Breathwork

Breathwork Perth

At our Body Psychotherapy practice in Perth Western Australia, we use Breathwork as a tool to bring more consciousness to your body and help you come out of your head, which is the source of rumination, anxiety and depression.

Breathwork can be a powerful tool for personal growth and healing, but it may not be appropriate for everyone. In order for Breathwork to be safe and effective, the client needs to have enough groundedness at personality and bodily levels, so their system does not get flooded with underlying emotions that may surface. Breathwork should be approached with caution and under the guidance of a qualified therapist who is trained in understanding and working with Trauma and can help you safely navigate the experience and any strong emotions that may surface. Trauma can be complex and deeply ingrained, making it essential to have proper support during the healing process.

You can use your breath to promote deep relaxation, inner guidance, emotional intelligence and heightened awareness. Breathwork can also help bring awareness to and release of unconscious emotions which are withheld in your body. With regular breathwork practice, you can actually affect change within your body and when mastery is obtained, it can have a shamanic healing effect. Most people have heard of the practitioner “Wim Hof”, who is the world leader in this field, due to him not having any limiting beliefs. He can connect deeply to his nervous system and actually heal and fight off a broad range of cold and illnesses with just the correct breathwork techniques.

What is Breathwork?

Breathing is an essential function that you unconsciously perform, yet you may not realise that your style of breathing is a trigger and a reflection of other bodily and mental processes. This type of breathing is known as connected breathing. Through private sessions, a professional breathwork practitioner can assist you in reaching altered states.

Breathwork or Reichian breathwork is the process whereby the application is made of conscious attention to how you organically breathe and then intervene to change your breathing pattern to stimulate your body and mind towards a healing effect. The main technique involves you breathing in through the nose and out through your mouth. This has the desired effect of giving a felt sense of being more grounded in the body. Reichian breath work is generally used as an adjunct to Body Psychotherapy. It has a different effect and purpose to other breathing techniques such as Alternate Nostril Breathing, whose purpose is primarily to still the mind and induce a feeling or relaxation. Reichian Breathing can also have that effect, but it also creates more interoceptive pathways in the body, creating more vitality in the body.

Holotropic Breathwork is very similar to Reichian Breathwork and both breathing patterns are used to support Body Psychotherapy. Each method uses connected breath, the body, mind and breath, and helps with personal growth and emotional healing.

Deep breathing is a sign of vitality and safety within you, whereas compromised breathing reflects some form of defence or trauma incorporated into the breathing function. Your defence mechanism ideally should be targeted in a safe way, so that a full organic breathing response can be restored for your optimal health.

What are the Benefits of Seeing a Professional Breathwork Practitioner for Breathwork Training?

Breathwork training can help restore your vitality and learn how to deeply relax in your normal rested state. Your breathing is both a reflection of how safe you feel at an unconscious level and also is a key process that informs that same conclusion as to whether you should assume you are safe.

In this paradoxical way, your breathing is a circular process that informs you of your state of being and so a key benefit of our Breathwork therapy is to recalibrate your breathing to create biofeedback that you are safe and can relax into a rested state.

These breath work techniques will organically create that rested state in your body, which is sometimes called the parasympathetic state of being. We can teach you effective use of your breath to elicit the Relaxation Response as we become “conscious connected”.

Our Breathwork Training is designed to improve the emotional health of our clients to put their bodies back into a restorative of a healthy rested state. Additionally, Breathwork can be used as a stress trigger to activate you into trauma and so cause trauma to activate and discharge from your body and musculature. There are certain trauma release breathing oriented exercises, which only under the supervision of a trained professional, can be used to allow a session of trauma release to be conducted.

Why is Breathwork Breathing used as a Psychotherapy Tool

Trauma release breathing exercises are a tool in the toolkit of the competent trauma therapist as they provide a pathway into the body where skilled supervision by the therapist can allow you to remain in your Window of Tolerance of arousal or stimulus, and release trauma still held in your body as frozen musculature, memories, sensations and energies.

Our Somatic Psychotherapists are trained to observe and guide you into safe arousal through Breathwork, but modulate and stay present to your changes in your breathing, body or emotions, so you do not leave your ability to contain the releasing trauma. We teach all our clients tailored Grounding exercises in conjunction with our Breathwork training.

Our Breathwork Meditation in Perth involves conscious breathing for self-healing and the ability to direct the breath to various parts of the body where there may be energetic blockages. Breathwork Meditation will help you direct your focus internally, enable healthy control of your state of mind, allow defence patterns in your body to surrender, and calm your nervous system.

By completing a private session in Breathwork we can introduce you to your own body armouring or defences by showing how and where you breathe in in your belly, diaphragm, or upper chest, or in a combination of these areas. A targeted breathing technique that activates areas that currently do not participate in the organic breathing cycle will allow your body to widen the catchment of breathing in your body and move closer to fuller vitality and deep organic, full-body breathing.

More Information on the Australian Breathwork Association

For more information and readings around breathwork check out the Australian Breathwork Association website. At the current time, they are the governing body around international breathwork standards and practices in Western Australia. To find a breath work practitioner near you, simply search for Breathwork near me.