Using your breath to release body pain and trauma

1. Start by orienting yourself into your body. Feel each part of your body where it is being supported – chair, couch, floor. Touch each part of your body if needed, to remind it that “you” are present.
2. Drop an “anchor” from your tailbone to Mother Earth. Use whatever comes to mind, a string, a vine, an actual boat anchor, a chain, a spider web filament, literally anything that works for you. Go as deep into her as feels appropriate. Deep breathe at least 3 times and follow the breath as it goes in and out of your chest – feel your ribcage open and close, your lungs inflate, your nostrils flare. Offer yourself Love and care by placing your hands on your heart and feel your heartbeat/breathing.
3. Focus on your attachment to Mother Earth and “breathe” into it, ie, allow Her energy to flow into the soles of your feet/tailbone by focusing your attention as if your actual breath was entering your body in that area. As you continue to breath in, follow the breath into your body. As you breathe out, visualize it moving down and back to Mother Earth. Now try going in the other direction – as you breathe in visualize the breath coming in the top of your head, and send it out that way as you breathe out. Now try bringing it in through your feet and out your head, then go the other way, bring it in the top of your head and out your feet. Lastly, bring the breath in through your feet/tailbone and open your mouth to breath it out.
4. Once you feel comfortable directing your breath, bring the story, the dream or the memory you would like to process into your consciousness through mental imagery – ie, place a visual in front of you, either a still photograph, a video, or even a word or series of words to focus on.
5. Now pay attention to your body – where do you feel the tension?
6. There may be one spot or many. Start with the one that attracts your attention most. Breathe in through your feet and visualize the breath going to the spot that is tense. Let the breath swirl in and around the spot as much as possible before breathing it out through your mouth. Make sounds as it moves out if that feels right, or let your body move if it wants to as you exhale. Sit quietly, or get up and dance, scream, bang a drum, follow whatever it is that your body is asking you to do to help release what is held in it. It knows exactly what it needs to “unwind,” so follow its lead.
7. Check in with your body again. Is that spot still getting your attention? If so, keep breathing into it until it is clear, or until it feels like you want to move on. You may or may not be able to clear it completely in one sitting. It may show up again later as you go deeper. Healing like this is never linear. We have to trust the process.
8. If emotions come up, try to allow them. Perhaps voice them, breathe with them.
9. Continue to process as much as you can. Perhaps one breath is enough for today. Don’t push past your tolerance level. There is always later, tomorrow, next week. The body may need time to process, or it may be able to expel it all at once. Trust how you feel and what your body is telling you.
10. Perhaps guides, spirits, or ancestors will show up to help you, sometimes weird things happen. Try to accept whatever happens without judgement.
11. When you are finished, you can say something like “I return all of this to Mother Earth and the Cosmos for transformation and processing. Thank you for accepting it and supporting me.” Feel free to change the wording, as long as you voice the intent to release what has been held and acknowledge and thank whomever you are releasing it to. If you have written anything down, burn it to ashes and then bury it.

We do not exist in a vacuum – or in isolation. We are intimately connected to everything, including the Earth and the Cosmos. We are connected to Unitive Consciousness at the top of our head (7th Chakra) and to the Earth at our tailbone (Root chakra). We are in a constant exchange with this overarching system, just as we are in an exchange with the system with every breath we take on a physical level. Our connection to the system falls apart when energy gets stuck, or when we detach from it, both are natural reactions to daily living in our physical world. We can use many techniques to re-connect and re-balance, including this one.

Mother Earth offers all of us her abundance each and every moment to sustain our physical lives – water, air, food, shelter, beauty, song, etc. Energetically, she offers us stability and security. She offers us “safety”. On the other hand, The Cosmos, or Unitive Consciousness, “all that is beyond what we can see”, offers us expansion, imagination and unlimited possibilities. Flowing between the two realms, and everything in between, is what we are made to do.

Energy therapists have a saying: “where energy goes, matter follows.” The first form of energy in the body is thought. Therefore, we can use our thinking mind to detect and direct the underlying energy. At any time we can offer what we are holding in our physical container, down to the cellular level, back to the Universe for reprocessing, renewal, and rebirth.

Also, I remind clients all the time that we are a holistic system – emotional, mental, energetic, spiritual and physical. Math and science tell us that a change to any part of an integrated system results in changes to the overall system. So you can effect changes in your life by addressing any part of it. If you can any two or all of the parts at the same time, then you have synergy, which can be very powerful.