Breath Alone Is Not Enough Pt 2

Breath Alone is Not Enough. This is Part 2 of a conversation with Breathwork pioneer and Source Process creator Binnie Dansby. Listen as she tells me why after decades of breath and brain work, she believes the creative impulse and its connection to the brain requires both breath and thought to complete the growth process.

Transcript

Why don't we start with where we were yesterday,

And we will simply begin again,

Shall we?

Beautiful.

Okay,

So why don't you start by telling us when,

Where,

And how you came to breathwork.

Yesterday you told us that you met Leonard Orr,

The father of modern,

Rebirthing breathwork,

And you very quickly got on board.

Is there anything else about that very beginning time where you discovered breath and what is now modern day breathwork that you'd like to talk about to set us up for day two?

Wow.

Well,

I learned at a very significant level from Leonard about thought is creative.

I mean,

That was really,

He was so focused on that in the beginning.

And along the way,

I began to realize it's not just thought creates results,

Which can kind of get you into trouble,

You know,

But it's thought plus energy.

That's the formula.

Conceive,

Give it energy,

Have a result.

And it works that way throughout the entire existence,

Really,

That is the creative process.

So breath comes first,

And is the raw?

I think breath and thought,

You know,

I believe that we conceived the possibility of body before breath.

Okay,

So thought precedes breath.

That force of nature,

The thing that supports flowers to bloom,

The energy that supports the creation of a body inside the body of another human being,

Conceiving,

Then giving it energy.

That's fascinating.

I've never thought about that.

The formation of a body inside another body proceeds with thought and conception.

Conception.

And breath then comes and fuels?

The breath fuels thought.

It nourishes thought.

Remember my favorite quote.

Would you please,

I was actually going to say that.

That is my favorite quote of yours.

Would you please give that for us one more time?

A thought planted in the mind,

Nourished by the breath,

Takes root in the heart of every cell.

And this is literally,

Simply the way I think breath work,

My form,

Which is depth work,

I want to support people to heal decisions like it's not safe here,

I'm not supported,

It hurts,

The body hurts.

I want to use the breath to create new neural pathways of my body is safe.

I'm surrounded by support.

These are the truth.

No matter where you are,

You have the breath to breathe.

You're being supported to be alive.

So you're using the breath as a master metaphor for support and safety.

Yes.

How did you come upon using breath as a metaphor or thought that could carry another thought to the mind and body and heart of someone that you're working with?

Well,

I don't see the breath as a thought.

I experienced the breath as spirit in form.

It's there,

Whether I think about it or not.

And if I'm conscious about what I'm thinking,

I can change those old thought forms,

Things that I hold in the emotional brain,

For instance,

That we share with dolphins and puppies.

The emotional brain doesn't have language.

So you're using breath as that language to convey the idea of safety.

I'm using breath to support bringing and thought,

Bring to the surface anything unlike it.

That's it.

Wow,

You just said something huge there.

Anything unlike it.

So you're gonna go in for safety and love.

What are the first things that you experienced?

You said anything unlike that?

That's what's gonna come up as soon as you start this?

Of course,

Of course.

Tell me about that.

It's like,

If there is fear in the body and you are in the presence of safety,

You are truly safe enough,

That fear is going to come to the surface.

Why is it that,

For instance,

When we feel truly,

Truly safe with another human being,

We sometimes say things or do things that we regret because that's a safe space.

And it's very important to remember that.

Children go nuts in the presence of their mothers.

She's the safest space for them to express.

So if somebody comes for a breath session and I show them how to breathe,

We talk,

And then I show them how to breathe the way I want them to breathe,

Which in my work,

Source work,

Is about healing those original decisions.

So I have them breathe through the mouth into the high chest,

Which is where we experience the first breath,

Lungs opened,

Explosion.

As they breathe in that way and there is a safe environment,

Anything unlike that safety can come to the surface so it can be released,

So that we can let it go.

So you have never intentionally,

As far as I know,

Sat down and said,

Right,

We're going to use,

I mean,

That's what I've done,

Poetry and metaphor and decoded it.

You are simply an artist.

You are simply creative.

And we've been in the studio recording.

We're going to play for anyone who's listening a little bit of what we've been working on,

But you never actually intentionally said,

I'm going to use art as a form of exploration.

You simply are an artist.

You were a designer.

You were a singer.

You are still a designer and a singer,

But those were your professions.

