Breathwork

Control Freak!!

by Rebirth Your Life

In order to explore the breath fully you need to learn to let GO. Christina Thomas in her book SECRETS, published 1989 describes the following conundrum :

” ARE YOU CONTROLLING or IN CONTROL?

This is a very important distinction! Whether you are controlling or in control of your life will make a very major difference in the quality of your health, your business affairs and all your relationships. If you have a thought that you must control your life or anything in it, then you are working very hard. And there is no reason to attempt to control anything! Think about that for a moment. Can you control anything? do you have the power to control that your heart will be beating even two minutes from now? Of course not! But if you have not examined this subject, you may have a thought that you must control things.

As you begin to trust your unconscious self more, you will be able to begin surrendering, willing to do your best and give it to the God energies. It’s okay to be ” in control ” meaning centred, poised, balanced and using your intelligence to achieve optimum results. ” CONTROLLING ” is when you have a thought that you have to do it by yourself or that you have to MAKE something happen or not happen. Control is a form of fear and is the opposite of love. if you have any doubt about this, just look around in your life and locate a person who is very controlling and see if you feel loved thereby. People turn to controlling instead of trusting life; somewhere along the line such people have made a decision that they are unsafe unless they control everything. Although that decision may have been forgotten, it is running the life of that person and demeaning the quality of his or her life experience.

If you honestly investigate this, you will realise that it is not possible to control anything. Just shifting the way you think about this will help you to relax and become more effectively in control.

EVERYTHING IS ALREADY PERFECT . . . . There is a vast and orderly intelligence at work in the Universe; it is functioning perfectly in your life, the chances are that you are controlling something – which is a way to keep the perfection away. You are, then, literally holding the perfection OUT! While it works to have a preference for a certain outcome, being ” attached ” to or insisting on having only a certain outcome is the way to disadvantage yourself.

Allow these concepts enough room to notice how they are working in your life!

3 Ways to Breathe

by Rebirth Your Life

Continuing CHRISTINA THOMAS’S exploration of Conscious Connected Breathwork, from her book SECRETS – A Practical Guide To Undreamed -Of Possibilities.

Here she explains 3 different ways to breath in a Rebirthing session, guided by an experienced Breathing Coach.

1. FAST and FULL : used in the beginning of a rebirth to really pump a lot of energy into the body. I usually have a client begin with wide-open mouth breathing, although it is ok to breathe in and out through the nose also. One may also begin with mouth breathing, then switch to nose breathing for a while and even back to mouth breathing again later on. It is not acceptable to breathe in through the mouth and out through the nose or vice versa.

2. FAST and SHALLOW : this is like speeding up the film through a movie projector ( faster speed ) and turning down the volume or intensity of the feeling ( shallow depth ). It is not necessary to be overwhelmed by an experience in order to fully experience and thus integrate it into your consciousness awareness. You may love your favourite music but you probably would not choose to have it playing so loud it would hurt your ears!

3. SLOW and FULL : This mode is utilized when you are experiencing something that you want to fully enjoy or absorb. It is sometimes used at the end of a breathing session if you get into a very joyful, loving space and want to feel every last bit of the feeling.

SO WHY DO THIS?

Jim Morningstar creator of The School Of Spiritual Psychology writes :

” The Rebirthing process involves learning to breathe in such a way as to release physical tension in the body, clearing the mind of negative thoughts and limiting conclusions reached about past experience, and accepting the spiritual joy and light that result when illusions about ourselves are cleared away. Rebirthing is one of the most powerful tools for breath mastery of which I am aware. Rebirthing is the science and art of increasing the safety you feel in being alive in your body. This safety leads to a sense of inner peace, abundance, pleasure and intimacy. Only by increasing this sense of inner safety can we truly relate to others without fear and defensiveness. This is the key to changing the course of survival on our planet”.

