ALIVENESS!

Urban LifeClass Breathwork Coaching comes to Athens 27th April 2019.

by Rebirth Your Life

Easter Breathe : Saturday April 27th.  4 – 8pm 

Venue : A Beautiful House in Creative Akadimia Platonos

Urban LifeClass is a London UK based Not-for-Profit Breathwork & Coaching Programme led by David Parker, incorporating Codependency Recovery, Relationship Reviews and breaking addictive patterns – including thoughts. Thought is creative but ACTION has more power, which is why we focus on affirmative ACTIONS not just affirmations. 

We also don’t use fancy language or special clothes, come as you are and speak as you do, we find this more authentic.

The Athens Team below are an eclectic bunch, inter-generational, highly creative, non-judgemental and as you can see we LOVE what we do. No team member gets paid, your monies goes toward 2020 when we expect the need for a larger venue and a bigger programme of events.

In the meantime we give service to serve you, so you can serve yourself, learn to breathe more productively and maybe support us in growth if you like what we do and the progress you make. All sexualities and genders welcome.

We have 3 INTRODUCTION WORKSHOPS for 2019, – April, June & December, with an Autumn one pencilled in, depending on David Parker’s travel schedule. You can read about him here. https://rebirthyourlife.me/globalcoaching-experience/  

All workshops are in English with Greek translation if required.

So escape from your mind into your body, feel lighter, clearer and breathe out stress with experiential Somatic Evolutionary Breathwork. Each Workshop is for 10 participants MAX, so personal attention can be given.

Easter Breathe : Saturday April 27th 4- 8pm 

Venue : A Beautiful House in Creative Akadimia Platonos

Read testimonials and blogs on this site https://rebirthyourlife.me,

sign up for this adventure with just 20 Euros for a 4 hour Introduction to Breathwork.

That’s all you need to do 

There is no sign ups or obligations to continue with anything after, we just ask that if you can’t make the workshop you booked or you can’t transfer your place to another – we hold the 20 Euros as a donation.

Loads of info can be gathered from our Team Members in Athens

 Organiser/Producer – Patricia Photiou +30 6949826260

Experienced Breathworker over 3 decades – Yiannis Vousvoukis

mob 6945 900 310

#breathe

Check out the URBAN LIFECLASS site too: https://urbanlifeclass.me    

 

 

 

Brace! Brace! . . Flying High with the Universe. Breathe! Breathe!

by Rebirth Your Life

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Words : Robert Beck

Ask any freelancer and they will tell you that one of the greatest struggles is not knowing where or when the next job will turn up. Working in theatre and performance, I am often faced with periods of extreme productivity followed by periods of very little work. It’s pretty terrifying sometimes and can lead to bouts of depression and feelings of not being good enough or strong enough blah blah blah! It was a period such as this that I found myself in at the end of March this year and I genuinely had no idea what I was going to do.

13238879_10208928531268992_7241278699584094363_nTo provide some context, the beginning of the year had been busy for me. January had brought with it a lot of performance gigs; February had seen me direct two shows, as well as mounting my own production, Prevail, with my theatre company, Plain Paper Productions; and in March I turned 24 and seemed to spend a large chunk of the month celebrating (and drinking…lots of drinking!). So that by the time the end of March rolled around, I barely realised that I hadn’t got any work lined up and my bank balance had been worryingly depleted thanks to all the aforementioned “celebrating”. I didn’t know what to do – all I knew was that I needed to work.

images-1I’ve done breathwork for nearly three years now and have worked closely with David Parker and the rest of the UrbanLIFECLASS team. Through working with them I have learnt to “trust in the universe” – a phrase that sounds very spiritual but is really just common sense. I’ve learnt over time that worrying about the future too much isn’t conducive to anything and can stop you from focusing on the here and now.

Yes, it’s important to have an eye on what’s coming up but the things I’ve found most useful for my life as a freelancer (and as a human being more generally) is maintaining clarity and focus in my career and life. If I work to maintain those two things then it doesn’t matter what happens in the future because I know, whatever I do, that I’m moving in the right direction.

So what did happen? Well ask David, and he’ll tell you that I fretted for a bit and offloaded some concerns to him about not having enough money to last me through the year and feelings of not having the tenacity or the talent to drum up more work but then I calmed down and I stopped worrying. I am enough, I do enough, and I’m worthy of the work that is given to me. I have clarity on what I want to do with my life and I am focused enough to go out and get it. Therefore, every action that I take is a positive step in the right direction and I have to trust that the universe will deliver in some shape, size, or form…and it did!