And then you came to breath.

So who you were was simply already in formation.

We're going to do a recording later today about in formation,

But you were there and you applied who you were to the breath.

And it turned out to be poetry and metaphor and music and all of the creative arts.

Well,

And early on,

I heard that I was supposed to take this process to pregnant women out of my own experience.

And so I began to explore birth,

Explore pre and perinatal psychology.

And because my first experience with Leonard,

He spoke about Birth Without Violence,

Which had just been published.

And so I,

Well,

When he said birth affects our lives,

I had an energy release in my solar plexus that threw me off the end of the sofa that I was sitting on.

So I knew I had to pursue this,

Whether I was really loving him or not.

It's like,

This man's got something.

And I also,

Of course,

Got hold of the book.

And at the time,

Jan Off was exploring and people were practicing primal therapy.

And so there was a lot of thought about birth.

Well,

I spent the next eight years,

I worked with the couple who had the first water birth in the United States.

And they came very naturally into my life through the loving relationships training.

And then I continued because there were then people who wanted to have water births.

And then I got invited,

I was invited to Europe.

And that's how I ended up living in England and working in Denmark and Germany and Estonia and England.

And I quickly realized that we were shifting from,

First I called it healing birth rebirthing,

Because my focus was definitely on healing birth,

Not on just paying attention to the breath and having whatever was coming,

Come.

And then a group,

Part of my training in Denmark,

Actually supported me to change the word to source,

Because we realized that we were focusing on our source experience with a body.

The very first,

The very primary primal experience.

Right,

So that's why my work is called Source Process and Breathwork.

And it's a very specific system with a system of processes and preparation for life.

So you moved on from breathwork to something very much your own thing,

47 years ago.

I moved from rebirthing breathwork to source breathwork.

Got it.

And with very specific process work.

So tell everybody why and how,

You and I,

Of all people,

The grand dame and the enfant terrible of all of this,

How is it that we came together?

What is it that we're doing that's in common?

And we talked yesterday,

We'll start there.

How did we end up here?

And then we'll talk about creativity,

Connection,

And letting go,

Which were our three topics for this thing.

What are you and I doing in the room?

How would you describe that to anyone and everyone who's listening?

I think fundamentally we're poets.

Okay.

And you are a genius musician with all this recording equipment.

And I quite fortunately have attracted to myself in the past and now people who I could collaborate with.

I have some very beautiful guided deepenings for sale on my website that I made with German musicians.

Well,

German and Danish musicians.

I've attracted,

Always attracted artists and performers,

Writers into work because I'm teaching the fundamentals of creativity,

Bottom line.

And creatives love to be in that space and free up because fear stops the creative process.

We've just been talking about that.

Yep.

Fear holds us back.

So anyway,

I think you and I are here because we really love to play together.

That's it.

It's play.

That's what I want to say.

And make art.

That's it.

That's what I want to say.

And the application of all of this is so vitally simple,

Vital meaning necessary or required to sustain life,

I think is the definition.

Yes,

Thank you very much.

It is so simple.

We play,

We play and we enjoy and we sit down to record.

And if you're like,

Ooh,

What am I going to do with this?

And we have those moments,

Like,

Where is this going to go?

What are we doing?

And I have these occasional questions.

I'm like,

What am I doing?

Am I doing,

Is this the right sound?

But when we get out of the way,

And that happens,

Fortunately for both of us very quickly.

I mean,

The morning I had could have set off a tone.

I mean,

I topped a bucket full of liquid and it went everywhere and then it broke,

It shattered.

And I'm like,

How does a plastic bucket even break?

But all of that sort of happened.

And yet we sit down and the world disappears.

Yeah.

Everything else loses focus except the inceptive,

The conceptive process.

And so you're talking about birth,

But it applies across the board.

Absolutely.

And so what we're recording is actually a part of my healing as I hear the words,

As I create music and sound sculpture,

Audio sculpture around truth.

And that's what I want to say.

If the words are true,

If the life is true,

If you've lived it as an artist,

As a breath facilitator,

As a would-be healer,

If your life as unattractive as parts of it might seem,

Is real,

When you sit down with someone to breathe,

The only thing that can come through is the art of the life that you've just led.

Thank you.

And that will have a tone and a frequency.