The Connected Breath

by Rebirth Your Life

From her book SECRETS – Christina Thomas describes THE CONNECTED BREATH

“Now I will describe the actual rebirthing or connected breath. Let us use mouth breathing as an example. Open the mouth rather wide and draw in with intention and willpower on the inhalation : then immediately EXHALE, just allowing the breath to fall away. You will not “follow the breath out” or blow out or control the exhalation or try to make it the same duration as the inhalation. Just let go and allow it to fall away as if you were dropping a ball off a cliff. This is a vital point. Many people will attempt to control the outbreath in some way, as they probably attempt to control your own lives. If the exhale is controlled IN ANY WAY, it is not a rebirthing breath.

Next point : No pauses before or after you inhale or exhale. This is another way some people unconsciously attempt to control the process. Initially, you may have many random thoughts and all are OK. You may feel that you are taking too much time, that you don’t how to do it right, that this isn’t going to work, that you are hungry, thirsty, wish this was over, feel really weird, wonder if you’ve gone crazy, feel like your throat is too dry etc. And none of those thoughts matter at all because this process happens outside of the mind. Sometimes the mind is involved, but it is not required to cooperate in the rebirthing process, which is why the breath is more powerful”.

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Re-reading this from way back when I read it first in 1989, highlights what happens to us when we stop and feel. Codependents are DOING people not BEING people. This is why the affirmation ” I do enough, I am enough, my presence is enough ” saved my arse more than once. In order to recover from any addictive compulsive behaviour like chronic helping, one needs to stand back with the Highway code. STOP, look, LISTEN and Speed-bump your life. Think it, but don’t act it out.

So it’s little wonder that once left to ourselves and the breath we try to fill that ” God slot gap ” with hunger pains, negativity and restlessness. If only we could give that level of care and attention we give to others, to ourselves freely, the divine gap of the breath will EXPAND into peace, bliss and eternal safety. You can with Breathwork Coaching- it’s simply spiritual hoovering of body and soul.

Full Steam Ahead!

by Rebirth Your Life

” It is important to have a balanced perspective toward suppressions. The energies which we are used to call “negative ” are just feelings. They really are neither negative or positive; they just are.

But many people do not have permission from family, culture, religion and thus not from themselves, to feel negative feelings, especially anger. Judging these feelings in the first place is what caused them to become suppressed: if they had been perceived as acceptable, they would have been experienced at the time of stress.

So it is critical now, to accept and feel them in order to clear yourself.

The suppressions which are dislodged and experienced with breathing are not “released” but actually are integrated into the totality of your expanded awareness. Think about the following example : Most likely, you have had some experience in your life that was quite painful but because of that experience, you matured and became more compassionate, sensitive and understanding. In other words you expanded because of integrating that pain into your total awareness.

This is exactly what happens with REBIRTHING. The energy of a negative, painful event which you did not feel in the moment it occurred, became stored instead, in your subconscious mind as suppressed  energy, it is brought into consciousness and integrated in just the same way, leaving you more mature and expanded! People frequently experience after rebirthing that ” even the trees look different “. It is as though some filter is removed which had partially obstructed the lens through which they viewed the world and, indeed the world now looks different, usually simpler, lighter and happier.

Compare the breath to a train moving across country with you as a passenger.

Let  us say that as long as you are breathing in a connected fashion during a rebirth, the train continues moving. If you stop breathing, the train stops. Now suppose that you come to a particularly unpleasant place where the scenery is unpleasant and it even smells bad! You can keep the train moving and even speed it up or you can stop the train and take a long look at this unsightly place. Compare that to reaching a space in a breathing session where perhaps you are in touch with some energy that is particularly painful. If you hold your breath it is tantamount to stopping the train so you can experience it for a longer time. So it makes sense to keep breathing and even speed up the breath to move through this space quickly.”

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This excellent appraisal of Breathwork are the words of CHRISTINA THOMAS taken from her book SECRETS : A Practical Guide to Undreamed Of Possibilities, published in 1989.

A lot of Rebirthing books from the 80’s are no longer in print but may be found on http://www.abebooks.com/ the web shop for worldwide deleted and secondhand books. Much of the material is still relevant today as Science is recognising in the 21st Century, the impact of ancient breathing healing techniques. Start a Breathwork bookshelf for less than you think.