11215718_10208717353469679_7581717721461493015_nIn the space of one afternoon I went from having nothing lined up to having two jobs – one for the day and one for the night.

My day job as a schools outreach officer for The Shakespeare Schools Festival would improve my administration skills and my work with young people and my night job as a drag queen performer for the show The Gingerline: Chambers of Flavour would allow me to express myself creatively and develop and hone my performance skills.

The universe had delivered – and twice over at that!

UrbanLIFECLASS was set up to help people living busy, urban lives cope with the stresses and problems of every day life. The training it offers gives you a tool kit for dealing with issues like mine and for learning strategies for keeping on keeping on.

images-1Without the breathwork training and support from David, Mel, and the other ULC team members, I may well have allowed myself to get bogged down in worry about the future and not opened myself up to the possibility that good things come to those that wait.

The end of the story is that I’ve just spent a happy two months working two fantastic jobs, developing my practise and skills, and making some wonderful new friends and connections. Now the two jobs have both come to an end and I’m, once again, looking at a period of quiet. However, this time I am CHOOSING to keep it quiet because I intend to relax and enjoy my summer but I trust that, when the time is right, the universe will deliver again.

12974535_10208666932129177_2027884504200471924_nRobert Beck is a freelance director and queer performer living and working in London. His recent show ‘Prevail’ was part of Camden LGBT Forum’s History Month programme and is produced by his company Plain Paper Productions. As well as this, he is a drag performer and has appeared at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, The Bethnal Green Working Man’s Club, and various pubs and bars around London.

He is also the UrbanLIFECLASS PA and admin guy and has worked with David Parker for the last three years developing workshops and administrating the annual trip to Marrakech, Morocco. Follow him on Twitter @robertjamesbeck

A Deeper Reflection

by Rebirth Your Life

Feedback from Spike Mclarrity a participant of :

IMMACULATE PERCEPTIONS – Spiritual Hoovering and a Blissful Path To Creative Release.

Dickie-Beau_CJP12061A weekend workshop with Rebirthing Trainer David Parker & Performance Artist Dickie Beau funded by The LIVE ART Development Agency. At Chelsea Theatre Kings Road London October 5/6 2013.

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Monday begins with a fresh smile on my face, a deep sleep been had, and all my doors and windows are open to allow the fresh air flow through the house as I breath in the optimism, possibilities and the sense of being awake.

Caroline-Howell-window-fresh-air-blogI hadn’t truly thought about what the weekend would bring, and somehow was distracted by other things, and so the word Re-birthing escaped me, I suppose I was looking forward to seeing what Dickie would look like as I have only ever seen him in drag, and from friends feedback on working with him in the past, I knew that something will happen but not quite sure what.

That aside and your workshop began I found myself on familiar territory, though I hadn’t done a rebirth session for a few years, and each session is unique on its own, but the fact here it was not on a field or in some alternative centre or commune, but within a live art building!

That’s was refreshing in itself. My own experience was deep, profound, and challenging, the letting go, facing fear and panic that surfaced..(to my surprise)

I know it was just yesterday and my body and soul is still digesting the information, but to wake up this morning I felt I was greeted by an old familiar feeling of myself! It had been lost in thought, emotions, anxieties, distraction, confusion, hatred, yearning, blame, shame, and a mass of other shit, anyway here I was, me, laying there, feeling my body, feeling my breath, BREATHING!!!!

Yes my breath, the life source.

For myself it was a wonderful reminder of the life I seek, the one that makes me feel alive, to live everyday breathing in the air around me, breathing in my history, my story, my life, my friends, my family and the love and healing that I am surrounded in.

It was like being on a fast fair-ground ride not knowing what emotions that will surface, but the reminder of my mother, the one that carried me, the one that fed me, the one who’s heart beat I felt from inside her body, the woman who gave birth, who held me, who breast fed me, who heard my first cry, wiped the shit from my arse, bathed me, loved me.

imagesThis was a new image of her, one that I had never seen. I only ever saw the sad life she lived, the external life around her, not my connection with inside her body, now that was profound. I saw for a moment, whether in my imagination, never the less there I was breathing, sweating, my body filled with intense heat flowing from head to toe, toe to head, and I could feel the umbilical cord attached to me, I was floating, I could hear a heartbeat, hers, her mothers, her mother’s mother and mine, the connection was strong, pounding on my chest it was extraordinary.

