The Return to the Feminine Principle in Circular Breathwork: Breathwork is Not a Race or Workout
The Return to the Feminine Principle in Circular Breathwork: Breathwork is Not a Race or Workout
As the divine feminine calls us to return to her living wisdom, we awaken our ancient remembrance of her,
intimately bowing in response to her delicate power.
Wild yet soft as the wind, she belongs to no gender…
Rather, she hums within each individual—
rising, awakening and yearning to be remembered.
She is the fierce gentleness who belongs to the formless absence of time.
She is the emanation of ever-flowing grace and nurture; beauty and elegance;
compassion, acceptance, patience and forgiveness.
Her force has no edge yet composes the totality of all things…
Vast and eternal, she seeks to restore vast harmony to all who encounter her.
She is the ancient roots growing; she is the stillness surrounding each unfolding moment;
she is the thunder of the storm, and the waves of the sea.
She is the great mother; the raw nurturer of the soul, here to bestow the most precious gifts upon those who open to her.
She is the profound rebalancing force of timeless wisdom, intuitive guidance, and unconditional love.
Representing flow, receptivity and grace, she upholds her integrity through beingness and allowance. In this, the feminine reminds us of the sacred unfolding, the exploration, the expression. And, as many of us understand, so too does breath.
Yet when we fail to invite the feminine into breath, we miss her great capacity for boundlessness, unwinding and healing; we obstruct the ability for her to flow through our bodies and being.
Without her, our experiences may become restricted or forced, rather than allowing and receptive to the fluid and ever-undulating nature of the very molecule of life itself. Where one may create a push or force to “attain”, the feminine invites the opposite— elegant spaciousness and deep surrender onto the moment; a divine dance with what is, just as it is.
Forcefully “pushing” oneself into an experience or “altered” state in breathwork does not allow for the process to truly take root within and unveil its medicine. Yet when we wholeheartedly sink into the feminine, radically allowing ourselves to be in full receptivity through the art of circular breath, we open ourselves to the full alchemical process; the deep healing and communion with the spirit of breath Herself.
As a facilitator of this work, we must be balanced in both our feminine and masculine principles if we are to truly hold safe, attuned space for others. And, at the moment, we see within the breathwork community an over-focus and polarized orientation towards the masculine “push” of conscious breath— that which overrides our physiology and thus our deeper, fundamental needs of true unwinding and organic process.
In the balancing of principles, or the marriage within, we must understand the strength and integrity of the container as equally important as surrendering to the feminine spirit of the moment. This speaks to the ability to expand into holding without interference. And this gentle opening and artful allowance is as powerful as it gets. For the feminine nature is to receive, flow and flower into ecstatic vistas of embodiment. Through her way of being, we open even further to the infinite pleasure and sensuality available to us in every moment.
As a Breathwork Facilitator, ask yourself:
How can you hold healing containers and safe spaces for yourself or others if you are not harmonically-merged with this feminine dimension within your own being?
We cannot receive the expansive medicine that is desiring to take place and move through us in a breathwork journey if we are not harmonized with our own feminine nature, and if the feminine principle is not infused into the container.
Failure to bring in the feminine dimension creates an imbalanced state within the masculine energy, inhibiting a breather from fully allowing and surrendering to the multidimensional healing that is taking place within them.
As trauma begins to be uprooted and excavated from the body and tissues, it is imperative to hold the breather in the boundless and formless nurturance of the feminine, with no agenda for time, or endpoint.
We must create space for the experience to be softened into, opened up to, and received deeply.
This ability to surrender to the intelligence of breath and her sophisticated processes provides the breather both time and space to allow the somatic unwinding to fully take its course, and to resettle within the new recalibration of the body.
We cannot halt this process mid-way or we are engaging in risk of re-traumatization of our breathers and their healing journey.
It is important to remember that the feminine is boundless in nature; the masculine creates form. The feminine is receptive and the masculine penetrative. We require both in balance within the space and upheld within by the facilitator in order to give way for both energies to harmonically hold our breathers.
As a facilitator, it is essential for you to be balanced and aligned with both energies— to thus be able to hold your breathers in receptive, feminine and ceremonial space which honors their experience, whilst simultaneously bringing precision and direction in your ability to uphold the container, energies and processes. It is a humble recognition that to be an attuned and powerful space-holder, you must give way and bow to the breath. This is a true process of humble surrender while still maintaining grounded, intuitive presence. If the masculine is overriding the healing container, the breathers may in turn become closed off and shut down within their process, unable to fully receive the medicine of the experience.
It is important to now observe our origin, and our birth process, and take this wisdom into the sacred containers that we create.
As facilitators of breath, we are upholding the rebirthing process, familiarizing ourselves with the cycle of life, death, and rebirth in our own inner healing journeys and it is imperative that we take this very, very seriously. We would never think to rush the birthing process of a child. Nor should we think to rush the rebirthing process of breath. Conception is the moment the breather says “yes” to the journey.
To prematurely halt the breather, whether that is in the shortness of time of the container, the encouragement of pushing too hard too fast, is to ignore the gestational healing process of breath itself, to risk death of the full experience for the exchange of time rates, preferences and desires, to remove the breather from their inner rebirthing and healing journey prematurely is to inhibit the medicinal death and rebirth process of breath. We must honor each stage of healing as we do birth and rebirth.
This is what the feminine teaches us. For she is the great holder.
