Its founder, Leonard Orr, named the technique Rebirthing in the beginning of 1970. While taking a long, warm bath, he started having flashbacks from the time he was an embryo. The imperative need to immediately get out of the water, along with a suffocating sensation, was the signal for further experimentations, which started in warm water and resembled the natal state. This is the reason why Leonard Orr named this technique Rebirthing. Later, the term Breathwork was added, as in essence it is a technique based on breath. Most recently there has been added the name Conscious Breathing. The changes in the name aim at making this technique understood better.
The consciousness of a sentient being can be seen as a continuous series of birth and death of mind-states. Pranayam, or other names for rebirthing are ‘conscious connected breathing’ and ‘divine energy breathing’. Rebirthing can, and often does, result in a biological experience of God. The pattern of connecting the inhale to the exhale tends to bring up sub/unconscious issues to the fore, that then can be breathed away. ‘But then why bring them up, let them lie buried and unconscious’, you might well say. Yes, that would make sense if it were not for the fact that those unconscious issues are influencing our lives and creating the problems that we have to deal with in our everyday life! Our thoughts, our beliefs and our imprints create the universe we live in. Very often these beliefs have been imprinted into our consciousness at birth and even during our conception and prenatal life. The conscious connected breathing of rebirthing helps us to access these early imprints and we can change them by breathing through those feelings and through the use of affirmations. Affirmations are positive thoughts that help us to create the universe of our choice.
Thus, rebirthing is similar to psychotherapy, in that it believes in accessing the information in the sub/unconscious mind, but it differs in that it does not require an analysis of the situation nor a reliving of the feelings but a simple, gentle connected breathing. If one is learning to breathe from one’s own breath why is the rebirther needed? The rebirther is there to gently guide you to the pattern whenever you stray from it. The rebirther notices the intricacies and subtleties of the breath and can help you deal with emotional issues as and when they arise by guiding the breathing. The rebirther can help you formulate the affirmations that are likely to work best for you. Most people feel reassured by the presence of a gentle, compassionate soul and feel the safety and security to allow repressed memories to come up. They like to have someone to talk to, to share their experience and insights with. But, in say ten sessions, the client having experienced the benefits learns this pattern of breathing i.e. it comes to him/her in a more or less natural way and s/he can use it whenever required. So the dependency and transference issues of psychotherapy are kept to a minimal. The client is encouraged to connect to their intuitive breathing pattern and thus to become independent, emotionally and at all other levels, in ten /sessions
Rebirthing Breathwork – Breathing techniques.
The breathwork process releases the emotional, negative charge out of cell memory. The process causes integration of unresolved emotional, physical, mental and spiritual energies. The primary result is an experience of clarity at a very core level. The process empowers a person into choice and out of victimhood.
By learning to use breathing as a highly transformational tool (conscious connected circular breathing), you will learn how to free your physical and emotional body from energetic blockages resulting from traumatic or supressed experience. Regular practice will energize you, enhanceBreathwork or Rebirthing predominant characteristic is simplicity Rebirthing starts with lying down, relaxing and breathing . Long and careful attention to the relaxed breath will reveal a many layered pattern of inhibitions and exposes our unconscious patterns of defense against pleasure and aliveness. When these are noticed (no longer unconscious) we can neutralize and integrate these patterns of past-time tension by breathing through them with present awareness of safety. It offers a gentle effective way to reveal the latent pristine state of body and consciousness which we all experienced in the pre-natal time and which was pushed back by the shocks of birth and early relationship. Our relationships can be clear and complete only when we dissolve our resistance to having that ideal condition. Unconscious birth memories bar the way as a closed portal on the path back to bliss. Breathwork will help you find the key to unlock that door.
The technique, supported by breath, connects us to the main strength inside us, which is life. All the records that need to be processed, surface and what follows is an immediate realization of the issues that take us backwards instead of forward. All these issues are released through breathing. The pattern of breathing is the natural breath (something we tend to forget in the hustle and bustle of everyday life) and which manifests more clearly at night, when we are fast asleep.
Deep inhalations and relaxed exhalations form the “Alpha” brain waves. In other words, during that time we process what our subconscious mind needs to release and at the same time we receive useful information about ourselves from the super conscious mind. Usually we remember very little in the morning and nothing is really perceived since it is not assimilated in a conscious manner.
The Rebirthing technique functions in the same way. The only difference is that we are fully aware and conscious as our subconscious mind is processing the issues that trouble us. Rebirthing is the process of realizing our True Self and a tool to release our true nature, clearing every illusion and false image we have unconsciously created about our self and which prevents us from enjoying a full, happy and life.