I have done many self-growth workshops, pushed many boundaries entered into the places I resist, ignore, I fight myself on a continues struggle, but here I was with a simple technique that embraced me with a hug, with gentleness that it introduced me to my mother, it enabled my primal self to let go of the holding and allow the self to be mothered, to return to a place that I never thought I would remember, the place of safety that I was born from.

15515664-mother-babyIt was a moment with me and my mother, not about hang ups, or frustrations, anxieties and all the other baggage I carry, this was about a mother and a son re-uniting, through a heart-beat, through time, through love.

I thank you for this it is one of the most precious gifts that have I have been given recently.

At this point I wanted to say how structured and relaxed the whole weekend was, you took care of us, you reassured us, you fed us, you became our parents, gave us a safe place to become a child, to become ourselves, to be ourselves.

This was really important especially in a theatre for live arts! ( a difficult place to turn into a safe haven and a womb ). For me the crossing of my two life styles, bringing two practices together, helping me to realize it need not be separate. I know the fact that you cannot teach live art, but it is the tools we work with that can help every individual to become themselves within their work and the re-birthing strangely can work, especially in my own practice, reminding myself to breath and to stop being bitter about what I think isn’t happening, but to enjoy, embrace, dance, breath, live, love and appreciate the gift of life.

Thank you

Spike

(below is a picture of my mother holding one of my older brother’s, I wasn’t in the picture yet! I was in the second five born after.) I wanted to share this. xxxxxxxxxxxx

spike GIF

A Tyrolean Breathe

by Rebirth Your Life

Rebirthing new people is always exciting.

One never knows how they will take to being out of control with controlled conscious connected breathing. I am always surprised how young clubbers are eager to drop a pill from a dealer without question in a club but fear breathing deeply on the floor fully focused without chemical support. If only they knew that the end result of a breathe has been described as coming up on an ‘e’, they would do it more and fear less. Natural highs contain spiritual ecstasy – not chemical con tricks.

Innsbruck in the Austrian Tyrol has an active snowboarding, skiing and extreme sports day time calendar and at night, bars, clubs, alcohol and other youthful distractions make for messy times. In London my market is music, clubs, fashion & media but when I lead Rebirthing Groups, Seminars and small groups around the globe the demographic is more mixed and good that it is.

I have been asked several times to come to Innsbruck in Austria to start REBIRTHING GROUPS but it never felt right. There is something to be said for not grabbing at every invitation that comes along. South Africa has asked me to come to Johannesburg in 2011, but detail needs to be done, those days of flying across the world because ” the invitation came ” are over. Some practitioners still think that it’s not spiritual to turn away a client away ( because higher energies have delivered them to you ), but experience has taught me that NO is the most satisfying word in the english vernacular. Detail is more important than acknowledgement of work. I haven’t said NO yet to SA because the countries issues interest me : drugs, crime, poverty, HIV/AIDS regarding releasing blocked emotional trauma, but without conscious detail, intuition and breathwork have no bedrock.

Next month January 2011, I begin working with an established Breathwork Centre in Casablanca Morocco, and said YES straight way, when invited, simply because the detail was there from the beginning and working with family dysfunction recovery in North Africa holds my creative attention. 2011 seems to be my year for Africa.

CODEPENDENCY Recovery depends on clearer boundaries and communication and it remains my next task to focus on South Africa and it’s opportunities. In the meantime Innsbruck, Austria is new to REBIRTHING BREATHWORK and a small group gathered for the 1st group on Thursday, with the view above from the patio, a blissful surrounding – we have another on Monday. Without another Rebirther to hand I only work with 6 new participants in a group, this way I can offer full attention to individuals while serving the group as a whole.

. . . and yes breathing new people is exciting.

Set for 3 hours, the group stayed for another few hours to eat and socialise. Most of them expressed tearful emotions during the breathe and felt wonderful, according to phone and facebook messages the next day, so the job was done. How this work will be developed here I don’t know yet, but Innsbruck has localised networking and yoga groups to start the ball rolling. Here is the band of breathing pioneers from the 1st Alpine Breathing Group in Innsbruck.

The next batch of 6 arrive on Monday.

So organising for me may just mean finding 6 people, then another 6 to make the trip financially eloquent. It can be in your home, if suitable. Then a One Day Seminar or a Weekend Training in a chosen venue. But the real essential is detail and clear communication.

