Breath Alone Is Not Enough Pt. 1

Breath alone is insufficient in many of life's circumstances--no matter what you've heard in the latest wellness podcast. Join me as I learn from a 50 year pioneer of breath and birth psychology and my personal Fairy Godmother Binnie Dansby. We talk about why it is that what you think while you breathe is the most important thing and how to breathe and think to live free from fear and trauma. Most importantly--we tap into what I feel is the most important thing--making ART from life and breath.

Transcript

Okay,

Here we are.

Welcome everyone.

This is Sage Rader and Binnie Dansby.

Say hello.

Hello,

Welcome.

And we are here to share a little bit about breath and about thought today.

There's a lot going on in the breath work world,

Isn't there,

Ms.

Binnie?

Yes,

It certainly is.

It's vast and very interesting.

And why don't you tell us a little bit,

Just for the people who are here,

What your experience is with breath so the people know.

Where did you get started with breath?

How long have you been in the breath world?

Oh my goodness.

I've been aware and consciously breathing since I was 12,

13 years old.

And when I started taking professional voice lessons,

Because I had a talent for singing.

So I learned then that the breath,

I thought I was just going to learn some songs,

Right?

And I learned from my teacher that the breath supports sound.

And that,

Oh,

I loved that.

And then I did yoga.

But then in 1975,

I met Leonard Orr.

Who's Leonard Orr?

Leonard Orr is the father of rebirthing,

Rebirthing breath work.

And he and a group,

Which included Sondra Ray,

Were living together in a house in Ashbury,

I think,

In San Francisco.

And they were going into the hot tub with snorkels and nose clips and breathing.

And it was hot water.

And they thought they were remembering birth.

At the same time,

This was around 1974,

1975,

Frederick Laboye came out with the book Birth Without Violence.

Janoff was doing Primal Scream.

So there was a lot of interest around birth and the effects.

I had been with a psychiatrist.

I had done psychotherapy.

When I met Leonard,

Actually,

He was talking about the spiritual aspects of money when I met him in New York in the autumn of 1975,

A long time ago.

And he,

Just as an aside,

Told us about this group and that they were breathing.

And they thought that birth causes an effect.

Well,

I had a,

It was like an energy burst in my solar plexus.

And I flew off the end of the sofa.

Out of my embarrassment,

I went to him at the break and said,

I'd like to have one of those sessions.

And he said,

OK,

I'm going to Boston tomorrow.

But when I come back,

You can have one.

So I did.

Would it be safe to say that you were there from the very beginning of the modern day conception of breath work?

Yes,

Because we didn't even know it was the breath.

Right.

So it's particularly interesting to me then that we are going to talk about today how the breath is not enough,

Which seems contradictory,

Might enrage some people.

Why and how,

Having been there from the very beginning and worked with breath your whole life,

How is breath not enough?

Oh,

Dear.

Well,

I mean,

The breath enlivens.

It moves the energy.

It is your energy.

But your energy is nourishing your thinking.

This is working together.

We remember everything that's ever happened to us.

But we hold it in the emotional brain,

Which then governs the limbic system.

And it doesn't have language.

So we hold these old memories in the body.

And the breath,

I think,

And the way I have used it,

Because I've been very focused on pre- and perinatal psychology.

Very soon after I started working with the breath,

I heard very clearly that I should take this to pregnant women.

Because the way I was feeling in my body,

Just breathing with a snorkel and nose clips,

The energy that was moving,

I knew that it felt like I did when I was in labor the first time.

And it terrified me.

So after that first birthing experience,

I said there's got to be a better way and set out to find another way.

And I did.

And that was also Lamaze.

It was based on breathing to make room for the energy.

And I had a painless birth.

So I connected thinking and breathing.

So when Leonard started teaching about thought is creative,

Which is in the Bible,

I knew he was right.

How I've adapted that is thought plus energy creates result.

And that goes with the creative process.

Conceive an idea,

Give it energy,

And you have a result.

So the creative process,

It works across the board in all human beings,

In all animals,

Really,

In all of nature.

There is the rest.

That is the concept.

And then there's the adding the energy.

You have the blossom.

You have the flower.

Yes.

And so we met.

