Christina Thomas

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.