Contact Peace at [email protected]
REBIRTHING BREATHWORK:
CLEARING THE WAY TO CONSCIOUS RELATIONSHIPS
by Peace Arnold
Unhealed trauma affects all of our relationships in all areas of our life. Our earliest traumas are from our birth experience. This includes the period of time from conception through infancy. Since this is a pre-verbal stage of life, these memories are stored as emotions and formulate deeply held beliefs that are frequently triggered and extremely confusing to our rational minds, which ever seek to find reason and often settle for blame.
Our early childhood experiences and the beliefs and influences we inherit from our families are the next level of imprinting that becomes ingrained in our psyche. Early childhood is the time in our lives when we are meant to be taking in high quality information for survival. Our systems are designed to absorb this information as a basic operating system without question. What we learn at this stage of life gets ‘wired’ as survival, even if the quality of content is destructive.
Information from the above two stages of life are operating at the unconscious level, below the radar of awareness, until we train ourselves to recognize a pattern, openly examine it, and bring it to light. Awareness is the first step on the road to conscious living.
Rebirthing Breathwork utilizes a breathing technique that induces a deep state of relaxation and, at the same time, is highly energizing. This practice reveals and liberates our physical body from long held patterns of tension and emotional suppression while we are paying specific attention and can choose to ‘allow the sensations to be there’, continue the relaxing breath and observe the process as this stored tension is released through our system, sometimes revealing the thoughts and beliefs we have internalized and struggled with our entire lives.
Rebirthing pre-sessions explore the areas of our lives where conflict exists, practicing ‘presence’ with our internal wisdom, developing a relationship with our inner voice along with a sense of safety, comfort, and trust in our natural intuitive facilities.
Rebirthing uses affirmations, based on the ancient spiritual science of mantra, as well as contemplation and building relationship with the elements through direct experience of the powerful healing effects the elements have on our bodies.
All relationships are opportunities to learn and grow. Discovering our unconscious beliefs around relationships and clearing the painful emotions these beliefs trigger when we are in relationships can remove the obstacles and sabotage patterns that stand in the way of long-term happiness. Transformation can happen within a relationship, as well as in the process of becoming clear and calling in a new relationship. The work you do in one area of your life will have a beneficial impact on other areas as well. Life is relationships.
The philosophy of Rebirthing is based on the certain knowledge that thought is creative, that we are responsible for the conscious use of our minds and for developing our minds through self-examination and personal mastery.
Energy is the Universal Spirit, Life Force we all share. The entire Universe is Energy, Thought and Form. Energy is acted upon by mind/information and shaped into form. “We are Spirit, Mind and Body. We are Energy, Thought and Form. We are Earth, Air, Fire and Water intelligently interacting.” Leonard Orr, founder of Rebirthing Breathwork.
Change your Mind ~ Change your Life ~ Change the World
Our experiences as children are imprinted in our bodies as stored information and patterns of tension. We have all had the experience of cringing at a painful or embarrassing memory and the coping strategy that follows. We might push that memory away; find someone or something to blame; beat our selves up and vow to do better, or, sink into depression over our perceived failure as human beings.
Day in and day out this cycle is repeated triggered by events, small or large, and, as if on automatic pilot, our systems react, our choices and actions follow and our world is shaped by early childhood experiences, for better or for worse, until we decide to change our minds, allow suppressed emotions to surface and be released from the grip of our resistance to feeling and, finally, relax and let stored tension discharge through our systems and complete their life cycle.
Our breath is the bridge to our inner workings and our inner world. When we bring attention to our breath we shift our awareness from the noise in our heads, from incessant and obsessive thinking to observing the feelings and sensations in our bodies. These are the very feelings and sensation we so often run from, generating mental noise as a distraction from our feelings; the very thing that defines us as conscious, sentient beings. Through our breath we bring in life energy and renewal. Through our breath we facilitate movement and change.
The first step in changing our minds is the willingness to sit as compassionate, sentient beings with all the feelings and sensations in our body, with all the content that our mind is running and, love ourselves unconditionally as the wholly innocent divine beings we were born to be before we took on the past histories and burdens of the world we entered at the moment of our first breath.
