A Trauma Informed Approach To Breathwork

This masterclass will go over the relationship between breath, stress, the nervous system, your emotions & how we can break patterns using breath.

This is for:
People interested in doing breathwork trainings
Healers, breathworkers, teachers, coaches, therapists, wellness enthusiasts & meditators.
Anyone committed to your own personal development & growth.

It will also include a modified Rebirthing Breathwork Practice.

Transcript

Hello,

I am Karina Khalila and you are about to listen to a masterclass that I shared online called Embody Your Breath,

A trauma-informed approach to breath work.

We will be discussing all things breath work and what it means to be trauma-informed as a practitioner,

But also what impact that can have on the client itself.

I hope you enjoy.

Welcome,

Everybody.

Welcome to Embody Your Breath.

This is a trauma-informed approach to breath work.

I am thrilled to have you all here.

Let's begin with a few breaths.

I'm going to invite you to close your eyes.

And I love to just check in with where everybody is at,

Just so that we get an idea for the collection of souls that are joining us from all over the world.

That collection of souls is going to take a moment now just to breathe together.

So wherever you are in your cycle of breath,

Breathe all the way out and then take a deep breath in through your nose and open mouth.

Let it go.

Two more deep breath in through your nose and open mouth.

One more deep breath in and let it go.

Just taking a moment to pause,

To be with stillness,

To be with silence,

And perhaps even to pause just to allow yourself or welcome yourself back into your body and into this moment.

Again,

Take a long,

Slow,

Deep breath in through your nose.

Open mouth,

Let it go.

One more deep breath in.

Let it go.

When you're ready,

You can open your eyes.

So I'm Karina Khalila.

Most of you know me.

High school teacher,

Yoga teacher turned breath worker.

Breath work has become my life's work.

I love it.

I created the Embodied Breath Academy two and a half years ago and creating a team for that academy because I don't want it just to be about me or me-centric.

However,

I do love teaching the content and I do love sharing what transformation can take place through breath when we have awareness of what the hell is going on in the human psyche.

And that's something that I'm deeply passionate about.

So a little bit about my history.

When I first became a breath work practitioner,

I felt like it cleared away so much of my stuff,

So much of my stories,

Anxiety gone,

Depression gone.

And then I hit like a wall in 2020,

Like I think nearly everybody did.

But I met this wall with,

Why isn't breath getting me any further than this?

And I was stuck in a particular cycle or pattern and I couldn't figure my way out of this cycle or pattern.

It was like,

How vulnerable do I get?

The essence of it was,

Was like I was in no man's land.

I'm not an ugly person.

I know that.

And I definitely have a beautiful soul.

So like,

I was like,

What's going on?

No man's land in terms of like no partner,

No,

No boyfriend,

No asking anybody,

Like no one was asking me out on a date.

I'm like,

What is going on?

So it's kind of vulnerable for me to share that.

And it had been years.

And even my friends were like,

Karina,

We don't know what's going on with you.

Like can't help.

And I was really lonely and really sad.

So I went to my breath work practitioner,

My breath work teacher.

And I said to him,

What does it mean to be trauma informed?

And how do I,

How do I become trauma informed?

Cause I think I've got some trauma.

And he was,

He sort of brushed me off a little bit.

It was like,

You don't need to know about that.

Sometimes the more you know,

Isn't,

Isn't what you need.

And I was like,

This isn't resonating.

I feel,

I don't feel understood and I don't feel I understand myself.

So I went off and did a whole lot of study myself.

To study myself.

I also did trauma therapy,

Specifically trauma therapy to essentially try and heal whatever the stuck pattern was.

I'm going to talk about patterns a little bit later.

And so that journey of going through trauma therapy and also going through like different kinds of therapy courses,

Sorry,

Trauma courses to understand what it means that journey just opened up a whole new world and potentially how I could make my experience of.

Breathing people even more potent,

Even more powerful for them,

But also even more loving for them and for them to come back to a space of deep self-love.

So it was felt really exciting,

Felt really,

Really exciting.

So that's where my passion for like bringing trauma informed work into the,

Into the breath work world.

I want to share that,

You know,

Doing trauma therapy greatly changed my life,

But being,

And I'm,

This is the first thing that I want to teach you is that being trauma informed doesn't necessarily,

It's going to mean that it's going to heal trauma.

It means that the practitioner knows how to handle or hold a person when the trauma does come up.

So that's where I'm going to teach you how to handle a person when the trauma does come up.

So that's what being trauma informed means.

If somebody has really deep trauma that they want to work with somebody for,

They're a trained people to do that.

And,

But you know,

If you're ever looking for a course or ever looking for a training,

You know,

Being trauma informed doesn't mean that we can heal trauma because what I've found is having my understanding of trauma and having a person be seen,

Validated,

Loved,

Cared for,

Held,

Even though the shit is hitting the fan for them,

That container can actually be very healing for a person that thinks they're innately damaged because they have this big thing.

Is this resonating?

Okay.

Let's take a deep breath in together.

Let's just take a deep breath.

As I shared before,

What does it mean to be trauma informed?

What it means is that firstly,

It will not re-traumatize.

Trauma,

When something traumatic happens,

It's not so much what happened as it is how a person felt when it happened and what happened after.

The care that a person received after they experienced the trauma.

So if you know,

A person was to confide in a friend and they shut them down or invalidated them,

Then possibly that trauma would have been kept in the body as shame or fear or anger or all of the above sometimes.

And some big events.

So we've got trauma with a capital T,

Big,

Something happens,

Usually causes PTSD.

And then we also have trauma with a little T,

Which is like a bunch of very small things.

The way that I like to explain that is,

If you've got trauma with a big T,

It's like having a big gash across the front of the chest.

Whereas if you've got trauma with a little T,

It's like many,

Many,

Many paper cuts,

Both are just as painful and both take a different way to heal each of these things or each example.

