There are so many different methods of holistic healing available to us. Some don’t seem worth looking into, and there are so many different and very specific methods that it is difficult to pinpoint just one approach to try.
Mainly, it is difficult to know which methods will help us heal from trauma or addiction. Yet we know that some of these methods are incredibly powerful and give results to most people who attempt to improve with them.
Breathwork is a method we may have heard about, but what is breathwork, exactly? How can it help me?
Opening Up about Breathwork
Yoga and meditation are two examples of healing activities that use breathing to help us find peace and healing. We all breathe all the time, and there are many different ways that breathing is used throughout our lives.
We use breathing, for relaxation, to cope with pain, and more. So what if there were a particular way to use breathing to access emotional healing?
This is the concept behind breathwork that is used in treatment for substances. To open up emotional blockages that have prevented us from healing from trauma or substance use.
Using specific breathing techniques, we can access emotions that have been “stuck,” sometimes even for years, and release and heal from the pain those emotions represent.
How Breathwork Heals
The types of breathing that we use in breathwork allow us to access our sympathetic nervous system. This is the “fight or flight” part of our nervous system, the area that deals with stress, trauma, etc.
When we experience stress, loss, abuse, pain, or any trauma, our minds naturally respond by releasing hormones and creating that type of fight or flight response in our bodies.
The trouble is, if we don’t address these situations and let our bodies relax and heal, all of that emotional stress and pain gets bottled up inside of us and stays there. Often, we keep adding to it until we reach the point that normal emotions cannot move through us, and we are not even able to access emotions at appropriate times in our lives.
Breathwork allows us to bypass our conscious mind, which has helped us protect our pain, to access the sympathetic nervous system. We can use the breathing techniques to access and release these stifled emotions and release the pain so that we can heal.
This often happens very quickly when using breathwork. What can take years in talk therapy to try to repair what we can improve in just one session of breathwork.
Why it Works
Breathwork is not just a theory. There is a science behind it that shows us why it works. Not unlike having a clog in a pipe in plumbing, emotions can become trapped inside of us, often for years.
They build up, not unlike a clogged pipe. However, usually, our conscious mind does not allow us to access them, because it is too busy telling us that it is unsafe to do so or otherwise trying to protect us from them. Of course, in attempting to protect ourselves from pain, our minds create more pain by keeping it bottle up inside of us.
The breathwork allows us to break up the clog using breathing techniques that bypass the conscious state.
We may suddenly find that we can cry for the first time in years, or we may feel almost like electricity is shooting through us as emotions are able to move freely again. We can breathe and move freely, and most importantly, we can genuinely feel emotions again.
Breathwork can bring many healing opportunities, including feeling genuine emotions from joy to sadness, feeling more self-love and acceptance, being able to forgive ourselves or others, being able to let go of challenges, and feeling peace and connection to purpose or spirituality.
Breathwork empowers us to explore and connect to other people again emotionally.
Using Breathwork in Treatment for Addiction
One of the blessings of using breathwork in addiction is that our substance use has served as a way to stuff our emotions, to numb our bodies, and to keep anything from bubbling to the surface. Breathwork has the opposite effect.
Rather than stifle emotions, it is explicitly designed to help us find and release them. The breathing techniques also help our bodies heal from the substances we have used, similar to meditation and yoga.
Breathwork As a Tool for You
The best part about using breathwork is that after being guided through it, we can actually learn to do it for ourselves. We can take what we have learned as we move forward and use it as a tool in our continued healing.
We can use it to achieve peace, release emotions, and connect with others emotionally again.
What is breathwork, and how can it help me? Breathwork is a powerful tool that allows us to reaccess our natural emotions. We can heal, we can forgive, we can find peace, and we can connect with our spirituality, others, and ourselves.
We can keep it as a tool moving forward in our lives. This is not just another healing method to be skeptical about. Breathwork is power. The power to heal ourselves.
AToN Center offers breathwork to help you breakthrough in your healing. Call (888) 535-1516 to find how powerful breathwork can be for you.
