Many cultures and practices use the breath as a means of relaxing and also healing. In yoga, tai chi, and qi gong, there are various breathwork techniques to support mindfulness, reduce anxiety and depression, bring relaxation, boost the immune system, and enhance the overall life force within our bodies.

Breathing typically does not involve any thought as it is part of our “autonomic nervous system” – ie it is something we do automatically and unconsciously. Like every beat of our heart, which is also part of the autonomic nervous system, it is essential for survival.  I’m always in awe about how we are each a walking miracle – that our heart keeps beating and the complex system allows us to breathe – both awake and asleep.

The healing qualities of the breath, when used consciously in a shamanic way, are magical. The breath can be used to hunt out not just physical issues, but also emotional and energetic energies that may be stuck in the body and holding us back from being our full potential.

Emotions are curious and complex entities.  Very often, we react to situations in ways we might not understand and this is typically the result of an underlying emotion that is stuck in our body and just simply gets triggered. The instinctive response is to close down this emotion they feel uncomfortable and we may well judge it unfavourably.

But the job of an emotion is to be felt.  Once an emotion has done its job and been felt, it will leave our body.  If an emotion is not felt, it will be stuck in our body, and that is where the trouble starts.

We learn at a very early age to keep our emotions in our body. With the best of intentions, caregivers will encourage us to “cheer up” or “look on the bright side” or “don’t make a scene”. Societally and culturally, these are often very appropriate as we need to live in community and fit in and I’m not wholly decrying them.

But modern culture does not allow for emotions to be processed in the way they need to. The job of an emotion is to be felt, and if they are not felt they become trapped in our bodies.

The impact of this is threefold.  First – they take up space in our bodies which could more beneficially be replaced by an aspect of ourselves. Secondly, they try to be heard or seen and so attract behaviours that will trigger us so the emotion can be felt. In other words, we find we create situations which are not particularly pleasant and our learned behaviour is to repress the emotion. And finally, these trapped emotions grow into some physical ailments causing pain, disease and ill health.

Furthermore, emotions can jump between one person to another. Most of us have had the experience where we have been with someone and felt drained – usually this is down to an exchange of emotions and we pick up their more difficult emotions.

Working with the breath is transformative. And it is something that I love to teach clients as it is so simple – it takes a bit of practice and attention but the results are unparalleled. Furthermore, it is very empowering as we learn how to help ourselves.

In a nutshell, using shamanic breathwork healing, we call in the support of our healing allies, and gently bring our awareness and our breath to the emotions that are in our body and ready to be released.  We also seek to extract any information that we can from the emotion as sometimes they can contain much wisdom and treasure. We can lean into the emotion gently, so that anything that needs to be felt can be done so safely, and gently without any form of overwhelm. The emotion softly and sweetly is set free.

The benefits of this are multi-faceted. 

1. The removal of difficult emotions makes space for more joyous ones that adhere to our true self
2. With a body more filled with joy, we start to attract more a more joyous and loving life
3. Our immune system and physicality improves

Finally, the impact on our lives of shamanic breathwork is cumulative in a way that is exponential. It gets increasingly easy to engage with triggered emotions and just turn the attention in and release what needs to be released however that may be.

Personally, I have found that healing has become so much fun!  I now am excited when I am triggered as I know there is gold on the other side just waiting to shine through. 

I love teaching clients how to do this. The results are phenomenal and it only takes a few sessions to really get the hang of this, giving you the tools to transform how you react to situations to enhance your life.  Why not get in touch and see for yourself!