I want to sort of also say that trauma moves differently in everybody.

Trauma is expressed differently in everybody.

Trauma is re-triggered or triggered in everybody in a different way.

And so there is no blanket rule when it comes to trauma.

When we are working with somebody who has trauma or when we ourselves have trauma.

And I also want to say just side notes that if you are sitting here and thinking about yourself,

My invitation to you is actually to just put yourself aside and drink this in as information rather than self-assessment.

Now,

The other thing that I was about to say was that when you are doing this work,

It's always really powerful to stay curious and curiosity is like,

Hmm,

Curiosity is imbued with love.

So when you are working either with a client or when you're working with yourself,

With your own trauma,

It's always invited for you to have a sense of lightness and play and to,

Of course,

As best a person can try not to identify who you are as being a traumatized person.

In this way,

If we identify with the trauma,

Over-identify with the trauma,

It needs to be addressed in the process of healing.

But if we over-identify with the trauma,

Oftentimes it takes so much longer to heal because we're gripping and holding onto that identity.

If a person is holding onto the identity of being traumatized,

Then they'll never really honestly let it go.

So when somebody is,

Sorry,

What does it mean to be trauma-informed?

It actually means not to re-traumatize.

So what that means is the facilitator will hold the space for the person to allow them to go through what they're going through,

Be able to hold them in a sense of calm and ease,

Not taking anything personally,

Obviously holding the space and also showing them love and that it's okay and validating their experience.

I've seen it in so many of my clients.

As soon as I validate them,

They go,

They sit back.

Yeah,

It was really hard.

So to the flip side of that,

What I have seen and experienced in some people or in some therapists or in some breathwork sessions,

Don't worry about that.

That was in the past.

Just let it go.

A spiritual bypass.

Just think of the positive.

Be grateful.

Those things are very important.

However,

When we're dealing with trauma,

Sometimes that can be really invalidating when a person's saying that to someone or when a facilitator saying that to someone.

I have a story of a client of mine who was going through something big in a breathwork session.

She was getting very angry and she was met with anger by the practitioner.

And so it's like stuff like this that can happen because essentially in the healing space,

What happens is we get triggered by each other.

And what can happen when a person's sharing a story or a person's having an intense reaction is the facilitator can go into their own reaction or response.

And this is why I find it so important that the breathwork practitioners that come through my trainings are working on themselves so that if a client goes into something,

Then they can hold that with love rather than be like,

Oh,

That's bad.

You shouldn't be feeling that way or having some kind of reaction to what they're sharing.

Is this resonating?

Yeah.

Okay.

So I'm just going to check the chat because I've just realized it's not up.

Beautiful Liz.

Exactly.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

So I'm going to keep moving.

Are there any questions so far?

Shall we take a deep breath?

Take a long,

Deep breath in.

Let it go.

Sigh it out.

Okay.

Next point.

So the facilitator has expertise and understanding to know when someone's trauma has been activated.

So what that also means is somebody or the facilitator is able to recognize when they're disassociating,

For example,

Able to recognize when something has been triggered and there's a lot of emotions that are coming up and they're suppressing it.

There could be,

So I suppose there would be like a few different responses for a person to be going into a traumatic trauma response.

First is dissociation.

And it sort of looks like this.

It's like they've just sort of zoned into space was really present and all of a sudden not present at all.

That was sort of an exaggerated example.

Another example is that they're getting jittery.

They may need to leave.

So the first was like,

Dissociate,

Sorry,

I'm just going to pause bottom.

Dissociation is associated with either threes or fawn.

You've got run response where somebody needs to leave,

Or somebody is like,

I can't deal with this right now.

That's often a thorn,

Sorry,

A flight response.

And then these are obviously the fight response.

So argumentative,

Disagreeable,

And so on.

So usually if fight flight,

Fawn freeze has been activated or a person in a session or not in a session,

They've gone into a trauma response.

Their trauma is activated.

Their defense mechanism is on and therefore trying to get them out of the situation that they're in and into a safe place.

I wasn't going to go into fight,

Flight,

Fawn,

Freeze,

But I feel like it's almost necessary.

So if somebody is going into fight,

Which is like aggression,

Dominance,

It's a big defense.

Usually the best way to deal with that would be to just stay loving,

Calm down,

Be very direct,

Assertive,

And so on.

If somebody is going into a run or a flight response,

They wanting to run out the door,

Especially in a breathwork session,

This happens quite a lot in public sessions.

I find that this happens a lot.

The best thing to do is invite them to stay,

But then again,

You also can't control their reaction.

So if somebody is going into a flight response and they absolutely need to leave,

Then I would be letting them one,

But also convincing them to stay.

I'd be like,

I will absolutely let you go.

And my preference would be to stay and let's breathe this through and sit with me.

And I'd love to just help you ground.

Fawn and freeze are a little bit more harder to identify because fawn is like,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Whatever you want to do.

I'm happy with that.

It's like taking,

Like getting submissive and taking the back seat.

And freeze is like,

They're frozen.

They're probably very agreeable.

They may not be able to move or,

You know,

There's many different responses there,

But sorry,

I'm just thinking of all the different things.

When somebody is in freeze or fawn,

You may not necessarily notice it.

It's a bit more subtle fight or flight and much more,

You can sort of notice it and see what's going on.

So when the facilitator has expertise in understanding,

Recognizing,

Seeing a person's trauma,

And I'm actually going to go into that now,

The four R's is realizing somebody has gone into realizing that there is trauma,

That a person is experiencing trauma,

Recognizing the signs of having somebody going into a trauma response,

How to respond to that trauma and resisting or like making sure that re-traumatization doesn't happen.

So,

You know,

The example that I gave of invalidation is an example of re-traumatization.

So if somebody is having a trauma response and they're invalidated,

Oftentimes that will be re-traumatizing in some way.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

Let's take a deep breath in,

Let it go.

