What type of breathing do you use in Osho Breath Therapy?
In a session the focus is on using Connective Breathing which at the
Osho Breath Energy School is called "Trance-Energetic Breathing".
It is a type of breathing where you don't have a gap between the in
and out breath as in natural breathing. This type of breathing can
only be done if you bring your awareness to it. In connective breathing
people do not breathe in the same rythym all the time. Often, the
person starts to listen to their body, an emotional charge builds
up and the breathing pattern changes according to each emotion. The
breathing helps to explore each emotion and where it is held in the
body, this is often in the diaphragm. As the person opens and releases,
sometimes memories from the past come with it, eventually they dissolve
and something new and fresh happens.
With Connective
Breathing, we encourage people to open up to the flow of breath
to charge the body with energy. This allows old tensions and
defense mechanisms to be touched. These defenses have built up in
order not to be over flooded by input. Breath can go into opening
up the personality structure and the behaviour patterns that come
from conditioning. In breath work, conditioning is defined as an
established imprint on our nervous system. We behave in response
to the environment we are in. A child is open, curious, spontaneous
and in wonder in the beginning and when the parent is not able to
respond to this and says "Leave me alone" the energy of the child
is stopped and the breathing is held. A belief or conditioning is
created, "When I am happy or spontaneous, there is nobody there
to receive." As this happens many times and in many ways in growing
up, the breathing becomes shallow and the energy is blocked. We
create an armor, or a personality that we identify with. We become
how our parents, society, work want us to be in order to be loved
and to survive. This conditioning and holding patterns in our breathing
basically reduce our quality of life and aliveness. They minimize
our ability to feel, express and perceive.
What happens
in a Breath Session? Connective Breathing charges the system
and triggers the original aliveness. In the breathing, the
body begins to move with the breath and go into the tension. It
then begins to release the contractions. Sometimes what is needed
is a catharsis where the body has to act out in order to break
through the prison of constriction. At other times the release
can happen softly in a melting way where light waves of energy go
through the body and the armor begins to melt. What is created is
a more open and expanded flow of life energy. Working with breath
in this way is that it moves with each person exactly where they
are in their development in the moment. It touches things that are
hidden and under the surface and often things that are deeper in
the unconscious where the origin of the difficulties lies. For example,
a person may have relationship conflicts or a fear of sexual energy
and the breath touches these feelings, the shame, the fear, the
helplessness and guilt around these issues. With the breathing you
move with the issue deeper into the unconscious to the root restriction
of these patterns. A deep release happens that affects the current
situation creating more flexibility, understanding and a creative
ability to solve the situation.
In which
way is breath connected to emotions? Most of us have been cut
off from our primary emotions, which are impulses of the
body and nervous system to react to an over-charge from the outside.
The body cries to release the charge of pain and usually when we
are allowed to do that the body moves back to a sense of well-being.
But when we are stopped from having this reaction we do not get
back to a sense of well-being or core relaxation. Instead
we stay on the edge of a tension and a sense that it is not okay
to relax and let go. In the breathing process through the charge
and discharge you create the sense of balance again in your own
system and feel deep relaxation.
What does
Osho Breathwork have to do with Meditation? The relaxation phase
is a very important stage where you dive beneath all the
control and thinking patterns and experience a
core relaxation that is very deep. This state is almost a trance
state where the body reorganises all of what has been released
and opens in a new way. It has been scientifically proven that
in that state the immune system works much better than in a 'normal'
state; it supports you in being healthy. Also this state is very
close to meditation, because in meditation you also move into the
core through the outer layers into a deep let go and detachment.
In this relaxation phase the breathing becomes very light and tranquil
and many people fall asleep. Over a period of time, through sessions
people are more able to stay in this state and be the watcher; it
becomes a bridge to meditation.
When you
focus on the breathing you learn how to watch the changing emotions
and you become more conscious of what is going on inside you.
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