As children and adults we are ‘acted upon’ by our environment. As children we are designed to be taking in this information for survival. As adults we take on the responsibility to discern the quality of the content of our mind. We are charged with the duty to pass on worthy and worthwhile information to the next generation, whether or not we have children of our own. This is the responsibility of adulthood. Before we can do this we must examine the quality and content of our own minds and heal the unresolved traumas of our childhood. Too many generations of adults have failed to do this and have been passing along information based on unresolved traumas and unhealed wounds; information that does not serve the present or future generations. We see this playing out in our personal lives and relationships. We see this playing out in world affairs. Changing our individual minds and coming fully into the present moment is the basis of becoming fully responsible healthy adults. One breath at a time we are changing the world.
Music and Mantra
“The seed of God’s Name has great power. It destroys ignorance. The seed is so soft, the sprout is so soft, yet they pierce the hard earth. The earth cracks.”
~~Ramakrishna Paramahamsa~~
Spiritual practice is the care of our energy bodies on all levels; from the physical, mental, emotional levels to the most subtle energetic forces moving through us and out into the cosmos. Mantra, traditionally the repetition of the name or names of God, is the use of sound, or frequency, to set the tone, vibration, or “Word” at cause in the creation, which is your Life. Affirmation is a form of mantra. Music is an even more widely known form of Mantra in the western culture.
Feeling gives mantra its potency. Much more than the recitation of empty syllables, feeling engages the powerful electromagnetism of the heart. Musical expression is the flow of feeling into the conscious creative universal field that responds to our call. This flow creates a momentum that potentiates the vibration of our words.
About 10 years ago I found myself taken over by a continuous stream of thought about all the pain, suffering, and heartache I had ever experienced and all the places in the world reflecting these aspects of life. While the observer in me, wanted to shift this stream running through my head, the momentum behind it seemed unstoppable. No matter how I tried to take over the reins of my own mind I could not seem to take command.
At one point a voice within me rose up over the noise and said, ” Sing!”. That week I joined the Interfaith choir at One Spirit Learning Alliance in NYC and very quickly began to make progress. Using the power of music through song I was able to say ‘No’ to the old story and write a new chapter of my life from a brighter perspective.
Singing is a powerful way to shift our minds and influence our creations. The level of intensity found in “big city” environments requires ways that meet the challenges presented by this intensity. Mantra is one of the ways that has served me well.
What is the inner soundtrack of your life?
The purpose of spiritual practice as the care of the human body, mind, and spirit and includes the acknowledgment and care of the soul. It is a natural part of daily life and living. It clears metabolic waste from our living energy systems and puts us back into conscious alignment with our natural divinity and connection to Infinite Intelligence at the very core and source of our being.
I have made and continue to make shifts as the layers of “old news” and corrupted programing purge themselves from my body/mind. It is an ongoing process just as life is an ongoing process. Practices with Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Mind, and Love, (Mantra being a Spiritual Practice of Mind and Mindfulnes), support this purging.
On the more traditional path there is a great abundance available to discover about Mantra. But, don’t just read about it. The benefit is in the doing; in the practice. Set aside some time each day and give your old thought systems a taste of something divine… Let me know what you discover.
Immortality Mantras, (provided here to be informative, respectful, and diligent in pointing to source)
Om Namah Shivaiya
Jai Maha Maya Ki
Jai Maha Mritun Jai
OM NAMAHA SHIVAI: The Eternal Name of God, The Eternal Trinity
This is the Supreme Mantra, common to all religions. It means:
OM – Infinite Being, The Eternal Spirit, The Mother-Father God
NAMAHA – Infinite Manifestation, The Physical Universe, The Holy Spirit or Ghost.
The word Holy means to set apart. Sacred means to set apart for a particular use. Everything in the Universe has a purpose.
SHIVA – Infinite Intelligence, The Mind – the creator and destroyer.
The two basic qualities of Mind are to create and destroy.
Jai Maha Maya Ki: Victory to the Divine Physical Body. This is the Physical Immortality Mantra. Victory to the Supreme Manifestation of energy is the most literal translation.
Jai Maha Mritunjai: Supreme Victory over Death. The Transfiguration.
Jai means Victory
Maha means Supreme
Maya means manifestation or physical form or mental or social realities.
Ki means energy
Mritun means death.
Mantra yoga or Japa is a supreme technique of meditation. It is practicing the presence of God through the continuous remembrance of the Name
Mantra can also be used for protection or to heal the mind and body. Every time we speak the name of God or even think it, the quality of our energy rises.