Lastly,

What being trauma-informed means doesn't necessarily mean that you're not being trauma-informed means doesn't necessarily mean it's going to resolve the trauma.

So as said this earlier on,

It's really important for somebody to seek more formal training,

Especially for me as a breath worker,

I am trauma-informed,

However,

And breath work does assist in healing trauma.

However,

If somebody is really wanting to go into their trauma and breath work's not doing it for them,

I would definitely be referring onward to somebody who can.

The psychotherapies EFT,

EMDR,

NLP,

Somatic movement therapy,

Can in conjunction with breath work can actually be really supportive in healing a person's stuff.

I often refer to either an EFT practitioner that I swear by,

Which has worked really well for me,

Or if they're really willing to do some big work,

EMDR has been,

I think EMDR is one of the most amazing trauma therapies.

It's just really intense.

I've done EMDR.

Alternatively,

Talk therapy is freaking amazing.

Talk therapy gets sometimes a bit of a bad rap in the psychotherapy realms.

However,

I feel like sometimes it's necessary just to have somebody or to speak to someone and just go,

Blah,

This is my shit and go,

Okay,

Maybe this happened because of what happened with your parents.

Oh yeah.

And like having the pieces,

Puzzles of the pieces come together and making sense of that puzzle piece.

So,

Or the puzzle of your life,

Making sense of that.

So in breath work specifically,

And I'm going to speak to like the work that I do,

It doesn't necessarily resolve trauma,

But breath work sometimes,

And not always definitely does assistance support in somebody healing their trauma.

All right,

Let's move on.

I'm going to talk about the trauma-informed breath work practitioner.

Because breath work is an unmoderated field,

Meaning there's no established governing body in breath work.

There is,

And it's not only that,

It's a very spiritual experience.

Hands up who's experienced breath work in a very spiritual way.

Me also.

So it's also very,

Very spiritual.

Yeah.

Okay.

So because of that,

We can sort of tend to focus on the spirit side of things and the aha moments and the awakening and the expanding consciousness and the evolution.

And that's great.

However,

I feel like it makes a really great practitioner.

And I think that's a really important thing to remember.

And I think that I feel like it makes a really great practitioner,

Somebody who understands and recognizes the way that trauma moves through a person's body and how to work with that.

And that's something that working or learning how to work with trauma in a person's body really is dependent on the individual person.

There's millions and millions of people out there.

There's no blanket formula when it works,

When it comes to working with trauma.

However,

Just understanding what it means and how it can work in somebody's body and the way that people perceive life is completely embedded and imprinted in the body and the muscles,

In the organs that it's completely interlinked.

The mind and the body are together.

The mind is inside the body.

They're not separate.

And so if something is happening to the mind,

It is also happening to the body.

If there's something is happening to the body,

It's also happening to the mind.

Yeah.

So if we approach breathwork from a purely spiritual perspective,

That's great.

Fantastic.

Amazing.

Not bad at all.

I feel like it's missing a big chunk of how effective it can be if a practitioner understands the nature of trauma and the way that it works.

What I love about what I have learned being at,

You know,

Going through this trauma,

Being trauma-informed and doing my own trauma therapy and understanding myself,

And I will share this just as a continuation of my own story,

Considering I've been vulnerable thus far,

I may as well continue.

What I realized was that the years of me not being in connection or in relationship with any man was a reaction,

A very subconscious reaction,

I am safer alone,

Caused by something that happened to me when I was 24.

And it was,

It registered in my body as a violation.

And it was quite a traumatic experience.

And after that experience happened,

Old Karina went out and went,

I'm not going to let that get me down.

I'm going to get under everything that moves.

And,

And like,

I went out and played and had fun.

And,

And yet I wasn't able to listen to my body.

My body was screaming at me,

Stop.

And I went through two burnouts.

And then it was after the second burnout that I like,

There was no man's.

And I can see now the way that my subconscious and it was so deeply embedded in my subconscious body mind was keeping me safe by switching off so many things.

Oh,

Goodness,

This is really vulnerable,

But my sexual energy switching off my heart,

I was so closed,

I'd gone deaf.

It was just like,

My whole body was screaming at me,

Like,

Stop and heal this.

But because it was by that point,

It would,

It had been seven years prior,

I was like,

Oh,

I'm over that.

That's fine.

It happened.

It was,

You know,

Shit.

But time doesn't heal.

You know,

That saying time heals all wounds.

It doesn't somewhere in the body,

It's harboring holding on to the memory of that.

And the way that it shows up is usually very subconscious in the way that in how we relate to other people,

Friends,

Lovers,

Our parents,

Partners,

Obviously lovers,

Partners.

So it shows up,

It's something called an implicit memory.

And it's where the body remembers,

You don't cognitively remember,

But the body remembers it thinks it's in danger and goes into a response.

Fight,

Flight,

Fall,

And freeze.

And so to heal trauma,

There's many different ways that we can go about it.

But I like to use one of my teachers analogies,

There's two ways that we can go go about it,

We can work from the outside in peeling away the layers of the onion.

And that can be an eternal journey.

Or we can come back to ourselves and remember that we are love.

And when we do that,

Oftentimes,

Many of the layers of the onion fall away.

And then we're left with,

You know,

One or two or three particular things that really need our attention and our love and our care,

And our presence with healing.

Whenever I work with people,

In big deep things,

I always sort of keep bringing them back to play and curiosity.

Because if we can keep remembering this stuff is so fucking serious,

Can you feel the energy?

It's like serious,

It's dense,

You feel the energy here with us,

It's like,

Whoa,

You know,

It's uncomfortable.

But if we can combine looking at the hard stuff along with like,

Okay,

What does it mean to have pleasure?

What does it mean to have fun?

What does it mean to play and combine them both so that it's not just this deep,

Dark journey into hell,

That it can be useful.

And it can be love filled.

And parts of it mean like looking back at at everything and realizing I was a victim.

