Healing your inner child

What is Breathwork Therapy?

Breathwork therapy as a tool for psychological enquiry and emotional release, has been developing since the 1960’s.

Early events create subconscious beliefs that are reflected in and maintained by our breath. For example a shallow breathing pattern may reflect a core belief that “the world is not safe enough place for me to breathe fully or be heard”.

Shallow or irregular breathing patterns seen in the present, often formed at a time when we did not feel safe in the past. Unconscious breathing patterns can continue to lock unsafe feelings into our bodies, long after painful past events.

Breathwork practices such as Rebirthing Breathwork (which I qualified in) or Holotropic Breathwork, have traditionally used intensive and cathartic breathing patterns, to try to heal and release past traumas.

Our understanding of trauma has evolved since breathwork was first developed. We now know intense process work can overwhelm an already dysregulated nervous system. However as trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says “the body keeps the score” – to heal we sometimes need more than ‘just talking’.

Engaging our whole breath still can offer a direct line of enquiry into our bodies: allowing us to see ‘what is’ and to heal. Titration and regulation are the keys that allow our breath to feel safe enough, to gradually unfurl and deepen.

TEB: Transforming Touch® a Somatic Therapy.

Trauma Sensitive Breathwork works well where there is just enough underlying nervous system regulation to support inner enquiry. In the absence of this turning our attention within can feel too overwhelming, in which case we need to prioritise bringing greater nervous system regulation first.

There is a growing movement that recognises the power of touch to support the healing of trauma. I am one of only a few practitioners in the UK offering TEB: Transforming Touch® – a somatic therapy supporting the healing of developmental trauma.