Integrative Breath Therapy

What is it?

Integrative Breath Therapy is a wonderful tool for self-exploration using Conscious Connected Breathing. It is a simple and gentle yet powerful technique which allows you to access, release and integrate memories, emotions and patterns stored in your body, mind and soul that hinder your full potential, physically, emotionally and mentally.

How is it done?

After discussing your particular needs with your Breath Therapist, the session itself is done sitting up in a chair or lying down. Having been guided through a relaxation sequence, you consciously connect your breathing so that there are no pauses between inhale and exhale. The breathing is relaxed, yet full. Slowly you will be guided to find your own rhythm, probably slightly faster and fuller than you are used to. Every breathing session has its own cycle, which includes an activation phase (20 to 40 minutes depending on the individual), an expression phase where we work with the material that is surfacing and an integration phase. The length of a "breathe" is generally 1 to 11/2 hour, a full session usually lasts for 2 hours.

How does it work?

You can control your breathing consciously (e.g. Pranayama breathing exercises) but if you don’t think about your breathing even for a whole day, you are still breathing automatically. Thus the breath forms the bridge between the conscious and the subconscious and allows for access and release of deep seated emotional material held in the body. Integrative Breath Therapy works on the principle that there is a direct connection between mental and physical well-being and the openness of the breathing. Relaxing and releasing the breath dissolves tension in the body and mind.

Physiological explanation

Through breathing continuously without break, your body becomes super oxygenated, which changes the CO2 level in your brain. You enter a self-induced trance state where memories, pictures or emotions held in the sub-consciousness can come up to the surface to be reviewed, released and integrated. The power of Integrative Breath Therapy is that in this state you are simultaneously the experiencer as well as the observer of a past incident, and therefore able, to release or re-interpret what happened then, from a new and conscious perspective.

Holistic explanation

Through conscious connected breathing you accumulate life force (Prana, Chi, Ki) which starts to move freely through your body (experienced as tingling, energy rushes or waves). This loosens up stored blockages held in your four-body energy system (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual), thus working on all four levels at the same time. Possible experiences can be manifold and may vary every time. The spectrum ranges from physical sensations of energy moving, pain or pleasure to release of emotions (sadness, anger etc.); realisations of unsupportive thought patterns or new thought connections and insights, as well as deep spiritual or visual experiences or any combination thereof.

The Breath Therapist

The Breath Therapist is your guide on the journey. He/she will skilfully manoeuvre you through the surfacing material, witness and validate your experiences, help you to stay present and maintain your mental clarity. Additionally your Breath Therapist’s will provide a safe and loving space, is supportive and non-judgmental and makes it easy for you to relax and let go. To integrate what has come up a skilled Breath Therapist will use various psychotherapeutic integration tools (e.g. Counselling, Family Dynamics, Inner Child work, Psychic Surgery, Past Life Healing etc.). It is important that you feel comfortable with your Breath Therapist, therefore check out several till you find the person who feels right for you. Breath Therapy with a man will be different from Breathwork with a woman and will bring up different issues.

Safety

Integrative Breath Therapy has an innate self-regulatory mechanism. Your subconscious and your “Inner Healer�? decide what is appropriate and safe for you to experience right now, and how much to release. Whatever surfaces might be challenging for you, but is never more than can be safely integrated. You don’t necessarily have to understand or review certain incidents as pictures or thoughts to be able to release the charge around them and the whole process has its own innate intelligence. All you have to do is to trust the breath and engage in the process. It will take you where you need to go, and it will bring up what is most important for you in this moment, enabling you to take your next step towards becoming more whole and happy.

Benefits

Integrative Breath Therapy improves your physical well-being (better, more open breathing, stress release, dissolving psychosomatic disorders etc.), your emotional well-being (release of long held unprocessed emotions which require life energy for the repression process) and your mental well-being (dissolving and replacing unsupportive thought patterns and beliefs). It also facilitates spiritual opening and soul connection, bringing you more in touch of who you really are, your divine core. After the session you will feel relaxed and relieved, as you have been able to offload extra baggage. The release is permanent and the transformation through Breathwork is profound and easy.

For more information on Breathwork or any of these techniques or to find a 1x1 practitioner please contact the BRS or Heinz Gerd Lange directly on gerdlangemain@googlemail.com or www.lifemasteryprogram.info

Heinz Gerd Lange:

On his life long personal quest for enlightenment and personal mastery through the major world religions, Heinz Gerd came to personal development and Breathwork over 20 years ago. Since then he is committed to create space for peoples core essence to unfold. 

Heinz Gerd is an international lecturer and trainer for Breathwork, metaphysics and personal transformation specialised in mind re-patterning, bio-energetic integrity and life shifts. He was the director of the former Institute for Breath Therapy and Transformational Healing (InBreath) in the UK, which used to train professional breathworkers in a 3-year part-time diploma training, and now runs the “Life Mastery Program’’ together with his wife Lera.

by Heinz Gerd Lange