And I'm also empowered from having had that experience,

Or those experiences.

I look at you all and I'm like,

Wow,

That's a lot of work.

And I'm like,

I'm not sure I planned on sharing this,

But I think it's important.

What I have learned is that everything,

All the shit that has happened to me in my past,

Has in some way instilled me with a very powerful skill,

Personality traits,

Aspect of myself.

And what I've learned is that anything that I learned through a traumatic experience,

When I healed that trauma,

That skill became a superpower.

I'll give you an example of being intuitive.

Often somebody who is intuitive has a parent that was dynamic.

My dad was dynamic.

I love you,

Dad.

If you're watching this,

I'm sorry.

But he was dynamic.

And so I learned that it was safer to be in him and to learn,

To be watching his energy so that I knew before he did when he was about to go off,

So that I was witnessing his actions and his movements.

And that's how I learned how to be empathic.

My mom as well,

In a different way.

I was constantly observing my parents who had a very dynamic relationship.

I love you both mom and dad.

I do very much.

And watching them,

I learned how to see on a deeper level what was going on.

And so I was able to sort of have empathy for both my mom and dad,

Because I was able to sense,

Sorry,

No,

Wrong words.

I would learn to be empathic because I was able to sense into my mom and dad's experience of life.

And then that bled into all of my friendships.

And I often knew hands up who can resonate with this.

I often knew what people needed before they did.

Me also.

Yeah.

Far out.

It's a gift.

Thank you.

It's a gift.

And hands up who also gets this.

Sometimes it's way too much information.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that's a really good example of how we might've learned a really fucking powerful skill through experiencing something really challenging.

I'll give you another example.

I have an addictive personality.

When I was younger,

It was drugs and alcohol.

When I got over the drugs and alcohol,

It became work.

And when I actually never really went in to intentionally heal my addiction to working,

Maybe I should still think I should sometimes.

Anyway,

What I've learned is that that is actually one of my superpowers.

I just know how to run business.

I just know how to make the movements happen.

It's like an innate knowing inside of me instead of something that I'm doing out of fear.

This isn't like the,

What I do isn't about a fear response.

It's more coming from a place of love and excitement.

Does that make sense?

So we form superpowers from our trauma.

And what I love about that gives me so much hope and excitement for this world,

For the people who are willing to go and heal,

Whatever is the shit is there for those people who are willing to go and do the work,

Even though it's hard,

Even though it's tough for them to come out the other side,

We're going to have a world full of super heroes,

Super humans.

There is going to be,

Ah,

I can see it.

Not our generation,

Maybe,

But perhaps we are the forebearers of that transformation in the world.

Anybody with me on that?

Okay.

Yeah.

Yay.

Let's all take a deep breath in.

All right.

So I love this.

Okay.

Just to give you a little bit of an update of where we are at,

I'm going to go through this.

It's probably one of my favorite summaries of like how we can break a cycle or a pattern that's caused by something that happened that was traumatic.

This is a very watered down version,

Very basic.

I teach this in the training.

I go into,

Into this in depth in the rebirthing breathwork practitioner training and also in the advanced practitioner training,

Because this is actually really complex,

But it's something that I've broken down into sort of a very simple flow chart of how we can actually shift our cycles and patterns.

So what we're going to do is go through this.

We're then going to talk a little bit about self-love,

And then we're going to do a very short breathwork practice.

This isn't,

This masterclass isn't going to be a breathwork session,

But just a little bit of breathing to see what impact that that can have.

And then a little bit of time for Q and A.

So what is a cycle or a pattern?

Anybody got an idea?

Anybody got a clue?

You can come off mute or whack it into the chat.

What's a cycle or a pattern?

Yeah.

Something that happens again and again and again,

Over and over again,

Different scenario,

Different person,

Different work,

Different partner,

Same thing.

Hands up.

Who's experienced that?

Me too.

Still learning to break a few of those cycles.

Definitely unconscious,

Because if we were aware of it,

Potentially we may not be going through the same thing,

Or we'd be seeing an improvement in the situation.

So it is possible to break patterns and cycles through healing,

Through accepting,

Through self-love,

Through self-acceptance.

What we have is a series of belief systems in our mind that are often formed from the age of conception,

Literally that early on to about the age of eight.

And then anything after that was solidified usually through the teenage years and puberty and that shit phase of life.

So we formed a set of belief systems,

Both positive and negative about,

Oh,

I'm sorry,

I retract that statement,

Expansive and limiting.

I prefer that sort of realm of consciousness.

I don't think anything's positive or negative or good or bad.

I prefer like expanding or limiting.

So an example of something that is expanding is something that you're naturally very good at.

Can you think of something?

Yeah.

You can think of something naturally you're really good at.

My Virgo friends are probably really good at spreadsheets and money.

I love you.

I'm a Pisces,

So I'm really good at crying and emotions.

I love me too.

Anything in between.

I love Virgo Pisces.

It's just a hilarious combination.

Anyway,

We're not here to talk about astrology.

You've got something that you can think of that you're very good at.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that is usually fueled by a belief that you have about yourself that is encouraging that thing to happen.

And then you've got limiting beliefs.

And unfortunately,

There's the noise of the limiting beliefs has turned up much,

Much more in most people than the voice of the expanding beliefs.

Usually depending on the person,

The limiting beliefs will be louder than the expansive beliefs.

And so the limiting beliefs actually prevent us from doing,

Saying,

Experiencing what we really want to experience because we're not good enough.

We're not worthy.

We're not lovable.

We're not perfect or completely imperfect and so on.

We're not safe.

I shouldn't be doing that.

What's other people going to think of me and so on.

So we've got a series of limiting beliefs that creates a thought.

I shouldn't do that.

I'm not going to do that.

It's not safe.

Or I won't send him a text message because I'm afraid he'll reject me and therefore enforce that I'm not lovable.