The third trimester of birth can be compared to the peak of the breath journey. This is when the experience is rapidly growing, when the breather is in deep somatic healing. This is not when the rebirth process is over, + this is not a safe time to end this process or the breath journey, as so many facilitators are doing shortly after that “peak release”, i.e. 20-30 minute breathwork journeying with no integration, savanna or post-breath processing.
Next is another segment imperative to birth, or rebirth through breath: the fourth trimester, or final integration and savasana. During this time the breather is recalibrating, the body is adjusting, and the oxygen is continuing to flow profoundly through the tissues, resettling into this rebirth, this new way of being, reclaimed deeply in ways known and unknown. Many breathers report this time being the most transformational part of the journey, when the medicine continues to do deep work, and the experience seals itself in indescribable ways. This piece is as important as any, and the process cannot be skipped over.
The fourth trimester honors the babies first 12 weeks of life. This is when the newborn adjusts to the world. This is harmonic with final savasana, when the breather adjusts to this new recalibration. If skipped over, re-adaptation into the world, their lives, and multidimensional relationships (specifically relating to self and inner landscapes) can endure difficulty. The breather may not be fully settled from the experience, if deep in trauma healing and excavation, we need to honor the breath's capacity to settle and recalibrate the breather, in ways that we cannot, enabling them to finalize the rebirth journey and settle into the Now.
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To all Breathworkers treating breathwork like a fast-paced work-out class, this is a FIERCE and LOVING CALL from the feminine dimension to SLOW DOWN.
To those leading short, fast and quick Circular Breathwork (point of distinction: I speak specifically of ‘absence of pause’ breathwork which takes breathers into their subconscious), this is a FIERCE and LOVING CALL from the feminine dimension to SLOW DOWN.
To those leading breathwork journeys with no tapering down, integration or savasana at the end, this is a FIERCE and LOVING CALL from the feminine dimension to SLOW DOWN.
To those leading breathwork journeys with no processing, space-holding or post-breath support at the end, this is a FIERCE and LOVING CALL from the feminine dimension to SLOW DOWN.
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 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 must 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.
Ask yourself… Is breathwork something that you really want to rush? How well do you know the work you are offering? Was your training conducted with deep integrity? Did you learn each subtlety and nuance of this art form? And of trauma-informed space-holding? Do you understand breathwork on a multi-spectrum landscape? Do you teach with honor, ethics and thoughtful consideration for the delicate process of breathwork journeying?
These are all important questions to sit with.
The inquires established in this essay derive from direct knowledge, not the abstract. They are born of story after story after story of many people (particularly women but also all genders) relaying that their breathwork teacher was too aggressive, too fast, too harsh, too invasive, not attuned to their deeper needs or process. They their teacher brought their personal energy into the space and made it about their ego. That they were not tracking what was being asked for moment-to-moment within the collective. They they did not make themselves available after the journey and “rushed off like some kind of self-proclaimed celebrity”. That the fast, intense, too-much-too-soon breathwork their teacher pushed on them shocked their system.
These inquires are on behalf of the many individuals now averse to or mildly traumatized by breathwork because of it being held or facilitated sloppily or ill-informed. On behalf of breathers being told to “lie back down and not move”, often by male teachers who do not understand what unwinding actually is, thus inhibiting that breather’s organic process and release.
Not to mention… Teachers giving little to no context for what they work is and not preparing breathers for the spectrum of emotionality that could arise during the process. Teachers pulling breathers out too soon and sending them “on their way” to drive a car when their process is far from grounded in or complete. Even some teaching that don’t even know what tetany is or how to guide their breathers through it. This is 101!
All of this must be looked at with deep accountability and illumination within the breathwork community. We must hold anyone who seeks to teach this work with higher standards. Because right now, as it become incredibly “popular”, it is becoming increasing sloppy and ill-informed.
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If you find yourself forcing, rushing or “pushing” breathwork journeys as a facilitator, please slow down, deeply self-inquire and journal on these prompts:
How are you holding space for yourself in your own life? Are you creating stillness, presence, and silence? Opportunity for spirit/the divine to step through? Are you deep within the body and expanse of the soul, or are you within the carousel of the mind and time?
From which energy are you entering the container of breathwork?
Are you entering the space with an agenda? Do you have preconceived notions of how your immersion should look or be? Do you bring your personal ego or will into the space? Or do you surrender onto the altar of the moment and bow to the intelligence of breath as the true teacher and guide?
Are you in a rush to get to a certain “place” in the breathwork journey? Do you have expectations? Are you using push over allowance?
Are you open and fluid to receive the nectar and medicine awaiting you through the organic unfoldment of the moment?
Do you trust in divine intelligence? In a higher universal unfoldment and alignment? How can you invite in more flow, grace, receptivity, surrender and allowance in your life?
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Forced and rushed breathwork must stop.
Let us cultivate true experientially-based wisdom by drawing upon the feminine principle.
Please… Let us be ethical. Be in integrity. Be informed. ©
Always with love,
Kaya Leigh and Alexandra Durigan
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© 2021 BY ALEXANDRA DURIGAN, KAYA LEIGH AND SACRED BREATH ACADEMY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. All content is for your personal reference and is not intended to be shared, copied or otherwise distributed. Doing so is an infringement of copyrighted intellectual property. Small quotes may be shared and cited as 'Sacred Breath Academy' with permission.