THE RECORDING OF THE EXPERIENCE
The body records the entire painful experience of birth. The physical pain is stored and at times it shows up or it may be constant, with periods of great outburst. Some of the consequences from the use of forceps, for example, are cranial malformation and headaches at a later stage. The birth experience is not recorded just in the body; an endless series of thoughts, feelings and sensations have already been registered as the prime experiences of our life. What will be our impression of the new world in which we just arrived, when the first signs are associated with pain?
The birth experience is so painful that we suppress it from our conscious mind. It cannot however be erased, nor does it change the way we perceive life, love and reality. As for the patterns we develop and apply in our life, according to our own birth experience, they too are of an unconscious nature. Everything that concerns us is imprinted in our subconscious mind: our views about ourselves, love, relationships, how we deal with each event, how we perceive the entire world.
If all this is registered in our subconscious mind, how can we become aware of their existence?
THE APPLICATION OF THE BIRTH TRAUMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE
It is true that all the things we experienced during our birth, as well as before, have been imprinted in the “back” of our minds and direct every single area of our lives. Even if we are unaware that they influence in such a great extent our lives, our reality is there to remind us. Facts speak for themselves when we deal with the same situations over and over again, when there is no progress, when we face resistance and lack of flow; when there are certain situations that infuriate us, when some people make us feel uncomfortable and weird, and when all is perfect but something unexpected turns everything upside down. It is then that these patterns have been activated. Our reactions vary accordingly. The way we fall in love over and over with the same type of man or woman is not accidental. Our relationships that are characterized by the same quality, the repetitive events, our weight, our health, even our financial situation are part of the way we perceived our self into this world. The way it is all intertwined is overwhelming. Already from the moment of our conception, we start to evaluate ourselves, according to all the feelings and stimuli that our mother communicates.
The moment of birth is our “landmark” upon our arrival to this “new” world. It is exactly at that moment that we mould our beliefs, our values and our rationale for the world we come into. The way we are born determines these patterns of perception.
The ways we come into this world vary: normal birth, caesarian, dry birth, epidural spine injection, anesthesia, premature or late birth, complications with the umbilical cord, twins, water labor, in vitro fertilization – there are many different kinds of birth. Each one is a unique experience to the baby and therefore creates a different perception about this new environment in which the baby comes. This is the reason why we all develop different beliefs about ourselves and about our life. Scientific Basis OF REBIRTHING BREATHWORK
Quite simply, our memories and experiences are stored and organized in the Associative Cortex and Hippocampus parts of the brain accordingly. The Amygdala store your emotions and feelings related to those memories and experiences. When we experience something new that awakens our senses, the Hippocampus reacts to the Amygdala and stored emotions, which are a response to similar experiences you had in the past, resurface as a reaction to the new experience. In turn, the Amygdala respond to the P.F.C. (the part of your brain which makes decisions), and on a physical level some sort of decision is made in accordance with the feelings that you have associated with your past experience. In this way, according to scientific research, very few decisions are consciously made. Rather they are a response to feelings which are reproduced in agreement with our stored experience.
The Rebirthing / Breathwork technique works on a cellular level revealing when, how and why past feelings were stored and how we reproduce them in life according to our sensory inputs.
Rebirthing – Breathwork is a complete technique that it works mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally and psychologically. It is considered as absolutely safe because the body and mind use their own built in protection mechanism to always uncover only enough for our safety and security.
Conclusion for Rebirthing Breathwork
The research and recordings, for over 30 years now, are based on the experience of people who agreed to experiment and accepted the benefits of this technique. The Rebirthing technique is considered integrated because it applies to all the aspects of our self and is absolutely safe, because the issues that surface indicate that we are ready each time to acknowledge them.
We need to understand that everything begins with a thought and that our thoughts define our reality. If we are not pleased with our reality, we can definitely change it by changing the way we think. Rebirthing or Breathwork helps us face the world and our self through a different perspective.
Since 1974 there are Rebirthing schools in many countries all over the world and the training standards are set by the International Breathwork Foundation, an International Foundation for the practitioners of Conscious Breathing.
In Greece, the first training was organized in 2005 in Mykonos with participants from Greece, Wales, Australia and Singapore. At the moment, there are seven trained and certified Rebirthers in Greece, under the instructions of the founder of this technique, Leonard Orr.
One of the greatest benefits of Rebirthing Breathwork is to contribute to a more harmonious, healthier and happier coexistence on this planet, by first releasing our own self from our traumas, thereby forming the appropriate circumstances for joy, love and abundance for every single being.