What is Rebirthing and Breathwork Mastery?
Rebirthing is a name given in the 1960s to conscious breathing sessions that, for many clients, activated a body memory of one stage of birth – usually a traumatic or strong stress experience that was part of the event for the infant. From the conscious breathing session, there was a lessening of tension in the clients life as the body memory discharged through the connection with the event while breathing consciously with support of a practitioner. That body memory occurred spontaneously and often unexpectedly, many times for clients in the 1960s through to the 1980s and beyond. There was a lot of emotional release in many client sessions.

By the year 2000, in lot of the western world, the sessions of conscious breathing became more of a connection for the client to their subconscious beliefs and limiting decisions about themselves that created patterns in their life – more of a de-conditioning and reprogramming experience. In the last decade many of my clients are having very peaceful restful mind-breath-soul-body connections in their sessions that allow them to relax into life and rest well – it seems we now need to know that we can just to be as we are, and we can take time to rest – and we may not need to produce produce – output output – whatever ?

Breathwork Mastery is a name I have given to the use of breathwork as a path of self mastery. All the results from breathwork mastery sessions are through the self awareness and application of conscious breathing by the client themselves, and the breathworker is a support person who has had a lot of experience in their training, and after – of their own growth in self awareness.

Breathwork is best described as a conscious, connected body/breath technique which activates an inner non-mundane experience. This results in a number of internal experiences. One is where thoughts, pains, memories or feelings or energies that have been held down with the breath, are able to surface to be released, cleared or resolved. The process is freeing of limitations from previous decisions, beliefs or conditioning.

This process can now include the psycho-emotional aspects of your physical birth, in-utero experience and early infancy and their psycho-spiritual implications – as body sensations only ( rather than body memories with strong emotions as in the early decades). The opportunity to decondition and reprogramme self continues may come as clients see their early infant decisions are no longer true – while they in touch with the body and breathing consciously, monitoring the changes in sensations . Otherwise more and more clients are simply having the body sensation changes while breathing consciously with support, and experiencing the same sort of shifts in perspective and attitude to previous issues that we saw through emotional release work and reprogramming emphasis in the years prior.

In the non mundane experience of a Rebirthing Breathwork Mastery session, a new perspective to life issues emerges. The continued process continues to bring clients to a point of choice or free-to-be-in-action instead of reaction to events and people. In a breath cycle of approximately 90 minutes duration, the full and connected breathing accelerates what seems to be an unwinding of tension in the central nervous system – a detoxification of the tissues. This cleanse extends from the physical into an emotional, mental and/or spiritual experience.

The total time frame of a breath session is approx two and a half hours. Rebirthing Breathwork Mastery (RBM) is the name given to define specific use of intention + body sensation awareness + conscious breath over time. Rebirthing Breathwork is known for effective release of tension, physical, emotional or psychological. Mastery comes from yoking conscious breathing to body sensations, which are the cellular memory being activated by setting an intention.

RBM is most powerful for using conscious breath and cellular memory to resolve whatever is not yet resolved in the conscious mind. Breath is the link between the conscious mind and the sub/unconscious mind. The other main emphasis is on integration of the session. The use of the conscious and effortless, relaxed breath, allows the intensity of the breath session to be in accord with whatever can be integrated by the breather. This is now a process that has proved its worth over time!

Breathwork Mastery specific Technique –
Nine defining points of Rebirthing/Breathwork Mastery (RBM) as a strand of Breathwork

  1. emphasis on body sensation awareness as well as conscious breath all through the breath session – it is a body/breath process.
  2. emphasis on self mastery – individuals are self generating their process and are self regulating organisms – RBM is a creative tool.
  3. awareness on process – when an individual is safe enough, supported enough, and ready enough, he or she will clear unresolved past events – allow time and awareness in the process.
  4. application of well chosen intention setting within the process – relate all the content of the breath session to the intention in a debrief.
  5. use of breath that allows a physical, mental, feeling or spiritual experience – start with full, conscious, connected, subtle breath, in and out the nose until or unless the nose closes (refer to scientific research on nose breathing and the brain connection – starting with nose breathing in RBM is optional, yet recommended)
  6. allow the breath session to unfold with minimum intervention – use the debrief afterwards to integrate all the wisdom, inspiration or clearing that emerges during the breath cycle
  7. be present to, name and identify exactly what is happening on each level of the breath session, without adding any interpretation – stay in touch with whatever emerges on the physical, mental, emotional, or psycho-spiritual to create the maximum opportunity for clearing on all levels.
  8. awareness of safety – that a breather can only regress to something that he or she as already lived through – any past event which is surfacing for clearing is because of intention – the process is safe and any intense symptoms are immediately affected by a change in intention.
  9. agenda free focus for facilitation with emphasis on expanding self awareness – both for facilitator and participant.
  10. The instructions in RBM breath sessions are for full, conscious, connected, easy breathing, in and out of the nose until or unless the nose closes. Intention is specifically what does a participant want to make a difference to in their life. The emphasis for each session is on taking a step that is as close as possible to being integrated by the end of the session. After the 90 minimum breath cycle, time is given to debrief the breath session to allow relating the content to the intention. Subtle shifts are honoured as well as mild or intense releases on any level, all of which lead to ultimate resolution in time. Rebirthing/Breathwork Mastery is about having your life go in the direction you intend.RBM is about having your life go in the direction you intend.