So it creates a thought that creates an emotion,

Creates lack,

Creates sadness,

Creates anger,

Creates shame,

Whatever the emotion is,

Guilt,

Grief.

And then we create a behavior pattern according to what we think and feel.

From those behavior patterns,

We create habits.

And so those habits are usually very,

Very,

Very hard to break.

Can you think of a habit that you have that's really hard to break?

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

Usually fueled by a belief system.

So what we can do,

I'm just going to check the chat.

I love you,

Laura.

We're very good at crying.

Go us,

Go team.

So what we can actually do is start to break the cycle at any point in this diagram.

We work with thoughts.

We're going to break a cycle.

We work with the emotions.

We're going to break the cycle.

If we work directly with the behavior,

We're going to break the cycle.

If we work with habits,

We're going to break the cycle.

If we work with belief systems,

We're going to break the cycle.

And what I'm learning with very sticky cycles,

Things that happen over and over and over again,

You go,

Fuck,

I've been healing this for fucking 10 years,

And it's still here.

The same thing happens over and over again.

Okay,

Great.

What I often see is that there's constantly an improvement in the pattern.

It's not as bad as it first was,

If that makes sense.

I also had a beautiful friend of mine flag something with me.

He's a hypnotherapist.

And he said,

What if these cycles and patterns,

We're not actually here to heal.

We're here to accept and just go through the fucking roller coaster of what it means to have that pattern.

I was like,

Oh,

That's a really interesting,

Kind of cancels this whole situation,

How this whole graph out.

However,

It is something to contemplate like,

Okay,

At what point do we have to turn around and just go,

All right,

I'm accepting that this is part of my journey.

Right.

So with breathwork,

This is sort of the foundation of all the work that I do with people and then what I teach the trainees that come through my trainings.

That's what I teach them to do as well.

I teach them to look at the belief systems,

Start addressing the belief systems they may have.

If the client is willing,

We address thoughts and emotions,

Emotions.

We go into much,

Much more in the advanced practitioner training.

We go really deep into emotions and emotional release practices and why they're so powerful.

And behaviors and habits start to change when a person starts to breathe because what the breath does is it unites the body,

The mind and soul,

And the three of them come together.

And from that,

It moves a shit ton of energy.

Breathwork is essentially energy work.

It moves a shit ton of energy.

And the person is able to feel once they're finished breathing clear,

Not necessarily knowing what behavior or pattern or habit they've cleared or thought process of cleared.

Um,

Maybe they do,

Maybe they had a memory and they made peace with something.

Often this always happens quite naturally in breathwork sessions.

When this happens,

Behaviors and habits start to shift really naturally because they're no longer wound in tension and stress.

That makes sense.

Okay.

The core philosophy of rebirthing breathwork is relaxation is the truest form of healing,

Which I am now building a,

Um,

Business around being relaxed,

Being the truest form of healing,

Because when we're tense,

When we're stressed,

When we're wound up,

We often make choices from a defensive space.

And I haven't put choices in here,

But making a choice as a behavior,

What leads to a behavior it's fueled by thoughts and emotion choices is sort of,

You can see my arrow,

Right?

Where I'm circling.

Can you see that?

Yeah.

Good.

Just checking choices are like between thoughts and emotions,

Sorry,

Thoughts and behavior.

When we're wound in stress,

We make choices that keep us in a space of defense.

Don't keep us in a space of openness and love when we breathe often.

Um,

That tension,

That stress is no longer as built up in the body.

And so therefore thoughts are a little bit more relaxed,

Make better choices.

And that changes behaviors,

Which also change habits.

Uh,

The amount of people that have come to me and have been smokers and within,

You know,

Four sessions of quit smoking,

Um,

You know,

Just from breathing and not because of the breath,

Not because of breathing in and out,

But because it's cleared so much shit.

So breath essentially works with all of these,

You know,

Behaviors,

Habits,

Thoughts,

Emotions,

And belief systems.

And if we work with one,

Then it's actually possible to like clear whatever is stuck there.

Those of you who've never had a session with me or one of my team,

Um,

The way that we work is we actually use 30 minutes at the beginning of a session to identify an intention.

And,

You know,

We bring up or talk about,

You know,

Any thoughts that you might be having or belief systems that are present or,

Uh,

Any behaviors.

And usually that comes through.

So how are you just asking someone,

You know,

How are you?

And then that opens up a dialogue that allows us to go into,

You know,

The,

The belief systems,

The thoughts,

The emotions of what's going on in a person's life.

And in that time,

We can sort of identify what's really going on and then use the breath as a,

As a tool to clear whatever is stuck.

It's fucking awesome.

Really?

Isn't it?

Sorry.

It just sounded like the biggest Bogan Aussie.

That's the core of who I really am.

Let's take a deep breath together.

Heaven forbid.

I have a couple of glasses of wine because that's when you really hear the way I truly am.

All right.

So,

And I just want to come back to this,

You know,

The importance of curiosity,

The importance of self-love,

The importance of play in the healing journey.

If you are going through a healing process,

What can you do to be creative?

What can you do to,

To be curious about your situation?

What can you do to learn to love yourself better?

If love is a strong word and it's a bit too woo and,

Um,

What's that thing?

Disney for you,

Then put the love word down and say,

Appreciate self appreciation,

Self acceptance.

What can I do to be more playful?

What can I do to just accept myself better?

Even though I feel like shit,

I love and accept myself just as I am.

It's probably one of my favorite sayings.

It's not mine.

It came from one of my best friends.

So just going to credit Jennifer Harmony right now.

She's an AFT practitioner.

Um,

But even though I feel blah,

I love and accept myself just as I am.

And if love is too strong,

I choose to accept myself just as I am.

I believe that the truest form of healing is actually learning to accept and love yourself.

It's as simple as that.

Choosing to heal is learning to love and accept yourself.

And even though you're angry,

I love and accept myself.

Even though I'm grieving,

I love and accept myself.