And I'll just tell everyone,

I was fortunate enough to have Bini in the first neuroacrobatics class that I taught at the Professional School of Behavioral Health Sciences.

And neuroacrobatics was this thing that I was so excited to have created and share.

And it comes from all of the learning that I've garnered from traditional breathwork and honoring our elders and honoring the systems that existed before us and gave us life and building on them.

And what I was able to do was sit in the class and quote,

Unquote,

Teach Bini neuroacrobatics,

Which is all about poetry and metaphor and how metaphor is the actual language of the breath,

The brain,

And the body.

Yes.

And just like she did now,

Bini nodded and like the Grand Dame,

Like the Judi Dench,

Welcome,

Darling.

Welcome,

Darling,

To the room in which we have all inhabited for decades,

Those of us who are artists.

So I got to share something new that was really quite old,

That was really quite very old.

Yes,

But I love the way you language.

I love the way you art is my life.

I think that life is an art form.

And my body is my art project.

And so it was so wonderful to meet someone.

And there are others,

But you're one of those people that uses poetry and music and theater.

In my trainings,

We do presentation.

It's like being visible in the world.

It gets really contracted at birth.

And to support part of the process of remembering and healing birth is to come out to express.

So yes,

Thank you.

To express an idea in terms of words and breath to create what I call the felt sense.

The felt sensation of me,

Of the experience I want to have.

A lot of people are sending people out into astral realms.

A lot of breath workers feel like they have failed unless they've given a flash bang grenade of an experience.

And people are wailing and crying and writhing and cathartic-ing all over the place.

I want you to come before you go out.

Come all the way into this fabulous,

Wondrous communications device.

Closer to the mic.

You want me closer.

Yes.

Sweet.

Let's talk about that.

The inner world,

Which these are all terms that are bandied about.

But as an artist,

I neither have to prove it like a scientist,

Nor am I hypocritical like a guru if I don't always live it.

It's just art.

It's in the moment.

It's what I think.

It's what I create.

And it reflects my values.

It reflects the breath and the thought that I have.

It creates an internal felt sense,

Which I then pattern out.

That's not new.

No.

That's ancient.

It's like felt sense is energy registering in the body.

It's your energy.

What you think about it is how you will experience it in the next moment.

Perception.

How do I perceive this pain in my elbow?

Yes.

Well,

I can say,

Oh my God,

There's something dreadfully wrong with me.

And that's what I will experience.

Oh,

My body's attacking me.

That's the way I will experience it.

Ah,

Wonder why this is happening.

I have,

You know,

What's my body communicating?

Ah,

Perhaps I need to see someone who knows about that,

My acupuncturist.

It's like if I'm in communion with my physical body,

We're friends.

We come together and we have a conversation.

And we take care of each other.

Now,

Where I come in is where none of that is already true.

So if you suck at that abysmally and you're no good,

That's where I start.

I was terrible.

I still am some days.

But if I can check in with my body and how I feel,

And I understand that the metaphor that I'm using,

Understand the metaphor that I'm using to describe to you how I'm feeling is actually a form of affirmation.

And so there's this bypassing that often goes on because we don't want to speak out anything bad or positive vibes only.

But we're not actually living in the reality of our true felt sense.

So what we're talking about is not,

To be clear,

A bypass.

It is how to be with what is as it is.

And have a volitional choice to close that loop,

To heal,

And then move on to the next thing.

My biggest thing is we open healing loops as healers in the community.

We allow everyone to sit with it as it is,

And then we never resolve it.

We tell them,

Your need for resolution is the problem.

Go sit with your need for resolution.

And then they never get healed.

They're always healing.

How would you address that need to put the healing to use that you have before you open up a need for more?

What I know and what I believe is the resurrection of God's child is the knowledge that you have a choice about what to think at all times.

Consequently,

I can't change the weather.

And I definitely can't change your behavior.

But I can change how I think about it.

And that will determine my felt experience in the situation and how I will take care of it.

Healing,

To me,

Healing is always taking place.

Healing begins,

For me,

Healing begins the moment a life-diminishing thought is changed to a life-enhancing thought.

That's beautiful.

And consequently,

We're always in process.

We're always,

But it's a loving process.

When do the loops close?

When do we go out and use?

Because I heard you groan in the same places that I have an internal groan.