Expert Witness

by Rebirth Your Life

Workshops are full of people who think they are experts, they think they know what’s best for us when they often hardly know what’s best for themselves. Such is life, and we eventually forgive those steeped in codependent armour, as well as ourselves for not speaking up while spoken too. I think that the only expert that works longterm is our OWN experience, and since we are often dismissive of ourselves, we dismiss the value of our input. When we witness honesty and emotion from deep sharing of others it can provoke vibrative memory of buried treasure, and help us to dig further within our psyche in order to achieve forgiveness. This is the real energy behind workshops and seminar probing.

Robin Norwood who wrote Women Who Love Too Much, set herself up as expert and ten years after forgave herself by writing WHY ME, WHY THIS, WHY NOW – A Guide to Answering Life’s Toughest Questions, when her life car crashed. She experienced true humility by going public and sharing this experience of falling off ivory towers. Within my 20 year journey of leading workshops I have heard amazing truths revealed, including incest, which plugs in the whole training.

She writes the following about an abuser.

” To truly forgive requires that we truly understand. We must be able to look clearly at the whole picture, recoil from none of it, deny none of it, accept it all. In a way this means that we must become EXPERTS regarding which that we must forgive, seeing all sides, not just our own.

An example : I was in a workshop on the treatment of incest many years ago when, halfway through the morning, one of the participants identified himself as an aggressor who had sexually abused his daughter. For a long moment there was a stunned silence. Then he went on to describe his incarceration, the therapy he and his family had received, and his recovery of many years duration.

He now counseled male offenders incarcerated for the same offences he had committed. With his wife and daughter, he participated in group discussions for the families of these men. His honesty created an environment that allowed other workshop participants to talk about their own experiences with sexual abuse.

Because he modeled courage and dignity and humility as well as honesty, he made it easier for some of the therapists in the room who were also incest victims to gain more understanding of the person who had violated them. We stopped interacting as professionals and became EXPERTS instead, drawing on our EXPERIENCE as we struggled to understand this human problem. Such understanding, when achieved, leads eventually to forgiveness – and forgiveness is the final step in our healing.

Through forgiveness we are forgiven. “

In sharing our deepest shames we dissolve the pain of holding on. I have attracted many women and men over two decades who are adult survivors of child abuse and used Rebirthing Breathwork to gently bring them back to feelings without overwhelm, recovery without self loathing, hope without silence. In 1992 my brother went to prison for pleading guilty to abusing his step daughter for 5 years. I had to forgive him, but closed the door on future contact as he was not ready to take responsibility for his actions. I left a contact number but no call has been dialed. Not my stuff.

I sometimes wonder where he is, whether his alcoholism rebirthed his life or whether amends have been made. Sometimes we don’t need to know.

Love & pain & the whole damn thing

by Rebirth Your Life

” In the quest for wholeness, paradox is at every turn. It is true that we cannot realise our wholeness as long as we deny any fragment of ourselves. If we seek to avoid fear or pain or sadness, we will simultaneously block the love and joy and laughter from our awareness. That pain, fear or sadness contains great stores of energy, which can be released for potent creative and constructive use only after it is consciously felt and thus allowed to integrate. A truly healthy person, one who has power over themselves and their own life, is courageous enough to become willing to experience whatever life has in store. “

I read these words by Christina Thomas in 1989 when I was once again in liver failure, back in hospital and losing the plot. Christina is a Rebirther and student of A Course In Miracles ( ACIM ) and since Rebirthing Breathwork had halted progression of chronic active Hepatitis B for me, I was eager to enter the unknown to seek solution. I was in emotional turmoil, a close friend had been murdered the year before, the loss of people around me dying from Aids was approaching 50 people and there was no cure for my Hep B condition. I felt slain in more ways than one, yet I had stayed stopped from smoking, drinking and drugging for 7 years, so something was working. I had halted relationships as all I attracted was people who thought I was brave, and did nothing to meet my emotional needs or just smothered me with their own fear of me dying. The only relationship I was interested in was within my body and the spiritual strength to survive it.