What do you want to be happening that is not yet happening? – use of your intentions
This is the question that you answer when you come for a breath session with a Breathwork Mastery practitioner or trainer. This becomes your intention – as Breathwork Mastery is a creative tool. Humans have already been programmed by past events. Now what do you intend to create? This is the focus of your session. It is not a mental focus, because the Breathwork Mastery technique is a body/breath process. However, what has been in the way of your intention does emerge in each session or series of sessions.

What happens in a breath session?
The experiences of a breath session are likely to be physical, emotional, mental and or spiritual. The experience happens on whatever levels you need in the session, depending on the intention of the session. The session mostly relates to what is happening in your life now, or what is in the way of the intention.

How many sessions do I need to have?
With the Breathwork Mastery process, this becomes apparent to you as a client. We are totally client focused. With each individual being unique, it is up to the client to monitor their own process of clearing through conscious breathwork. Clearing will happen as breathing in the session is connected, no pauses, and mental and emotional material is held within the body-mind as breath holding. RBM practitioners allow each participant to experience whatever ease or difficulty in breathing to unfold when they facilitate. However, they do support the client to self pace their self revelations and clear themselves in their own timing.

The emphasis is on self mastery and self awareness. So you as a client, decide for yourself how many sessions you have. It is generally recommended to have at least three sessions to give your body-mind a chance to allow the technique to really have the breath “work” for you. To undertake ten sessions has been recommended from the start of rebirthing in the 1960s, with the understanding that it takes this many sessions to start to break the automatic habits of breath holding in our life. This is the common experience of clients and participants.

The course in training participants “Breathing Well – Living Well, how to conduct your own sessions is a twelve session training, put in place as a highly useful training for using the breath for clarity and balance for the rest of your life and how to support others. It is experiential and theoretical – you learn all the psycho-emotional consequences of suppressed breathing.
This is unit 1, unit 2 and unit 3 is  pre-professional training for becoming a RBM practitioner, although participants can start at any unit. There are also workshops of twelve sessions over 7 days where you undertake breath sessions only – two a day.

Do I remember my birth?
The technique is often a regression. This can be to any point in your past, including in-utero recall and past life symbology. The main value of regressing is to discover the belief that was made in the past, and sometimes at birth since it was a significant event, that is affecting or limiting you in your life now. Another is to recover information from past events or see them from the adult perspective. Or there is value in being present to what you could not be present to in the past, sometimes moments or stages of birth or childhood. All this leads to resolution of that issues produced by those events, partial or total, in the RBM breath session.

Is birth that important?
Birth itself is a physio-emotional event with psychological implications, and a spiritual dimension. It is a point in time when patterns and beliefs about life and people also take birth. That gave rise to the name Rebirthing. Do clients regress to birth in sessions now? That is most likely if they are in transition in their life, or a relationship, or some similar major change or crisis is happening.

Why go back to my past?
People usually come to Rebirthing Breathwork out of wanting to be more self-aware and self realised. The re-experiencing of birth or any event is only to release or resolve anything “left over” or incomplete from this or any other past event. Usually this comes through re-experiencing the event or events and identifying the decision that gave rise to the belief that has been conditioned or imprinted and lived out from that time. This creates the climate for release or resolution, which is mostly immediate.

What does the breath do?
Through breath the conscious mind connects with the subconscious mind and material surfaces. Once something is in the conscious mind, it no longer has the same power over us that it has when it is subconsciously driving us. In RBM breath sessions we get the messages and images from the subconscious mind and it makes a difference to our life.

Physically
The RBM technique is to increase breathing to the fullest comfortable use of the breathing mechanism, navel, chest and upper chest. Also on the physical level, the instructions are to extend the length of breath so it is connected – there are no pauses, allowing a higher breath intake into the lungs. The increase from longer and deeper yet relaxed breathing, speeds up the detoxification of the body through breathing, which already detoxifies the body to a high degree. The third and major instruction is to breathe consciously. The neurological centre in the brain that gives the command for the automatic breath comes from a different part of the brain to that for the conscious breath, which is commanded by the more evolved part of the brain. Therefore when we follow the RBM instructions our ease or difficulty in breathing indicates the amount of material, which can be emotional or mental overloading, that is in the way of being freer in life

Psychologically
The interpretation is parallel. The automatic patterns of breathing keep you in the automatic patterns of living and responding. It parallels the survival mechanism for people to survive life, reacting to events. The conscious breath is a generated breath, a created breath, leading to created life in terms of being able to generate your life from choices made in the present. In a psychological model, RBM is best described as a technique for belief system restructuring. Or de-conditioning and reprogramming. With Breathwork Mastery, people discover the source of beliefs or belief systems from which they have operated. It may take a series of sessions, depending on how much awareness is present around the issue, or how conscious a person is. However in time there is resolution of obsolete or limiting beliefs.