Even though I'm fucking frustrated with life and I want it to look different.

I love and accept myself.

I choose to accept myself.

Right.

Okay.

Let's take a big,

Deep breath in together.

Let it go.

Okay.

Okay.

So let's breathe.

I'm going to stop the share.

I'm really good.

You're enjoying my accent.

I appreciate that a lot.

All right.

It comes and goes because I've lived in Bali with so many foreigners.

Sometimes I throw the R in to make people understand me who are from other parts of the world that don't get the word here or dinner or water.

All right.

I digress.

So let's do a little breath practice.

It's going to be a short rebirthing breathwork practice.

Probably go for about 10 minutes.

So we're going to do it seated.

If you really want to be fully relaxed,

You can lie down.

We're going to do,

Because I'm a Pisces and can't count.

No,

I just lose myself while I'm doing this.

So I'm not going to blame Pisces on this at all,

But I am just as a joke.

I'm going to time two minute sections.

So we'll breathe for two minutes and then we'll pause.

And then we'll breathe for two minutes and then we'll pause.

It'll be about 20 to 25 breaths.

And the idea with the breathing is just for you to like,

How much can you soften into the breath?

Not worry about getting it right.

Don't worry about that at all.

Not even concerned about whether or not we're getting it right.

We're just going to breathe in and breathe out.

Does that sound good?

And as you're breathing,

I'm just going to invite you to like,

The way that I visualize this is like calling all of your attention and awareness into inward,

Inward,

Inward.

Let's bring it all back with every breath.

Come back,

Come back,

Come back until all of you can really notice is the rise and the fall of your breath as you breathe.

It's like reaching out and scooping all of your attention and your awareness.

Just going to call all of this back in.

And so all you're here to feel is just the simplicity of breathing in and out with the busyness of our life and the amount of stress that we have.

Being able to do that is a superpower.

It's not easy.

The amount of distractions there are,

I'm pretty sure they have managed to very well capture our attention with these things.

And the more that we can come back into our body and into our breath and into presence,

Which means being really here with what is outside as well as what is inside.

The more that we can do that,

The more anchored we become,

The better decisions that we make,

The better we have and so on.

Does that sound good?

Yeah.

Awesome.

So close your eyes.

You can sit,

You can lie down.

Yes.

We'll be breathing in and out through the nose,

The breath in and out through the nose.

Thanks for asking that,

Liz.

The breath in and out through the nose stimulates the parasympathetic nervous response,

Which is the rest,

Restore,

Repair response of the body.

Also mildly associated with fawn and freeze,

But that's very complicated teaching.

And I'm not going to teach you that right now.

However,

It will assist and support you in coming back.

The really strong mouth breathing practices like a Wim Hof actually stimulate sympathetic nervous response,

Which is the fight or flight run response,

Active stress.

And sometimes I think to myself,

Why are we doing this when actually what,

Like,

That's just putting fuel on the fire of already stressed people?

You know?

So if we can breathe in and out through the nose,

It actually stimulates more of a parasympathetic,

I should say,

Nervous response.

We ready to breathe?

All right.

So closing your eyes,

Nice,

Long,

Slow,

Deep breaths.

I might need to put my headphones on for this.

I'm just going to change my settings.

Can you hear me breathing?

Good.

So it's not a Nujai breath.

It's not,

You know,

Darth Vader breath.

It's a sniffy.

Yeah.

And it doesn't even need to make a sound.

So if you're not sniffly,

Great.

I'm sort of doing that just so that you know that the breath should be coming through the nose,

But no tightness in the throat.

We want to create space.

All right.

So closing your eyes.

And I want you to take a slow breath in through your nose.

And then on the breath out,

Just relax your diaphragm.

Let it go.

Breathing in through your nose.

Relax the diaphragm.

Let it go.

Yeah.

Breathing in through your nose.

Relax the diaphragm.

Let it go.

Breathing in through your nose.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Now let's connect the breaths a little quicker.

Breathing in.

Breathing in.

Breathing in.

Breathing in.

Breathing in.

Breathing in.

Breathing in.

It's time to take a full breath in.

Breathe in all the way.

Open mouth.

Let it go.

Sigh it out.

Make a sound.

Just pause on the breath out.

You may start to notice tingles,

Change in temperature,

Hot or cold.

You might notice other sensations start to move in your body.

What do you feel?

Just calling your attention and your awareness back into your body and just noticing these sensations.

Let's do the second round together.

Breathing in and letting go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Keep breathing just like that.

Keep going on your own.

You've got it.

Yep.

Going to do about 10,

Loose 10.

So maybe 12,

Maybe 15,

Maybe 9.

Just explore the size of your breath and then do less and soften more and just feel the way that it feels to experience the rise and fall of your breath.

Like the rise and fall of tides,

The rise and fall of waves.

Feel the rustling of the breath against your nose.

Take a full deep breath in.

Breathe in all the way.

Hold the breath in.

Open mouth.

Let it go.

Pause.

What do you notice in your body?

What do you notice in your mind?

You can come back to a natural flow of breath if you desire.

Go into a third round when you're ready.

Breathing in and letting go.

Let's breathe together to start.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Breath in.

Let go.

Let go.

Yeah,

Keep breathing like that.

Just breathe in and breathe out.

Maybe you can attune your attention to the exchange of energy that takes place,

Acknowledging that the tingles or the temperature change or the sensations you may be experiencing may be a result of the exchange of energy happening inside your lungs.

Take around five more breaths or so.

Take one more breath in.

Breathe in all the way.

Open mouth.

Sigh it out.

You can pause on the breath out.

If your mind is really busy,

I'm going to invite you to give your mind a job.

Ask your mind to notice the different sensations,

The different textures or temperatures of your body.

Turning back to a natural flow of breath if you need.

Notice how simple it is to shift your state of consciousness from one that is really busy to one that is a bit more centered and still.

