A Tyrolean Breathe

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.

Open Your Eyes To Happiness

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.