emotional processing and experience a higher level of wholeness.
Breathwork practice is usually focused on manipulating the depth and frequency of our breathing cycles and involves 30 minutes to 3 hours of rhythmic breathing.
Breathworkers report tingling sensations in their body ( especially hands and fingers), spontaneous movement, emotional activation, alertness and clarity of mind.
What is happening on the physiological level when we practice breathwork?
Physical sensations, emotional response and physiological shift in our body during breathwork practice is caused by the loss of CO2 and the change of pH in the blood, a physiological state often called “alkalosis”.
In an alkalosis state, our blood becomes less acidic and certain parts of the brain are less stimulated by the reduced blood flow and oxygen delivery. This process allows us to activate dormant and hidden material, usually blocked by defense mechanisms of our psyche, and access what we call “the subconscious”.
This phenomenon opens up space for creative out-of-box solutions by bypassing habitual mental patterns and ego mind constructs.
Besides that when more alkaline blood temporarily lowers calcium in our blood stream and causes increased firing in sensory and motor neurons. It stimulates our neurological system and causes tingling sensations and soft muscle contractions throughout our body.
Overall, this helps breathwork practitioners increase their muscle tone.
Breathwork practice also helps us strengthen our immune system by increasing its anti-inflammatory activity. Adrenaline is being released as a result of more neurons firing at the same time in the autonomic nervous system during breathwork.
This information is supported along with the scientific experiment which proved breathworkers who practice breathwork consistently had less severe inflammatory responses to bacterial toxins.
Regular breathwork practice also stimulates our lymphatic system and detoxifies our body.
Let’s recap all the health benefits of regular breathwork practice.
- Strengthens immune system and anti-inflammatory effect
- Increases muscle tone
- Elevates mood
- Detoxifies body
- Helps process and release hidden traumas
- Heals psychosomatic disorder
- Provides emotional release
- Releases tension & relieves pain
- Reduces stress, anxiety and depression
- Helps in gaining clarity and peace of mind
- Facilitates creative solutions
Keep Breathing!