It's just in a matter of a few breaths.

Let's do another round.

Breathing in and letting go.

Take a breath in.

Let it go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Keep going just like that.

And with every breath out,

I invite you to relax a little bit more into your body.

Like the breath out is like a sigh after a long day.

Like the breath out is a warm hug and embrace.

Like the breath out is enough for you to rest back into yourself,

For you to remember that it's okay to come home to the body.

Keep breathing.

Around five more breaths.

Next breath in,

Breathe in all the way.

Open mouth.

And you may notice your body might want to wobble or shake or shimmy.

If that's you,

You can move in any way.

This isn't like meditation.

I'm going to do one more round in a moment.

If you need to lie down,

You can do so.

Last round,

Breathing in and out through your nose.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Breathing in.

Let go.

Keep breathing.

And I invite you to be with what is.

It's always a cycle of becoming distracted by other things.

And then always returning home to center.

It's about how we return home.

Five more breaths.

Next breath in,

Breathe in all the way.

Open mouth.

Let's pause just for a little while.

You can come back to a natural flow of breath when you feel ready.

Keeping the eyes closed and just noticing what you feel within yourself.

Can you come into contact with the more spacious parts of you?

Can you connect with your heart?

Perhaps the physical heart as it beats in your chest.

Can you connect with the sensation of your energetic heart?

The soft space that is within you?

Can you rest back into the space of your heart?

Take a full deep breath in.

Open mouth.

Let it go.

When you're ready,

You can begin to come back.

Moving your hands,

Your feet,

Taking a stretch as you feel your knee and opening your eyes when you feel ready.

Does anybody want to share their experience?

How you feel now perhaps?

You can type it in the chat if you wish.

Or just come off mute.

Does anybody,

Yeah,

I love breathing,

She says.

I love that.

Does anybody feel softer?

Does anybody feel a bit more agitated?

Oh,

Okay,

Good.

No one here.

Does anybody feel a bit more inspired?

Yeah.

Deeper sense of clarity perhaps?

Anything else?

Did anybody get like an intuitive hit?

Like,

Oh,

I need to do this thing.

I often get food hits.

I need to eat this food.

It's like,

I don't know why,

But whenever I breathe,

It's a food thing.

Okay,

I feel more love in my body and calm.

I love that,

Petra.

Thank you so much for sharing.

D says happier,

Calmer.

I love that,

D.

Thank you so much.

Yep.

Okay.

So just like that was a grand total of 15 minutes of breathing,

And already we can feel some sort of shift taking place.

So feels nice and relaxed and calm.

Initially had tingling sensation in my jaw and in my body.

Cool.

And then it started seeing images of people and colors.

That's so cool.

So yeah,

Breath will start to expand your awareness.

So without going into it too much,

Because I want to leave some time for a Q&A.

When we breathe in this cyclical way,

So conscious connected breathing,

That's what we just did,

Conscious connected breathing,

And ours was through the nose.

It stimulates both the pineal gland,

Which is just behind the sinuses,

And we're breathing in and out through the nose.

So it activates the pineal gland and activates the lungs,

Which both release a small amount of DMT.

DMT is the spirit molecule.

Again,

I'm not going to go too much into that right now.

It is the active ingredient in plant medicines and mushrooms and other psychedelics.

And when that's activated in the body,

There's an expanded sense of awareness and an expanded sense of connected to spirit or consciousness,

And intrinsically a connection to self.

So it's almost like our awareness goes upward,

Inward and outward all at once.

And so we start to feel what's really here,

What's really going on.

And the mind becomes a tool that we use,

A tool that we use to close rather than a tool that uses us.

And as I shared in the breath,

Sometimes we forget and we go through phases of forgetting and we remember again and we forget and we remember again and we become distracted by thought and fears and behaviors and patterns,

And we get stuck in old patterning and what matters is the way that we come back.

The more like inward,

Upward,

Expansive state of consciousness,

The more we can actually live from that space and really live from our heart.

Okay.

So are there any questions that have come up since we've been chatting?

Questions,

Comments,

Statements,

Feedback?

No need to be shy.

And if it's a no,

It's great.

Okay.

Yeah.

Hey,

Karina.

I love your accent.

Thank you.

Can you hear me?

Yes,

I can.

Thank you so much for that experience and for your knowledge.

I do feel calmer and lighter and I wanted to let you know that Poppy and I would love to find you there,

Not until August,

July,

August.

And so I'll let you know some of those details and see if we can meet up because I'd love to know more about your training and the commitment that it requires.

Awesome.

I would be happy to share.

I'm actually going to share a little bit about that now anyway.

So thank you so much for asking and yes,

Please let me know and reach out.

Send me an email.

Let's just start there.

We can begin there.

Dee,

Were you about to say something?

Yeah,

I was going to share that usually when I do breathwork,

I tend to be emotional and there are always tears,

But today it happened in a way that I was actually rushing for the submission of my theoxy during my assignment.

I'm doing my master's right now,

So I have an assignment to hand out.

But I saw your IG on this remastered course and I'm like,

Okay,

I need to do this.

But when I didn't get your confirmation or I didn't get the link earlier on and all that,

Then I'm like,

Okay,

Maybe it's not meant to be.

I've been it for a while and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And then I'm like,

Okay,

Maybe it's not a good time because I really haven't finished my work yet and I need it to.

But when I was doing the breathwork,

It all just peeled away and I felt like whatever will be,

Will be kind of like that flip of mind.

And at first I had the thought of my work or what should I do?

Maybe I should add this in,

Add that in and all that.

But then after that,

I just completely relaxed and it just brought me to a space whereby I felt very calm,

Actually even supported.

And I don't have to worry.

It just melted all away and I actually also felt happier.

I was smiling,

I was like,

There was a sense of,

There was a joy.

I just wanted to share that.

Beautiful.

Thank you so very much for sharing.

Yes,

For joy.