Recognising my wholeness – warts n all – was my saviour. I may have felt damaged but knew that feelings weren’t facts – the body is only casement for the soul. It was at this point that I found, was given, or came across the affirmation ” God is my business Manager “.

Having had good instruction since 1982 in 12 Step Programme Recovery work I had blown away all the religious cobwebs associated with ” god stuff “. Thankfully I was not brought up a catholic or another dominating religion, so I could free spirit ” my god “. In the end I chose Babaji who entered my life in 1988, reading about Leonard Orr, Sondra Ray and Rebirthing Breathwork. That sat with me well and I have not altered this vision over 20 years later.

One of the lessons in ACIM is ” I will stand back and let him lead the way ” and when you are on deaths door that feels apt, in my experience. The big problem occurs when we have recovered, when the creative mind is once again alert to ego demands like making up for lost time. These days I am no longer dazed by circumstance but amazed by results. When I focus on MY part in the great jigsaw of life, all is well. In order to develop ongoing recovery one learns to face everything rather than sweep under the carpet of fear. This sense of wholeness is as refreshing as completing a whole bunch of paperwork for the accountant or finally clearing out that cupboard. It is a paradox that in order to accept my wholeness I need to accept my flaws – the loves, the pains and the whole damn thing. This is true spiritual embrace, a detox of the ego.

You may want to consider today how you ask for help and who you turn to and whether self punishment is still part of your inner curriculum. Self punishment is simply suicide compared to the pains that life throws at us. At least with life pains we can learn. Just think how fast the last two years have passed. Two years ago recession was feared, the worst since the depression. In retrospect we have all learnt something from this period of global cutback including the harsh reality that we have more than we need around us – should we seek it – that old habits can be changed and that confronting the worst, the death of something actually breeds life, energy and hope.

Inner Body Awareness

by Rebirth Your Life
” Another simple but highly effective way of finding space in your life
is closely linked to the breath.

You will find that by feeling the subtle flow of air in and out of the body as well as the rise and fall of your chest and abdomen, you are also becoming aware of the inner body.
Your attention may then shift from the breath to that felt aliveness within you, diffused throughout the body.

Most people are so distracted by their thoughts, so identified with the voices in their heads, they can no longer feel the aliveness within them.

To be unable to feel the life that animates the physical body, the very life that you are, is the greatest deprivation that can happen to you.
You then begin to look not only for substitutes for that natural state of well-being within, but also for something to cover up the continuous unease that you feel when you are not in touch with the aliveness that is always there but usually overlooked.


Some of the substitutes people seek out are drug-induced highs, sensory over-stimulation such as excessively loud music, thrills or dangerous activities, or an obsession with sex.
Even drama in relationships is used as a substitute for that genuine sense of aliveness. The most sought after cover-up for the continuous background unease are intimate relationships : a man or a woman who is going to ” make me happy “. It is, of course, also one of the most frequently experienced of all ” letdowns ” . . . and when the unease surfaces again, people will usually blame their partner for it. ” – Eckhart Tolle

When I first came to Breathwork books and groups in the late Eighties, I kept hearing this word that meant nothing to me : Aliveness. The word provoked very little excitement.
For most of my life I lived on the percentage that kept me alive and in survival, I had no idea that life was never meant to be a struggle. I had no idea that I had no inner body awareness except via pain. When I was in physical or emotional discomfort my body responded just to remind me it was still there, but ALIVENESS? – no way, Jose.

Rebirthing Breathwork has been described as a spiritual hoover, cleaning the past, vibrating the soul and attuning feelings and emotions for release, past and present. It offers a facility to experience inner peace that matches floating freely in the womb, a return to a memory of protective order, change and that first breath – ALIVENESS! The first experience of CHANGE. The process is so powerful that I challenged and changed incurable Chronic Active Hepatitis B Virus in my body to cured – simply by breathing it out. On my 5th session of breathwork I had a burning sensation around my waist in the liver area that would not erase and since I was on the original human Interferon drug trial in 1982 to find a cure for chronic active Hep B (which leads to cirrhosis and liver failure), I was carefully monitored by the research unit of The Royal Free Hospital Hampstead in London and allowed to appear at the Hospital Research Unit at any time, without appointment, if anything unusual occurred. They took bloods and rang me at home that evening – ” what have you been doing? – your liver function test has come up NORMAL! “.
The next day I scurried back to Hampstead in a room of a dozen doctors staring at me as I explained Rebirthing Breathwork. You have done what a 5 Million £ project has failed to do. This was a referral to that original 1982 trial – I was one of the 10 people on human Interferon. 9 died within a year – I was the only one that survived, even though the drug did not work for any of us.

