Breathwork—a Pathway to Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual Wellbeing
Breathing is our most important biological function. Through breathing, our body removes 70 percent of its toxins. On average, it takes a person approximately 3.3 seconds to complete a breath cycle—to fully inhale, retain the breath, and exhale. Each of us has a ‘life bank’ of about 670 million breaths. While most of us treat breathing as an automatic process that does not require our attention or awareness, many mystics and scholars throughout human history have explored the hidden power behind the breath. When the quality of the breath changes and one learns how to ‘optimize breathing,’ i.e., how to breathe ‘effectively,’ many significant benefits begin to follow naturally.
We Can Know a Person by The Way They Breathe
The Sufi Master Hazrat Inayat Khan taught that the way a person breathes is an indicator of his nature and that the key to wisdom and equanimity is the stillness of the breath. He wrote: ‘A man who works and is always busy with material things has a noisy breath, similar to that of the animals, and the irregularity of his breath shows the unsettled condition of his life; the breath of a thoughtful person is much more rhythmic and fine. Of course, more physical energy makes breathing grosser, and a person becomes thoughtless. When his breath is normal, man becomes thoughtful.’1 But how can we become masters of our breath?
What Is Breathwork?
Breathwork is an umbrella term for a wide range of breathing practices, techniques, and exercises that have a significant therapeutic effect. Breathwork contributes to physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. A systematic approach to breathing generally involves bringing awareness to the breath and changing the breathing patterns intentionally. In some forms of breathwork, one alters both the rate and the depth of the breathing, while other techniques require nothing more than conscious and focused inhalation, breath retention, and exhalation.
Part a healing modality and part a personal-development tool, breathwork is now a widely adopted and increasingly popular, mainstream wellness technique. By regulating the flow of breath, one regulates the flow of energy. Breathwork can incorporate elements from both Eastern and Western systems and traditions, including yoga, Tai Chi, Buddhism, shamanism, psychotherapy, and even various forms of art. From Anapanasati to Rebirthing to Holotropic Breathing, there are numerous systems and approaches to breathwork today. Their level of complexity varies from fairly simple to highly advanced.
Breathwork is sometimes considered an active form of meditation that helps release negative mental and emotional patterns, as well as remove energy blockages from the body. The Theosophical visionary teacher and author Alice Bailey has said that proper use of carefully designed breathing exercises can reorganize one’s energetic constitution, bring about self-healing and enable the person to realize their full potential. Breathwork teachers often say that with each inhalation new, fresh energy enters the body, and with each exhalation, we get rid of old, stale energy. That way, breathwork leads to relaxation, increased focus, and heightened levels of consciousness and self-healing. ‘The breath carries the life force, so the breath is our moment-to-moment connection with the source of life and all healing energies,’ writes Jack Angelo, a teacher and healer in the fields of energy medicine and natural spirituality spirituality in his book 'Self-Healing With Breathwork.’
Free divers use breathwork to increase the capacity of their lungs and be able to go without air for up to 12 minutes at a time. Breath control helps athletes reach peak performance and singers excel in their art. There are anecdotes about Himalayan monks and yogis who use the power of their breath to self-regulate their body temperature in extreme weather conditions. There are reports about common people who, using various breathwork techniques, have been able to lose weight, self-heal, and improve multiple aspects of their well-being.
‘There are as many ways to breathe as there are foods to eat, and each way we breathe will affect our bodies in different ways,’ writes the author and science journalist James Nestor in his book ‘Breath.’ He warns that 90 percent of us are breathing incorrectly, and urges us to stop treating our breathing as a passive process, and to become attentive to the quality of our breath, which he says is ‘the missing pillar in health.’
History of Breathwork
Within the ancient yoga tradition, there exists an elaborate system of breathing techniques known as pranayama. Chinese Taoist manuscripts from the 4th century BCE warn that breathing needs to be handled carefully, as it could have either beneficial or detrimental effects on health, depending on how it is performed. Within the Buddhist tradition, the breath is used as an integral part of certain meditative practices, as it enables the adept to enter higher levels of consciousness. Conscious breathing is also part of many indigenous shamanic rituals and ceremonies.
The ancient Egyptians believed that the breath carries within it the life force, which they called ka. In traditional Chinese medicine, the old ideogram for chi—the life force—consisted of three waves, symbolizing the breath. According to yogic philosophy, the breath is the vehicle of prana—the life force. Such a link between the breath and life force is found in many other traditions from the Near East and the Western world, as well.