Trauma release and resolution

What is trauma? – A state of alarm that occurs when there has been an experience that was life threatening for the individual? It can be an actual damage to the body or situation where the individual felt there could have been damage to the body or loss of part of the body …

Believe it or not, many of us had that experience in utero, during birth, or in early infancy when we were small, dependent, helpless and unable to do anything for ourselves. The phenomena of that experience is that what is life threatening for the infant or foetus, may not be life threatening for the adult person who is the parent or who is an on looker at the traumatic time for the small helpless one. Birth itself is a time when the baby and the mother have no control at all – it is an out of control experience as the muscles of the birth contractions are involuntary. The mother and the infant are unable to stop them or make them change. In the process of getting born, an number of events may happen that have the foetus/baby say to themselves ” i am in danger” and its trauma that may not go away in a lifetime.

What we know as breathwork now was called Rebirthing in the first decades and years of its foundation in the 1960s because so many people who did this practise (conscious breathing in a safe, supported environment ), in those days, had a spontaneous regression to the birth experience – in a subtle or intense form.

Why did people regress in the 60s,70s, 80s and beyond – to birth or early infancy ?
Trauma creates a contracted rather than an expanded state in the mind and body. It makes it impossible to relax fully – until or unless the trauma is released – or better still resolved.
Participants in breathwork retreats find that they unwind these contractions in the system – it seems to be the body and the nervous system that become more open in Breathwork Mastery sessions.

This seems to be a result of people having an experience of an altered state from breathing in this way and trauma or restrictions in the systems of these people who were wanting to go deeper into their authentic selves as a path of self mastery or personal development, would find themselves experiencing birth memories – mostly the traumatic stage of their circumstances at birth.

In this millenium?
In the new millenium, this regression experience is quite rare and it is opinioned that this is because there is more authenticity in most life style snd more personal freedom available to many people that the traumatic moments of their birth may not be a big issue any more. In this decade, individuals undertaking breathwork sessions may have many sessions with no regression and no memory of past trauma. The main outcome for most clients, at the base level is to leave a session with an increased sense of inner strength and a more positive attitude to their life.