I did not need ALIVENESS explaining to me any longer – I had experienced it, and had been reminded that my quest to leave my body had ended, via a journey of near death at birth, meningitis on the spine at 6 months and alcoholism, drug addiction, chronic active Hep B Virus and Cirrhosis of the Liver as an adult. If you come to one of my Seminars you will hear this story in full and how after 8 years of breathwork I created anti-bodies in my body to sero convert to full health – I will tell you how I did it.

The Love Guru

by Rebirth Your Life

” Some people mistakenly think that if you have a guru or a master, then you have to give your power away. In my experience, nothing could be farther from the truth.


My experience is that the master helps us to achieve our own power and stand on our own two feet; and this happens as fast as you can take it. In the presence of a master we are able to touch our own wholeness and our own perfection faster. As you get closer to the master, you find less of him and more of yourself. The guru is the mirror. Only in this case, it might feel like you see yourself magnified times one thousand or more. It can be very intense, ” You have to face yourself like never before “

from Sondra Ray’s book PURE JOY


Sondra Ray became a master to me  in 1988 when I first encountered the Loving Relationship Training ( LRT ) Breathwork & Coaching Programme in London & Madrid and also for many years after this first encounter. As a Rebirthing Breathwork pioneer she handed down her craft for the benefit of others. Along the way I encountered other mentors who encouraged me to find my own route and my own authenticity and not one said I must follow THEIR doctrines and their practices. Over a 20 year period I have come to believe that surrender is a passionate act of  service.

To surrender the ego to mastery of any kind is sacred. To surrender the notion that you don’t know everything is a joy to behold, instead of holding shame that the ego desires you have, for knowing less. Making mistakes then becomes an amusement instead of forming personal attack in your learning laboratory. You ARE good enough to question, and in my questioning I found myself not to be a disciple but a Master within myself. Sondra offered me the courage to search and breathe toward my own sense of mastery.

Being in therapy or in recovery is uncomfortable. The challenge of looking in a real mirror in front of you and reciting loving affirmations is more than difficult for most, and certainly was for me, in my quest for stemming self harm. I tried many seminars, workshops and self help processes.

One of the most testing ( . . . and I attended at least 3 of these ) was an Enlightenment Intensive lasting 3 days facing another person for 16 hours a day. When facing the person they ask you only one question ” WHO ARE YOU “. In response for 5 mins non stop you answer ” I AM . . . “( followed by a thought, fact or statement about yourself ). There is no discussion, the partner only acknowledges a thank you. In order to facilitate this process the intensive is residential where you are fed on healthy digestable food and 8 hours sleep. You do nothing but the process of sharing, surrendering and being. Every hour you walk in silence for 15 mins before returning to the I AM process for the remaining 3 days. This cleansing can place you in a shamanic trance of clarity and emotional release for healing.

Bob Mandell, co-author of BIRTH & RELATIONSHIPS with Sondra Ray said ” the only guru you need are the results in your life “. This simplicity will tell you what to work on next and whether your present circumstances are a mirror to your inner self. Is it an automatic love you have for yourself? Do you begrudge the flaws you see in the mirror or simply smile at their presence? Do you practice self harming behaviors? Finding a teacher, a coach, a mentor, a sponsor or a therapist is an admission that you require help and an act of surrendering to Win – not surrendering to lose.

Who is your master and who are the apprentices you mentor? What do you pass down to others in search of mastering living sanely in this world? Questions, questions, questions.

Now consider the answers.