Happiness

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”.

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.

Needs and Wants

by Rebirth Your Life

Oliver James, who wrote the book AFFLUENZA, a theory based on a virus of shop-till-you-drop mentality, says that placing too high a value on money, possessions, fame and outward appearance is bad for mental health. He says that it’s time for cold turkey and in the short term, as with any addicts cleaning up their act, there will be pain. In the UK, with a change of government, mega debt & world recession we are about to experience the worst government cuts since World War 2. I hope we receive food parcels from overseas.

It takes courage to face the unfaceable, but when you stop to think about it, shopping has no boundaries for many shopaholics as they have learnt to confuse real needs with disposable wants.

It’s clear that we don’t need a lot of what we buy, we could reduce without too much pain but like a child who refuses to go to school the mouth says ” Why should I? “. A real need is for things like emotional intimacy or to feel emotionally secure: a new HD TV are wants stimulated by the “must have” advertising industry. My Fisher TV was purchased in 1986, from John Lewis and it still works perfectly; I am rigged up for digital but I don’t have time for 4 channels let alone multitudes of cable adverts. I just don’t need it, nor want it. Traveling three months of the year in homes and hotels shows me what crap sat TV is anyway. Having said that, many a night I have sat comatose watching BBC News on a loop in a foreign hotel.

Two new studies on the psychology of spending concludes that buying stuff is the ” heroin of human happiness “and that shopping malls and pedestrianized High Streets have replaced parks and other forms of nature to have a day out. We may want to go to the Mall to fill time but do we need too? Do we need to buy another pair of trainers, a handbag or a sale bargain. Most people are bored when they shop, lacking motivation or imagination in spending disposable time. Like the addict they are desiring a quick hit, and a mode of escape. Cinema’s and Food Courts in Malls complete the addicts junk day out. This so called ” Family ” Entertainment is like processed cheese, yummy but no long-term nutritional value.

I have hit hard times in the past as a recovering bankrupt but 5 years with no credit was what I needed to sort my habits out. You don’t need to go this far but it may be of value to see what you can live without, or what you need to feel gratitude.

These 2 links may be of interest :

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/all-consuming-by-neal-lawson-1728878.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227121.900-review-ispent-sex-evolution-and-the-secrets-of-consumerismi-by-geoffrey-miller.html

Open Your Eyes To Happiness

by Rebirth Your Life

Like poverty happiness is relative, so create your own scale. I used to think that ” loving too much ” was intimacy & true happiness until I found drugs further up the ladder. Now drug free for a few decades and then some, HAPPINESS is whatever I choose it to be, like the freedom to make mistakes without beating myself up afterwards, freedom to make clearer choices and waking up on clean sheets without a hangover or comedown makes me very happy, I can tell you. Small things count.

They say that RESENTMENT kills the container it’s kept in, and my fuselage was well corroded when I was in a coma of drug use all those years ago – counting up all the things I did for people and the people that gave nothing back.

Maybe you think this :  I will be happy WHEN I get a new job, flatmate, partner and lose weight.

A Course In Miracles states that ” everything is temporary “, and once you get that notion and accept that happiness can’t be captured, freedom arrives quickly, as freedom is intrinsically linked to happiness. Freedom to be who you are, to be authentic without editing, to be open about lifestyle and character defects.

Losing past and present resentments is a key to Happiness. What works to anyone’s advantage is to write down 5 resentments about past or present, and be prepared to drop the hurts that burn inside. The Great Escape of drink and drugs are great tools to employ relaxation, release and realizations, long may that continue, but not so hot when the returning resentments capture your happiness and take you back to prison camp. I heard someone say that they drank to drown their sorrows then their sorrows learn’t to swim. Well, it was true for me.

Ironically, one of the happiest periods for me was 1994-96 just before the arrival of combination therapy for those HIV Positive. I worked soley with people living and dying from AIDS, as it was then, all with CD4 counts below 10. A healthy person has over a thousand. I took one guy to Turkey with a CD4 of 2, he was determined to have a holiday before he died. He was so happy to have made it ( and he lasted another 3 years with combination therapy ). Another wanted to be wheeled in a wheelchair to see David Hockney’s Mr & Mrs Ossie Clark & Percy at the Tate Gallery for the last time, while another decided to die on crisp white French linen so off we went to Peter Jones with cash in hand. Humour in times of darkness is an essential breeder of joy. With these guys I assisted them to complete their life, releasing resentments before they passed into light but anyone can lift the luggage they hold without the threat of death, though I do accept that fear is a great motivator. Try being motivated by joy instead.

For me happiness is a pile of freshly ironed and folded shirts. I get great satisfaction from that. Babaji said Karma Yoga (work) breeds happiness. Happiness is knowing that you have cleared the wreckage of the past. Happiness is turning the phone off. Happiness is being silent in a persons arms. Write your own list each day as an antidote to losing the plot and start running your life with a new set of rules to fuel happy thinking. You can get this through therapy, coaching or flicking through inspirational or self -help books. But deciding not to bother with the exercises mentioned is likely to end in a half-measured result.

In Rehabs like the Priory for a 6 week stay, people often do 16 hours a day of individual writing, group sessions, individual counseling and emotional management including the suggestion to LET GO OF CONTROL. Just think about how your sense of happiness is determined by the behavior of other people. Learning to detach from fixing others, pleasing others and then fixing and pleasing yourself is perhaps the ultimate shift in contentment and codependency recovery.

David Weeks scientific study, the first on the subject of Eccentrics, found them to be the happiest people and they live longer purely because they gave up taking notice of what people thought of them. Happy people are happy from within – not unhappy to be without the latest label. So remember that you don’t have to have a fit body to workout from the INSIDE, and once you start to focus on solutions you will realize that a perfect waist is not the key to a perfect life. Happiness is there for the taking if you open your eyes to seek it.