When do we encourage people to go out and use the healing they have and not be stuck in that internal process?

Well,

There's not a when.

The truth is,

If you're truly working with the breath and thought is creative,

In a session,

You will experience how to use the breath to make space for whatever is happening around you.

This is like the fire drill in school.

Hold hands and walk out the door.

It's like a breath session,

A therapeutic breath session,

Is the opportunity to feel whatever you're feeling,

To connect the breath,

To stay with it in a safe space,

To keep breathing and acknowledging,

My body is safe with all this energy.

I can make room for it.

And each time you practice,

And it's practice,

You expand a little more.

You become more comfortable with all your sensations so that you go out into the world and can be your authentic self because there is no thing that you need to hide.

No.

There's no energy that you're not willing to feel.

We know when people are holding back,

When they're constricted.

And that's very lovely because they need to protect themselves.

And I know that you can learn not to do that.

But it takes time.

This is not a pill.

Yes.

I mean,

You know,

Lie down,

Breathe,

With a lot of music and everything.

Great.

That's an experience,

But it's not my depth work.

Right.

Well,

Let's talk about that because what people equate with breath work is a very slender segment.

And it's very poorly rooted in the literature.

Stan Grof and holotropic breathing,

Perinatal matrices,

The things that he was doing,

The places he knew he was taking people to.

That is a very thin sliver of the work that involves breath.

Please tell us a little bit about what you're doing.

You said it's like a theater school.

And we've been doing all of our creativity in the studio for the last few hours.

We're going to debut something.

If you hang around towards the very end,

I promise you,

We're going to debut what Binnie and I have been working on in the studio.

It's a little breath time story based around something she's been working on for many,

Many years.

And we've been working with music and breath.

Instead of having a breath for creativity session,

We sit here in the studio and do our thing.

And it's an extension of what you've been doing for decades.

Tell us how and when and where and why the artist came to breath.

And how have you been using breath and thought creatively to weave magic for peri and post-natal situations?

Well,

To me,

There's no difference.

My work is a system to heal the decisions that you made when you took your first breath.

That's what the intention of source process and breath work.

And everything that we do is intentionally focused on that healing and bringing forth the one who intended to be here in the first place.

In the strum and drung of the way we birth our babies,

We forget it's distraction.

It's all about separation and emergency.

And somebody's doing it to me.

And I don't know whether I caused it or they're causing it.

And I end up over here in a little plastic box.

Or maybe I'm next to my mother,

But I'm not skin to skin with the only body and mind I've ever known.

Now,

What we do,

I believe,

Is that we set up a sympathetic nervous system baseline in our babies.

That means fight or flight.

That means,

You know,

How many people do you know who have adrenal burnout?

When if you come from inside to outside into a known element,

Like water,

You've been in water for nine months.

You come into water.

The best matrix for learning is to come into the known or go into the unknown and be able to refer back to the known.

We come into warm water.

Mother scoops us up and puts us on her skin.

We know that heartbeat.

We know that smell.

We're home.

We've lived inside her body for nine months.

I call that the original intimacy.

It's where we learn about intimacy.

I'm listening to you right now,

And it's poetry.

It's what we do,

By the way,

Everybody,

When we get together,

We just sit and listen and speak and listen.

And I could listen forever.

Do you hear the poetics?

It's who you are.

It's Robert Bly,

The poet,

Said poetry should taste good.

Oh,

Yes.

And so who you are as an artist informs and reforms everything you do in breath.

And yet we're taught,

Just breathe like this,

In for this many,

Out for that many,

And do it in this shape in this many numbers.

You've got an art history to all of it.

How and why does art relate to birth and creativity?

I chose three subjects,

Creativity,

Connection,

And letting go for the next two days.

Today and tomorrow,

We'll be back again for part two.

We've talked a little bit about creativity and connection,

But I want you to go back into those two topics specifically now and think about how the art of breath and thought allows for creativity and connection,

Because tomorrow we're going to talk about letting go,

Which seems antithetical.

How do I have creativity and connection and let go?

So for those two,

Art,

Breath,

Thought,

Starting at birth,

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Well,

Art,

Creativity,

Is stymied by fear.

Preach it.

Helps.

