Dear Friends,
I am so exited to share another blog post with you today about a wonderful healing therapy I’ve been doing recently. It’s called conscious connected breath (CCB) and I absolutely love it! It’s an incredible technique that gets you breathing from deep in your belly and your lungs. It helps with the release of stress, anxiety, trauma, and it promotes our mental and spiritual well-being. It’s different from the other versions of breath work that are done during meditations. This method I’m writing about today is more like exercise and involves the use of your whole body. You start by breathing slowly through your mouth and gradually increase your speed as the session progresses. Soon you are breathing short fast breaths over and over again. It’s been around for a long time, but since I moved here to Nova Scotia, I finally had a chance to try several sessions with a certified breathwork facilitator in my community named Guiseppina Colamarco. She’s absolutely amazing, very intuitive and gifted at what she does (if you live in the Upper Tantallon area please check her out!).
Even though I’ve been doing various types of breath work for years on my own, I was doing it as part of my meditation practice. Meditative breath work is very different from the breathwork I’ve been doing with Guiseppina. I find that not too many people know about it. The key is conscious, connected breath, where the goal is to connect your inhale with your exhale and then with your inhale again. We had those fires here not too long ago, and it truly was one of the scariest things I’ve ever witnessed. As a friend of mine put it, it was literally a matter of life and death. I definitely found I had some anxiety-like symptoms after that terrifying experience…
One day, before the fires happened, I was making mala beads in Guiseppina’s yoga studio. She told our class that she would be offering this new breathwork service which was more of a treatment rather than a relaxation exercise. A few months after the fires, I connected with her and asked if she was still doing the breathwork sessions she told us about that day in the mala bead workshop. I explained how I still felt anxious from the fires and from all the changes happening since my move from Ontario. She offered me a package for private lessons, and that’s where my journey began. After the first session, I already noticed a huge improvement. I was so much less anxious!
Like I said, this is not a new thing, but for me personally, I knew I needed to try something different because what I had been doing for myself wasn’t enough. This breathwork technique has allowed me to pull through and bring out traumas and triggers stuck deep inside my body to the surface. Guiseppina coaches me as the session goes on, while some form of sound therapy can be heard in the background. Sometimes she plays music, uses a singing bowl, or does drumming. She’s able to notice if I’m stiff or holding back and breathes with me until I get the hang of conscious, connected breathing on my own.
It was only in our second session that my healing breakthrough experience took place. I felt this intense energy pulse through my entire body, and I felt immediately stronger inside my core. During one of my sessions, I felt deeply connected to Mother Earth, it was so beautiful. It’s also common for childhood memories which need healing to come through and into the conscious mind. I wanted to do a post about this because it’s extremely powerful and I highly recommend trying it. We generally breathe very shallow, and breathwork teaches you to breath right. Because breath is life, when you aren’t breathing right you aren’t living right.
And it’s not just about spiritual healing. I would say this modality is therapeutic as well. For example, I find it’s really useful for panic attacks because it shows you how to use your breath to bring your body back into a state of calm. It also helps with connection by helping us connect first to our physical bodies. Once we learn that, we can then connect to others. I truly don’t think I could have experienced this personal growth with a shrink or a psychotherapist, because breathwork engages the body as opposed to the mind. It’s about action as opposed to talking. The facilitator is a witness to help me through my journey, but my journey is my own. That said, it really depends on the person and what feels right and natural for you! And sometimes multiple approaches are the most effective way to release our struggles. But I recommend CCB because it’s so powerful. It’s helped me in so many ways, and I hope it can do the same for you. Again, if you’re in the Tantallon area, don’t forget to check out Breathing Space Yoga Studio. Much love and thank you for reading!
Na Zdrowie,
Aga
Agnieszka Klim 