And I use a lot of equipment,

As you've noted,

But nothing works better than the human heart influencing and resonating with not hippie talk,

Real,

Harmonic resonance,

Like in a studio,

Creating harmony rather than dissonance.

The heart,

When powerfully created and tuned on its own to the frequency of love,

To the frequency of compassion,

To the frequency of,

Oh my God,

I'm here and it's okay.

And innocent.

Then all we need to do is zip it up and unzip it.

And by unzip it,

We let it out,

And it runs like a child all over the room,

Butt naked and in process.

It's not a finished thing,

Is it?

But we sit down with an idea,

A nascent thing,

And then we add a thing,

And what about that?

What about that?

What about that?

And pretty soon,

The playful co-creative process unfolds,

And we end up with a thing.

Right.

And I think we are coming up with a thing.

I think we're doing something that hasn't been done in a little while.

Ezra Pound,

The poet,

Used to write poems to his poems,

Instructing them what to do,

Run naked and wild through the streets,

Like on Rue de la Mer.

Oh,

That's wonderful.

Like on Rue de la Mer.

Like on Rue de la Mer.

I mean,

He would give them instructions as though they were real as to how to impact and affect the listener.

Beautiful.

I picked that up earlier.

I was like,

Oh,

You can do that?

I'm gonna write a poem instructing my words to achieve an effect.

Beautiful.

And so with- That's called thought creating result.

So back to our topic.

You're right.

Neural pathways,

Breath and thought.

Right.

So today we said we would talk about letting go.

Yesterday we talked a little bit about creativity.

We've talked about that.

Connection,

You talked about the connection that we have and how we're pulled away from it by the modern day birthing system.

Right.

And then there's a conundrum here.

I chose letting go as a topic because it seems to be contradictory to connection.

How do we let go at the same time as we experience authentic connection to another?

Let go into connection.

Say that again.

We come into this life and are separated immediately in most births.

We get separated from the only body and mind we've ever known.

It's,

I mean,

Most of the human experience in developed society anyway is based on separation.

I invite people to acknowledge that they are safe and innocent.

Innocent at the core of being,

The essence of being.

Doesn't mean we haven't stepped on a toe but the innocent can correct its mistakes,

Ask for forgiveness.

So letting go to me is letting go of the lies that we tell about I'm not safe,

I've done something wrong,

I'm bad.

No,

I invite you to let go and the only true surrender can take place after you've acknowledged that you are a good person.

The guilty do not surrender.

I've done something wrong,

Will hold on to that guilt no matter what.

When I acknowledge that,

Wow,

I made a big mistake and I truly ask your forgiveness,

That's me letting go into connection.

So what we're holding on to will determine how letting go will impact our lives for the better.

If we're holding on to anything,

You would say anything unlike love.

Right,

I would say that,

Yes.

So is it okay to,

In your world,

And I'm simply asking here in front of a live audience,

Is it okay then to use the metaphor that you sense or feel in the moment as most appropriate to encourage the human that you're breathing to let go?

What's your use of thought,

And in particular poetic thought in that process?

Your body is safe and you are innocent.

Say that again.

Your body is safe,

You're surrounded by support.

I invite you to choose to remember that you are innocent and that it's safe to relax and let go.

So that's the thing that I was taught,

And that's where we also share a very common bond.

I was taught the sigh of relief,

And I use the sigh of relief over and over and over.

Really,

Really,

Really use,

I don't wanna say overuse,

I use that one.

That sigh of relief,

Just so there's no push in it.

That's it,

That's the trick,

And that's what I spend a lifetime telling people.

There's not a push and there's not a slow ride.

Because,

Well,

It's simply don't push life away.

And so I was taught that that- Release gently and take another breath.

What about the neural trigger that's at the top of the inhale that's only hit?

That was what my teacher taught me.

He said,

There is a button at the top of the inhale that is only activated,

That actually triggers the relaxation impulse,

Signaling safety.

How wonderful.

Now,

Dr.

Litchfield says,

That very same breath might trigger a panic impulse in someone else,

Because the release and the relaxation,

In your words,

Might very well bring up everything,

Not like love its first time.

How do we,

As breath people,

Know when we're taking them in a direction that looks and feels uncomfortable,

But is beneficial,

Versus maybe when we're allowing something to go on too long,

Or we ourselves are trying to force.

There's a lot of people out there under the opinion that unless someone is shaking and crying and having a huge cathartic release,

They don't have a session.