Emotionally
Many individuals grew up not being safe to feel or have authentic emotions when small, or have been shamed or humiliated about their feelings, or shaped by expected or family pressure responses on what feelings are ‘nice’ or acceptable, Added to a family or cultural conditioning around feelings, as children, we have also gone through a number of experiences when tiny which were life threatening to us when tiny, yet were not for the adults around us. For the first few months and years we are totally dependent on others and cannot move or speak to ask for what we want or get a blanket if we are cold, tell of pain or injury that is not visible and so it goes. Even being lost in a supermarket for five minutes could seem to be life threatening for a small child and for example, having the cord cut too soon before the lungs are brining in oxygen, can seem life threatening for a newborn. The feelings and decisions that are made as a consequence, remain embedded in the psyche, become subconscious, and as adults, we ‘react’ to associated events. Many people do not know that what is being triggered is the body memory of the original event or cause. RBM techniques allow individuals to be safe to feel and safe to remember. In time, individuals experience authentic feeling responses in their life. This of course, includes bliss, which is one of the most suppressed feelings. Until then, each of us has valid survival modes for avoiding , masking or hiding/suppressing previously valid feelings, including addictive behaviours, and irrational responses – in spite of becoming adult!

Spiritually
If someone is totally at peace, deeply in a state of mental, physical and emotional expansion, in touch with self and having a deep sense of connectedness on all levels with all forms of life and the universe as a whole, you will find that person is breathing fully, effortlessly, with a rhythmic, even flow of the breath that comes from the bottom to the top of the torso, as if breathing in an out of every pore. Therefore, if we as RBM practitioners give you the instructions for a full conscious, connected relaxed breath, you are quickly able to become aware of what material is in the way of your peace and connectedness, and you are more likely to be able to create these states for yourself.

Medical application
In a medical model, RBM is most powerful for pain reduction. In RBM breath sessions, through the breath and its affect at cellular memory activation, individuals are able to release body pain, often chronic, by getting to the emotions, or memories plus emotions, held at that point, Chronic pain is emotional, mental or spiritual trauma locked in the body. This is usually held in place also by a belief, formed at the original event which imprinted the trauma. A resolution is created in the same way the pain was created.

An inner experience
In the RBM breath session, we set an intention for the session. The specific breathing is started and the body starts to have sensations. This leads in time to the surfacing of emotions, or psychological material, regression to memories or images relating to what is happening in life now, or what is in the way of the intention of the session. There is the facility to get to the cause of a pattern or issue. The other experience is transpersonal or spiritual or can be described as a meditation type experience with an accompanying deep relaxation and a feeling of rejuvenation.
In the session there are also energy experiences and or tingling or what I call a spiritual cleanse, which is usually accompanying the release or resolution of an emotion or an obsolete belief. The session is complete when the whole body is calm, usually after ninety minutes or more.
What is a RBM Practitioner?
A practitioner or trainer is someone experienced in the process from personal application. Your RBM practitioner specifically provides a space for you to be safe to remember, feel or express yourself anyway you need to fulfil your intention, including experiencing spiritual dimensions. The space the practitioner holds is an agenda-free space. Regression often happen spontaneously in life, without lying down and connecting the breath in the presence of a practitioner. What is called spontaneous regression can be triggered in high energy places, like some points in nature, in places of spiritual power, or in childbearing or lovemaking or by a song, movie, some association, drug taking, loss, another trauma, social or work pressure. The spontaneous session happens mostly when the breath increases as an attempt is made to push away the cellular memory, feeling or emotion that is surfacing. The feeling is of being taken over by an energy and most panic attacks, if facilitated would possibly turn into the full body memory birth recall, in the presence of someone like a RBM practitioner who can support the process and is quite allowing of what is happening.
Rebirthing Breathwork Mastery emphasis
is not only on release, it is on resolution. The emphasis is that with specific questions about what is happening to you in the session, in time, you arrive at any emotion or feeling around what is the way of the intention, and release it, AND discover the imprinted belief system or series of beliefs, which has created current issues in your life until then.

Use of intention + body + conscious breath creates a resolution in time. Having an Intention for the session activates the cellular/body memory in time to surface the point of decision that has been in the way of the intention and let it go if it is no longer true, then state in that altered space, what is now true. This is the process of deconditioning and reprogramming specific to Rebirthing Breathwork Mastery. The other main emphasis is on integration of the session. The use of the effortless, relaxed breath, allows the intensity of the session to be in accord with whatever can be integrated by the breather.