It just stops the action.

So we are naturally creative.

We co-create this body inside the body of another.

And then they smack us and make us get it started in a startle rather than allowing us to receive the breath.

And this is one of the things I think,

You know,

They're like orders and breathe this way and breathe that way.

I have found,

OK,

I have people initially breathe through a relaxed jaw and open throat into the high chest because this is the way we took our first breath.

And I want to trigger those memories so that they can be released,

Not so I want you to experience pain and trauma.

And the truth is,

Quite possibly you will experience some of that pain,

Some of that drama.

But it doesn't mean that you have to stay with it if you keep expanding the breath.

You expand the breath and set new neural pathways of safety.

My body is safe.

I'm surrounded by support.

I insist,

For instance,

That everyone have support when they're breathing.

If I'm one on one,

Boy,

I'm there.

I'm not someplace else.

I don't leave the room.

And if it's in a group setting,

Generally either people are breathing,

Sitting up,

Doing a deepening because I work a lot with visualization.

You don't call them journeys or any of that.

No,

I call them deepenings.

I love that.

A deepening is a guided visualization based on the connected breath,

Taking you deeper and deeper into the body along with the visualizing.

So there's that way we breathe when I'm working in a training.

We also lie down,

And there is someone there,

Plus there's supervision so that whoever is with you also has someone at their back.

And they are expressing to you high thoughts,

Like I'm here for you.

Your body is safe.

No matter how you might be feeling,

You're surrounded by support.

You have a choice about how to use your energy.

And I invite you to remember,

Choose the thought that you are innocent at the core of being.

Not unculpable,

No.

And the truth is the essence of our being is innocence and light.

Have you ever not expressed something creatively?

Have you ever been in a breath session and thought,

Well,

That was particularly uncreative?

Or is breath itself fundamentally creative,

And then we just steer the boat with the thoughts?

The breath's doing the rowing,

Maybe?

Curiosity is the key to creativity.

Preach it.

Come on.

Hallelujah.

And I am always,

Always curious about what my own breath will present,

Or my own.

It's not just the breath.

It's the sensations.

It's the feelings.

It's how I feel and what I think with that.

And what's going to happen with this person as they are releasing in a safe environment.

I know that we can birth babies,

Because I've supported it,

Babies with a parasympathetic nervous system baseline.

And I also know that at any time in our lives,

We can nourish and nurture and move into a more parasympathetic baseline.

I know I have,

And I know that it's possible for anyone.

And so what's fascinating about what you're doing,

And the way I've been able to work with,

And I won't say build upon,

But build around it,

Is the words you use create a felt sense.

Why?

Because of association.

The association is something that is based around something that George Lakoff's been doing at,

Where is it?

Oh,

God,

I'm blanking.

USC,

I think,

Maybe Stanford,

Metaphor theory.

California.

Yeah,

Of course it's California.

Metaphor theory.

So we understand everything in life from the beginning.

We call it a coming in and a going out.

All of that is life is a journey.

There are these grand metaphors that we understand.

And it turns out the way that we select the metaphors that we use for our descriptions and affirmations of our pain,

Our pleasure,

And all of it come from the most mundane things,

Things that have absolutely no metaphorical or grand value whatsoever,

Like a dog's tail,

Or fire.

Or Katya earlier today,

I was talking with Katya Bustani,

And she said,

Be the detective of your breath.

I said,

That's a great metaphor.

Run with it.

We understand the grand and the metaphorical in terms of the ordinary and the mundane.

And so how we are able to process,

Not deny,

But process and pivot around the reality of what's happening in our body.

So I have medical conditions so extensive they should preclude me from doing anything.

And I'm doing everything and living alongside because of the way I've been able to make friends with my sensation.

Thank you.

What is it about the words that you use,

Safety,

Body?

You say these things over supported.

What is it about those words that create the felt sense?

And if I've never had them,

And I don't know what that is,

How do you work with metaphor when you're working with somebody who's never,

They got no clue.

They don't even have a referent,

Even in the mundane,

For the sensation you want to imbue.

I think a breathwork practitioner,

If they're going to do depth work,

Must cultivate that safety within themselves.

And then when I tell you your body is safe,

You get it.