What's your line?

Having done this for as long as you have,

How do you know when the uncomfortable's okay and we need to move a little further in this uncomfortable direction,

And when to just back off and leave it alone?

Experience.

I can't tell you how.

I've had people trip that trigger of panic,

And I make them safe.

I invite them to breathe gently.

I don't think that we get anywhere by forcing anything,

And I certainly learned it very clearly from birth.

You know,

If a woman is having impulses to push,

But,

And she's not fully dilated,

If she pushes,

The cervix swells,

And so consequently,

The baby can't come through.

So it's like I am open to receive anything that comes up during a breath session,

And I feel safe with,

I mean,

I can't imagine that I have not experienced most responses and reactions.

I need to just jump in here real quick.

Yes.

Renika says,

What was it about the breath?

Will you repeat your quote?

My favorite quote of yours.

We've got someone here who's asked us to please repeat it.

Oh,

Okay.

A thought planted in the mind,

Nourished by the breath,

Takes root in the heart of every cell in your body.

If you're focusing on safety and support,

You will,

I mean,

You will begin to see,

Wow,

I am safe.

Walking down the street,

You know,

This,

If you're working directly with the breath and the simplicity of the truth,

Then you are changing neural pathways,

And you will begin to acknowledge it becomes sustainable.

And sustainability is what I'm after.

That's it.

Not a big experience,

And thank you very much,

And everything becomes the same in a couple of days,

Which I think happens with a lot of catharsis,

Is that we re-traumatize.

So I feel really relieved.

I've gone,

You know,

And I feel very relieved,

And I'm so happy that I cried for two hours and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

But I've,

Geez,

The thoughts still come back in a few days.

I'm still out there thinking I'm not safe,

And there's nobody here for me.

It's,

You know,

It's not sustaining.

I'd rather go gentle and deep.

And so this idea of deepening almost necessitates letting go.

Absolutely.

So there we are again,

Not necessarily what are we letting go for,

What are we letting go into,

But as we breathe and think and create a better class of metaphor,

We do end up with a better class of felt sense,

An actual feeling in the body.

That's what I'd like to talk about next.

And then for anyone listening,

We're going to debut the work that we've been putting out there and recording just for you live here on Insight in just a moment or two.

Great.

Go ahead.

Go ahead with what?

I forgot what I was asking.

I don't know,

I said something,

And I was like,

Wait,

Run with that.

Run with that.

Well,

Why don't we just jump in and play what we've been playing?

Let's do it.

Just create what we've been creating.

We're gonna share it with you.

I'm so happy to share.

These are deepenings.

That's what I was talking about,

Deepening by letting go of anything that's in the way.

And I think my point was you can only go as deep as you've done the work to heal by letting go of stuff that's in the way.

It's like cleaning it off and finding a trap door in your floor.

And you're like,

Oh,

I can go deeper.

Yes.

And cleaning out the room and finding another trap door.

Oh,

I can go deeper.

Well,

And as practitioners,

I know that your clients can never go any deeper than you've been willing to go,

Any wider than you've been willing to explore.

Yes,

That's it.

So shall we debut?

Why don't you tell everyone what this is,

What it's called,

And what you maybe were thinking while you created it.

This is a piece of a longer piece that started out.

It's called The Creation Deepening.

And my deep knowing that when I include my body and all of my sensations in my whole process,

I've come home all the way into my body.

And I maintain that.

It took a long time.

I was terrified of my body.

And that when we include it,

It manifestation becomes number one,

Easy,

And works much,

Much better.

When we say,

I want to create this,

We know that we really do.

Yes.

When you're in alignment with your physical body.

So The Creation Deepening is words about our origins,

About how fear gets in the way,

And is leading to a whole process of manifestation by acknowledging and expressing gratitude to all body systems.

But what we recorded so far is about that process of the soul's longing for a body.

So here it is.

It's simply entitled,

One,

Space and the Satisfied Soul.

And so that's it.

The beginning.

Not the end.

No,

No,

No.

And so we're creating music and thought and breath and because thought is creative and breath is the substance from which life itself exists,

The potent combination of thought and breath creates not only the felt sense that we want and need in our body to show up.

I mean,

That's my thing,

The practical application.

So yours is birth.

Mine is when things are so bad,

Quote unquote,

When things are so challenging or the demands on your system are so extreme,

Kind of like birth,

Only you've got your clothes on and everyone's watching and you've got to actually show up in a very strict structure of socially accepted rules in order to succeed.

