Posted by Kimberly Rex
Remembering to Breathe on the Emotional Roller Coaster
At times like these remembering to breathe is important! This past year had some powerful emotional content. We’ve gone through earth shifts and political trauma. If it’s felt like an emotional roller coaster, you are not alone! These events have maximized and mobilized response on many levels including personal feelings of grief, disbelief, anger, confusion, frustration, shock, and/or fear. It has felt as if time has tumbled over itself in trying to get us to process personal feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.
Breathing patterns give clues to emotions and feelings. You can measure a shift in breathing when you are excited, as well as when you are worried. Trauma, shock, disease, or pain interrupts the natural flow of your breath and vitality. When we get stuck in a breathing pattern even when the reason for an earlier experience is no longer present, it’s a clue that feelings have not been released. Processing feelings with the support of breath helps to move through these experiences to resolution.
The quality of your breathing patterns affects the flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange essential to life activity in the body down to the cellular level, impacts the emotional brain, synchronizes brain waves, and controls your mental state. When you are frightened, you gasp or hold your breath. When you are stressed or worried, you sigh, have a shallow or collapsed breathing pattern after the exhale, or have a blocked inhale. Exhaling to release or inhaling to start a new breath cycle pattern is the goal.
Remembering to Breathe
Following are two breathing exercises to support the release of feelings, and the creation of new images for greater relaxation and harmony. You can practice them together or use each one on its own.
1. Feeling Breath
- Get in touch with your breathing pattern. *Inhale through your nose. Each time you inhale, breathe in pure energy allowing your stomach to expand like a balloon, including your ribs front to back and side to side. Fill your lungs. As you exhale through your nose, relax your lungs and ribs from the top and middle. Pull in your abdominal muscles, exhaling all the air from the bottom of your lungs. Do this a few times.
- Become aware of what you are feeling. Continuing to breathe deeply and easily as you accept these feelings as messengers for processing material for insight, illumination, and resolution.
- When you are aware of what you are feeling, say what you are feeling out loud as you continue to breathe deeply and easily.
- When you have acknowledged your feelings out loud, continue to relax while releasing the named feeling when you exhale. You can say, “I release my feeling of__________” as you breathe out.
- You can breathe out emotional and physical toxins with this process also. Continue breathing with a focus on inhaling pure energy and exhaling emotions until you feel complete.
This nurturing relationship with the ocean of air you are breathing creates chi or prana to feed every cell of your body. When your breathing patterns are in balance and harmony, the benefits range from decreasing adrenaline flow when in a stressful situation, improving the quality of your vitality, better sleep, lowering your blood pressure, and greater heart health. Giving attention to your breath gets you in touch with your center or spiritual core, allows you to let go of emotional and physical toxins, and improves your sense of connection to your feelings, relaxation, and heart wisdom.
2. Limbic Brain Breath: Because breathing accesses the emotional brain, doing this modality will give you energetic support for creating new images and feelings. While breathing deeply, see positive image(s) and feel positive feeling(s). Use this visualization to support you in a stressful situation, when you need grounding or need an energetic pick-me-up!
There are many powerful breathing patterns that can heal your life. Here are two great books to explore: Free Your Breath, Free Your Life by Dennis Lewis Free Your Breath, Free Your Life: How Conscious Breathing Can Relieve Stress, Increase Vitality, and Help You Live More Fully
and Breathing Free: the 5-day breathing program that will change your life by Teresa Hale
Here is an opportunity to continue on the path with monthly healing modalities and repatterning events from Windows to the Heart Repatterning.
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Kimberly Rex, MS gives Resonance Repatterning® sessions by phone, Skype, proxy, and in-person for people of all ages. She works with clients to dissolve the impact of Earlier Experiences, and to allow positive change. Resonance Repatterning sessions address breathing patterns that have resulted from trauma and emotional stress. Contact Kimberly at kimberly@windowstotheheart.net for a session that will create positive change in your life!
Article by Kimberly Rex, MS Copyright©, All Rights Reserved.