I also can,

It's like if somebody is centered in fear,

Centered in the,

Grounded in the sympathetic,

Ready to go at any minute,

Expecting the divine meat axe to fall at any moment.

So we just have to be very careful here.

Meat axe.

Then,

That was a favorite line of Leonard Orr's.

The divine meat axe?

Yeah,

The divine meat axe to fall at any moment.

Anyway,

Judgment,

Criticism,

The things that we get in the delivery room,

That we get from our parents,

That we get from teachers.

Not doing it right.

Wrong.

Do it this way.

Fear,

Like I said before,

Stops the action.

And if I invite you to breathe with me,

I have already created a safe environment.

And I have created a safe environment within myself.

And Leonard Orr always talked about the purity of your presence.

I trust that I know how to care for you.

And you feel it.

That is a brilliant answer.

So may I sum up?

For everyone listening,

If you are working in breath,

And you are working with people who don't even have the fundamental experience of ability to process metaphor,

I think what we're saying is,

It's our job to have done the work to not need words,

To be able to show up non-verbally,

And convey that felt sense of safety with the purity of the work that we've done on our own to bring ourselves into a safe space.

We're all communicating all the time telepathically.

So when I first started doing this work,

It was amazing.

I was on an airplane coming on the red eye,

Flying back to New York after a business trip.

Because when I started working with the breath and really was intensely into it,

I was still working as a designer in New York.

And I was on the red eye coming back after a business trip to California.

And the plane landed in Louisville or someplace strange.

Anyway,

I felt this tap on my shoulder.

And I opened my eyes.

And there was this very,

Very nice man sitting there.

Had just such a lovely look on his face.

And he said,

I hope I didn't disturb you.

And I thought,

Well,

I'm awake now.

Well,

It took about three sentences.

And he started telling me the story of his life.

And it made tears come to my eyes.

He had no one to talk to.

And he was an extraordinary,

Very loving person.

And so I provided a safe space.

And I began to realize the shift that had taken place in me.

People have always told me their stories.

But it was even deeper.

And I began to,

He really helped me see that.

So to make a quick leap,

Because we're going to be wrapping up here soon,

Those of you who have stayed,

Thank you for joining us for this conversation.

We really appreciate you.

Binny and I are actually playing around with art,

Music,

Creativity,

Breath,

Sound.

And we're working on something that's almost like a course that you don't take in the traditional sense.

And I don't want to say too much.

We'll share more about it tomorrow.

What we want to debut is actually the very first thing,

Completely unmastered,

But mixed.

And we'd like to share it with you.

Is there anything you'd like to say about what this is called,

What it means to you?

Give them something of what you're doing,

What we're doing so there's a context for what they're going to hear and all of it.

This is the introduction to something that I wrote quite a few years ago,

A few years ago,

That I called The Creation Deepening,

Space and the Satisfied Soul.

And it's based in the truth of coming into union with your body and from the source.

And this first part is about that source.

And so we sat down in the studio and I put together a couple of tracks.

In fact,

I was pretty sure this was absolutely not going to work.

I was like,

This is garbage.

I'm going to erase this and start over.

And then it just sort of happened.

And that's what I want to say.

It's the proof is in the pudding.

You may hate what we do.

You may not love it.

I mean,

It doesn't matter.

The point is there's a process where it happens and you create it and you love it.

And then you give it to the world.

And some of them go,

That's not breathwork or I don't know what that is.

But we are playing with creativity and the form.

Well,

I've been doing this.

You know,

I have deepenings that I sell on my website,

Neadansby.

Com.

Boom.

But and this is the next step.

I'm so excited to be in the recording studio again.

Thank you.

All right,

So here we go.

This is just called One.

It's the very beginning of space and the satisfied soul.

Simply titled One.

I invite you to close your eyes.

Relax your shoulders.

Space and the satisfied soul.

Vinny's been doing this for a long time and it's really just a gift to honor you.

To honor that which came before and to receive the energy that comes with it to be able to create and move forward.

All I want to say is thank you.

Thank you for being here with us.

Thank you for giving us a chance to talk about what we care about most,

Which is breath and thought and poetry and life and birth and healing and that process of being in between.

Reviews

Thank you ! Amazing conversation about the art of breath ! Very grateful !🙏💓