An important exploration of… the Shadow Side of Breathwork Facilitation and Breathwork Containers.
'One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.' — Carl Gustav Jung
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We are all emotional beings at our core, and we exist to express emotions freely, directly, fluidly and openly. Emotions serve as our inborn compass through life, and hold the potential to support us in navigating the world around us. Emotions allow us to embody an inner-outer symbiosis... if and only if we heed their subtle (and, at times, not so subtle) wisdom. Emotions are intelligent and intuitive signals, ever calling us into alignment with our essential (core) truth. Yet somewhere along the way, many of us learned to repress our emotions, especially those perceived as “uncomfortable” or “unwanted,” in order to fit in, earn love, prove worth, put on a “happy face”, or even to be accepted by those around us. Many of us were also raised in environments where it was not safe, welcomed or invited to express the fullness of who we were, or the depth, variety and breadth of what we were emotionally experiencing, as young and sensitive children learning how to relate to others, interpret reality, and move through the world. This blog will explore the ways we can return to our innate emotional intelligence once more…
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Part of my (Kaya Leigh’s) soul dharma exists in challenging the "status quo" if that SQ is not serving the whole... I wholeheartedly embrace this mission as I continue to compile a decade of research and real-time tracking on why mouth-inhale breathwork does not support all nervous systems. Do note I said, some but not all… An important distinction to create as we begin.
It is one thing to activate the SNS (sympathetic nervous system) and work with mouth-inhale formats if a breather has already attained nervous system regulation (or are naturally regulated), however to push aggressive mouth-inhale formats on every individual with zero due diligence/no awareness of the general state of their nervous system (i.e. if they are in dysregualtion or not/what their deeper psycho-emotional composition is/if they are able to safely meet repressed emotions in a SNS response/etc) is causing harm in the circular breathwork world.
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In order to allow conscious, connected breathwork in a diaphragmatic capacity, the central diaphragm must be the first place we look to. In this understanding, unlocking the diaphragm becomes key in allowing for more fluid, unrestricted and expansive breath.
When the diaphragm is locked or tight, it often points to a diverse array of imbalances, including somatic holding patterns of tension, emotional armoring and energetic blockages. Thus, in its unlocking, we begin to artfully expand the lung’s range and capacities, allowing us to receive the medicinal and healing properties of oxygen in a more optimal way. Through this process, the breath becomes freed, fluid. spacious and ecstatic.
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We must stop approaching healing arts with the same fast, forceful, “get it done” energy that the modern world and western society is permeated by.
Breathwork is NOT a race or a work-out… Rather, it is a deep and intimate dive into the subconscious, into dream-time, into the emotional and pain body, into the nervous system, into childhood ancestral, womb, and cellular memory. And it much be treated as such.
It is vital to understand the harm you (as facilitator) are creating when you don’t give the essential space for these delicate processes to unfold.
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Breathwork is ultimately an umbrella term for the art or act of consciously affecting our breath, the only part of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) that we can control. Autonomic implies “independent” of the conscious mind. The ANS is likened to a team of horses- it will follow the leader. And because the breath is the only part of the ANS that is consciously controllable, if we begin to artfully master breath, it will become a lead horse, and the rest will follow. Change your breath and change your life, no exaggeration. How amazing is it to have one of the most transformative tools in existence right under our noses...
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“It’s not about always ‘letting it go.’ It's about letting it in. It’s about letting it deep. It’s about letting it through. It's about being true to your feelings. It’s about giving your experiences the attention they deserve. And that may take a moment, or it may take years. The trick is not to shame your need to hold on to what has yet to be resolved. ‘Let it go’ is the mantra of the self-avoidant, feigning resolution because they lack the courage or the preparedness to face their feelings. Let’s not play that game. Let’s let things in and through, until they are fully and truly ready to shift. Let’s let it grow into the transformation at its heart. We write our story by fully living it. Not by ‘letting it go’ before its time.”
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Our bodies were intelligently designed to breathe through the nose, not the mouth. It’s even been said that breathing through your mouth is about as practical as trying to eat through your nose! Breathing in and out through the nose helps us take fuller, deeper breaths, which stimulates the lower lung to distribute greater amounts of oxygen throughout the body. Also, the lower lung is rich with the parasympathetic nerve receptors associated with calming the body and mind, whereas the upper lungs — which are stimulated by chest and mouth breathing — prompt us to hyperventilate and trigger sympathetic nerve receptors, which result in the fight or flight response.
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Myself, Kaya Leigh, along with many other facilitators and somatic therapists that understand physiology, trauma and somatic rebalancing, are all in agreement that much circular breath being is being taught in a way that doesn’t support long-term healing and also that we need to move past mouth-inhales as a collective because they create oxidative stress in the body over time. The majority of “breathwork” we are seeing today is not conducive to nervous system regulation, somatic unwinding or the big picture of what long-term healing actually looks like.
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Breathwork is a powerful tool to unlock un-serving and illusory beliefs held deep within our subconscious. Through an intentional journey into their being, the breather may illuminate what is influencing and motivating them without their awareness, and meet these textures of self through an expanded state of awareness, where newfound clarity may be born. Did you know that cognitive neuroscience now shows that we are 95% directed by our unconscious content! Did you also know that everything that has ever happened to us and up to 14 generations of our ancestors is recorded in our cells, as DNA is 80% memory?
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We are here to reclaim our wholeness, come to know our sacred wounds then bloom from them, and finally embrace the totality of self. This means letting go of the erroneous New Age belief of solely “focusing on the positive” before we have done the inner work. To no longer insert neat little bow-tied packages of “love and light” into every circumstance when it’s calling for something more- something richer, deeper and full spectrum. If we truly want to enter into a more vibrationally-elevated state of being, we have to do the real work first. The deeper inner work. And sometimes that work is gritty, intense, messy, sublime, and gloriously human. Remember, we cannot bypass this precious step in our spiritual evolution. We are here to embrace the complete and undiluted offering of what is here calling us in, calling us home; and in turn, we reclaim our delicious, authentic, innate aliveness.
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Our wounds are sacred and serve a vital role in our personal journey through the earth plane. We cannot rob ourselves of this precious gift of inner alchemy and discovery. We must be courageous enough to go in, not around. Because the only way out is through. Our wounds are the doorway to our healing.
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In Eastern tradition, one is not allowed to transition into a teaching role until they have mastered their craft or demonstrated the signs of deep spiritual embodiment or gnosis. This would constitute an individual who walks the path of embodied, real-time wisdom in which there is no disparity between the inner and outer worlds; one who lives in unified and symbiotic harmony. Becoming a spiritual teacher or way-shower extends far beyond paperwork, classroom learning and proper certifications. One can have hundreds of hours of training time and a wall filled with framed accreditations, yet has still failed to venture into the precious alchemical spaces of self, where the real transformation is born…
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