This is the only vision I focus on.

Sondra Ray

by Rebirth Your Life

Sondra Ray was one of the early pioneers of Rebirthing Breathwork in the mid 1970’s and creator of The Loving Relationship Training ( LRT ). I joined LRT in 1988 and began a 3 year adventure with Diana Robert’s London Rebirthing 2000 Training in London assisting Sondra in London & Madrid. Diana brought Rebirthing to the UK in 1980, was Sondra’s organiser in London for over 20 years and as LRT Trainer supported Europe in creating LRT Centres. She has remained an avid supporter of my work and style of teaching, especially around codependency and relationship recovery.

. . . but this is, in Sondra’s words, how REBIRTHING . . . is for everyone.

”  Rebirthing is Sacred. Once I thought it was a scientific process. Once I thought it was therapy just to heal my birth trauma. I did not understand it all then. But one thing for sure, I NEVER thought it was silly. I always knew it was the hottest thing on the planet. That is how I always felt about it, right from the beginning.

Rebirthing is like a sacrament because you are partaking of the Holy Spirit. Rebirthing is more than just breathwork. It is taking in Divine Energy into your body in such a way that God is making love to you.

Rebirthing is Life-giving. It can even bring Youthing of the body. It brings spontaneous healings. It brings joy. It brought me everything I ever wanted.

That is why I became one of the first Rebirthers in the world.

I wanted to spread the news to everyone. The only reason someone might not want all of that would have to be fear; fear of letting go, fear of danger, fear of death, or in general fear of slaying the ego. People may fear rebirthing because of these ideas in their heads, and yet the irony is that Rebirthing will REMOVE those very fears. You pump them out on the exhale. Rebirthing continues to take away my fears and the fears of my clients and friends who have stuck with it. We consider it a wonderful life long spiritual path.

To me, it is one of the ultimate gifts from God. Rebirthing is Drinking the Divine. It is also drinking the everlasting nectar of Immortality. When I took Rebirthing to Russia, the doctors there scientifically proved that it produces rejuvenation of the body. So Rebirthing is like discovering the Fountain of Youth. It is having the gentle breath of bliss and the power of vitality charging the body.. It is the thrill of thrills and the serenity of peace at the same time. In this simple breathing process, one can permanently release tensions in the body, symptoms of pain and disease, fears of failure, fears of success, fears of love, fears of death and the beliefs and programming of old age. It will wash out misery . It is the ultimate Cosmic Bath!

Rebirthing is for everyone. No matter who you are or where you are on the path or on the planet. It will take you higher than you ever thought you could go. You will enter the Banquet Hall of Eternity. You will wonder how you ever lived without it. You will drink the everlasting nectar of joy and your heart will awaken to eternal passion. Rebirthing is something you will want to do for life. Eventually , after your rebirther says you are ready, you can learn to rebirth yourself. Initially you should plan to have ten sessions with a rebirther of your choice. You will hear people talk about dry rebirthing and group rebirthing. Dry rebirthing is done lying down on the bed or floor (clothed) next to your rebirther who guides your session.

Group rebirthing is done in a large room where a group of people (who have been well prepared) lie down together with the guidance of a very experienced set of rebirthers. This is best done during a two day workshop. You should continue dry rebirthing until you have worked out the bulk of your birth trauma and a breath release has occurred. Then you can learn to rebirth yourself.

Barbara Marciniak says that awareness and use of the breath are the essential KEYS for understanding and developing the higher mind during this astounding spiritual evolution. She states that we can use the breath to stabilize ourselves to have more energy to enhance our immune systemto create beneficial brain waves to activeate transcendental knowledge from the Source to reach higher frequencies

Besides all that one must add to heal ones body to release tension to have better relationships to rejuvinate. “

Love Sondra

www.sondraray.com

The starburst group breathe (above) was part of The Australian Academy of Rebirthing & Breathwork 10th Anniversary Conference in South Australia 2010, where I was invited to be Guest Speaker. All participants were experienced and completed a Rebirther Training with the Academy. However, you do not need to know about Rebirthing in order to experience it in a group, or connect with Sondra’s descriptive language. I am inclined to avoid her style of vernacular, preferring a more earthy approach, but hey . . . we can’t all ride the same bike. As my work is often confrontational – flowery language is curtailed – but generosity of experience, strength and hope is not.

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.