How do you succeed?

Play by the rules that you need to play by.

Show up for yourself to make sustainable spirituality,

Sustainable existence your priority.

And still accomplish what it is that you want to be in the world,

Who it is that you want to be and to build that life.

Many of us do the spiritual work,

Right?

And we'll sit in our closet and we'll do our thing.

What I love about what you do is it has a very real world application.

Baby,

Popping out.

It's a thing.

For me in my world,

That's the same.

It's equally personal.

Well,

For any world is make space with the breath and clearly align with the truth that you are safe and that you are supported.

It doesn't matter what your suit looks like.

Yes.

And it doesn't matter where the pain happens to be in your body.

Yes.

You can listen to that pain as a communication.

Mm-hmm.

So it is possible to live with this body,

Not as an attacker or something separate,

But your ally,

Your friend.

I had to create an entire mythos around my body.

And as you know,

And can attest,

I still do.

I get a lot of feedback and signals from my body on a daily basis that most people would find deeply concerning and they would stop.

They would arrest their life.

They would halt everything.

Instead,

I found a way to think and breathe and make friends with the quote unquote worst stuff.

Well,

Okay,

Back to the beginning.

Another reason why we are together is because of the artful way you have created what I've been doing in source for a very long time.

I learned from birth.

You have learned,

Yes,

From teachers,

Many good teachers,

But,

And you're learning from your body how to apply this.

Yeah,

From pain,

From sensation that I didn't know.

Literally,

When you've told the story about lying in the hospital and working with the breath,

It's,

I just,

I think,

Yes.

This is the way.

I did get my degree in intensive care in the observation ward at the hospital.

I got my degree right then and there.

So listen,

Everyone,

I just wanna thank you for being here with us today.

We do love the community.

It's really nice to have people popping in and out.

I just wanna say very quickly,

If you'll allow me to,

Honoring our elders is so vital and building on what they've done and building on what has come before allows us to ride in on the shoulders of giants.

And so even as I'm creating something that I think is entirely new and making a break with breath work,

I want to honor and bring in the grand dom.

There are many others,

But this one is mine.

It's like a,

Like they teach you that in the military.

This is my rifle.

There are many like it,

But this one is mine.

This is my fairy godmother.

There are many out there and this one is mine.

And so I honor you.

I want to say that I don't think you're making a break from breath work.

Oh no.

No,

No,

You're evolving.

We're all evolving and conscious evolution is what I wanna focus on.

I like that.

Consciously evolving the work,

The process of being more alive and more available for healing this separation that we live in.

And so maybe I will say it this way.

Think about that.

I'm sliding into something comfortable and I'm gonna take a few minutes to chill in my comfy suit before I step back into breath work.

In the meantime,

I call it neuroacrobatics.

You call yours a source process and deepening.

So by any name,

Breath is breath,

Thought is thought.

Please,

If you're listening or watching now or in the future,

Just know that breath itself is not enough.

A wild experience of catharsis is grand and beautiful and can be beneficial if given a place to work itself out in real life.

But spiritual sustainability requires a level of daily failure and acceptance at the process of attempting and falling short and reattempting and falling short.

That process of tear and repair.

Thought plus breath.

Puts us in a better place over time.

Well,

Be aware of what you're thinking.

So it starts with awareness.

And on that.

And you have,

What is your website?

Neuroacrobatics.

Com.

Neuroacrobatics.

Com.

I have a couple of courses there.

I've got some free stuff.

There's a free info session.

If you wanna know what neuroacrobatics is,

Go to neuroacrobatics.

Com.

Sign up for the free course.

There's also a paid course that Binnie was actually in the room for.

Right.

She was part of the cohort.

And you are located at,

Where can people find you?

BinnieADansby.

Com.

And you have things that are already there.

These deepenings.

It's very open source.

I am open source.

It's full of information.

Good.

Quite full.

And videos and things.

And if you wanna get in touch with me personally,

It's just info at BinnieADansby.

Com.

There it is.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

We do really appreciate you.

And we are really grateful that you joined us here.

And we look forward to being with you very much again soon.

I'll be back on February.

Reviews

So inspiring both of you! Thank you 🙏

Thank you for your amazing thoughts and insights about breath and art and life ! Very grateful. 🙏💓