Every breathwork session is different.

And obviously that wasn't a breathwork session.

This was just like a little taste of what rebirthing can do,

Just even 15 minutes of it.

And I feel as though every single time we breathe,

It's a different experience every single time.

So I'm really glad that that's what you got today.

Every single time,

It's exactly what you need.

Every time,

It's exactly what you need.

So,

Axe put a really good question in here.

How it is different when we do breathing from the,

Okay,

So when we breathe through the mouth,

When we breathe through the mouth,

It activates the sympathetic nervous response,

Which is the most superficial nervous layer of the body.

So it's more in your skin and your muscles.

The sympathetic nervous system is actually more surface and it's our defense mechanism.

So usually our fight or flight responses are embedded in the sympathetic nervous system.

When we breathe in and out through the mouth,

Because of the size of the breath,

Because of the oxygenation of the body,

It actually creates a defense mechanism.

I'm not somebody who thinks one way of breathing is the only way of breathing.

I think all ways of breathing are very important and necessary.

I don't know whether all this aggressive mouth breathing is good for us as a society.

It's very masculine.

And I think it also perpetuates,

Sorry,

Masculine in its approach,

Very yang,

Very go,

Very do,

Very hard.

And I don't think it's what we need.

Our society is like,

Wake up,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Stop,

Maybe sleep.

If you're lucky,

Watch TV.

There's no rest in any of that.

And actually,

That's what our nervous system needs in order for us to make better decisions about our life.

So yeah,

Liz actually describes this really,

Really beautifully.

She says,

In and out through the mouth activates the sympathetic nervous response versus what we did.

And in and out through the nose supports the parasympathetic nervous system,

Which creates feelings of calm and ease and relaxation.

Plus when we breathe through the nose,

There's a small,

Very,

Very tiny expansion and contraction of the sinuses,

Which actually moves the brain.

How amazing is that?

And when the brain moves,

It sort of gets a little bit juiced up and it's another release of DMT,

Very small release of DMT.

Thank you for asking all these questions.

Is there anything else?

If you think of anything,

Let me know.

I'm happy to answer.

So what I would love to share at the end of this,

We've got five minutes left.

I go very,

Very deep into all of this work in the practitioner trainings that I run.

I'm running a rebirthing breathwork practitioner training.

It's trauma informed.

It goes much deeper into what I just talked about.

Laura and Liz both come through the training.

Annika is doing this one,

Which I'm really excited to have you in Annika.

And essentially what we will be doing is both looking at the self as well as how we can work with our clients.

And like when we heal ourself,

We know innately and intuitively how to heal and work with others.

When we are embodying love,

We can so easily give that love to others.

When we are embodying compassion,

We can so easily give that compassion to others.

So this is like the foundation of what I teach.

I have two spots left in the practitioner training happening in March.

Well,

It's this month.

My God,

It's next month.

My God,

It's next week.

So in five days time,

If you are interested,

I'm really wanting to fill those last two spots.

This will be the last time I'll be running the online training this year,

And I'll be doing it by demand next year,

Probably.

I think because the world is open again,

Come to Bali.

Come here.

It's beautiful.

It's amazing.

And so the invitation for you is to come to Bali in May.

May 15th to the 29th is the training that's happening in Bali.

It's a two-week training,

And then there's some online components to support you in the process.

And then I'll be doing it again in October.

So if you're interested in either one of those,

Please send me an email.

Spots are limited.

10 for the online training,

15,

I think,

Or 14,

14 for the face-to-face training here in Bali.

So it's only small numbers so that you get a really juicy and delicious and exciting and one-on-one feel to the training rather than being in a group of many,

Many,

Many,

Many people and just being a number.

That's not what lights me up.

I care about you as the person.

So yeah,

AD's coming in May.

Come and do my training,

Bae.

Let's chat.

Let's chat for sure.

And if you're interested in taking sessions,

I've actually closed my schedule until July.

However,

If you're wanting to work with some incredible breathwork practitioners,

I've got one in London,

One in Amsterdam,

Two in Sydney,

And one in Byron Bay area,

And they all work online.

So if you're wanting to do more work with this kind of breath,

Let's chat and I can set you up with one of our practitioners that are in the Embodied Breath Academy.

Yeah.

Are there any questions or statements or anything else coming to a close?

Yeah.

It is an honor and I fucking love teaching this work.

I know it can get dark and heavy and the way through is the way to our ultimate love.

The thing that I believe firmly in is even though it's hard,

It's like the best thing that we can do for ourselves.

I think it's actually harder to bypass all of the shit and keep squashing it down.

I think it's much,

Much harder that way.

I think it's much,

Much easier in the long run if we can actually go in and love and appreciate all the shadowy parts of ourselves and then make better choices and better decisions and rule life,

Make life amazing,

Just live an incredible existence.

We're here to all be happy in some way.

Do you agree?

Yeah.

All right.

Let's close together,

Guys.

Bring your hands to prayer.

Close your eyes.

We'll take three breaths.

First breath is a prayer for yourself.

Take a deep breath in.

Second breath is a prayer for each other.

Deep breath in.

Third breath is a prayer for our planet.

Deep breath in.

The love enlightening me sees the love enlightening you.

Namaste.

If you have any questions or feedback,

Send me an email.

Thank you all so very much.

I'll see you next time.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Reviews

Thank you for sharing this style of Breathwork to help heal our trauma,
I will definitely keep practicing it 🙏🏼✨

Loved this. Very insightful 💙🙏💫

I really enjoyed this talk, thank you for sharing 🙏💕I have been hesitant about breathwork as when I tried the Wim Hof breathing a few years ago, after about a week I started having anxiety and panic attacks. It was way too stimulating for me! This practice felt very calming and relaxing, even though the breath was faster than my natural breathing. I also felt very present afterwards.

I look forward to exploring the rest of your practices on here 😊

Boookmarked and stoked to come back to listen fully