Given up on Meditation? Here are 5 reasons to try Active Breathwork

1. Breathwork is fast acting

Meditation is worth it and a practice I use often. When I started out with transcendental meditation many years ago it took me a couple of months of meditating twice everyday to start noticing an affect in my everyday life. I wasn’t overthinking so much, my anxiety wasn’t as noticeable – wonderfully subtle and incremental changes over time. But I just wasn’t able to keep up a daily practice. It is HARD to sit every day for meditation and something a lot of people struggle with. Interestingly the effects of Active Breathwork are fast, obvious and IN THE MOMENT. It’s almost impossible not to experience some change in mood or energy after an Active Breathwork Session. Even research studies have reported “improved states of mental clarity, profound relaxation and sense of well-being after just one Breathwork session”. Definitely a reason to try it out if you are anyway curious!

2. It’s GREAT for an overactive mind

Trying to meditate when our mind is on overdrive or we are feeling worked up and overly stressed out can be really difficult for many people. Our mind just won’t stop and I know I have just got up from meditating when the thoughts are just so loud, I cannot even deal .. where’s my phone? .. I need distraction stat!! Active Breathwork is really interesting in this scenario. We use the breathe to actually communicate directly with our nervous system. As we breathe deeply we send messages to the nervous to calm down, to soften. In turn a calm nervous system communicates with the mind that we are safe, there is nothing to worry about and it too starts to soften it’s yelling. So we know that when we go into an Active Breathwork session we are going to actually change the physiology of our body, plus we give the mind a task to do – to stay with the active breath pattern. So it’s really worth a try when really want to help ourselves out of an overactive mind state

3. Releases emotional build up

This is quite a wild aspect of Active Breathwork that is so cathartic! Did you know our breath is highly connected to our emotions? Just think about when we try to suppress a cry, we use our breath to hold it in! Our breath pattern changes also when we are angry or upset, and again, we change our breath pattern when we try to suppress these emotions. Stress and tension work the same – Ever notice when your sending that really important email or feeling stressed out working towards a deadline, we sometimes notice our breath is so shallow – or we might even hold our breath! Active Breathwork actually can be quite an emotional experience sometimes! Even one session we can feel anger, sadness and immense joy, it’s super trippy! An Active Breathwork session has the ability to allow us to tap into emotion we’ve been holding onto for weeks, months or years and to let it go, all in a 40 minute session! Leaving us feeling so much lighter and clearer afterwards.

4. Gain access to clarity and intuition

One of the huge benefits of an Active Breathwork practice that quietens a busy mind, is that we can finally tap into our intuitive voice that is much quieter then a stressed out mind shouting ‘AHHH FIRE’ all day long! Active Breathwork brings us into our body and intentionally calms the mind and body enough to be able to hear this voice within. We drop into the present moment when we practice Active Breathwork, which is where intuition lives. We can bring our concerns, confusions and decisions to Breathwork and in the space at the end of the practice, where we are at rest and quiet, there is so much wisdom if we stop and listen. When we remove the mind stress of ‘what ifs’ the ‘shoulds’ and the ‘have tos’, our intuition/our gut instinct often already has the answer.

5. It’s like a mild (or sometimes not so mild) psychedelic experience

Active Breathwork is often described as similar to a psychedelic medicine experience and I absolutely concur! One of the first introductions of Active Breathwork in western culture was by Dr. Stanislav Grof. Dr. Grof was a psychiatrist who turned to using Active Breathwork as a substitute for therapeutic LSD after LSD use was banned in the US in the 1960s. As with his work with LSD, Prof Grof used a technique called Holotropic Breathwork with his patients for the purpose of exploring, healing, and obtaining growth and insights into the human psyche. So if you’re curious about the psychological benefits of psychedelics, Active Breathwork is a great place to start!

Breathwork is not something to replace meditation if you already have a practice you enjoy, but Breathwork can certainly be used to support. Active Breathwork has actually deepened my regular meditation journey immensely!

Those of you who know me know I take some of the summer off classes, but regular drop-in virtual Breathwork classes are back soon in September 2021! Get on the mailing list here if you want hear as soon as dates are up and booking re-opens. Hope to see you there!