Breath is what is called a primary pattern, meaning it’s one of the first things a child does when he or she is born. Your whole body responds to the air that you bring in through your lungs, not just your chest, and oxygen is the most vital nutrient your body requires.

While you can live without food and water for days, possibly months, you will survive for a mere four minutes, six at best, without air. Your breath is the interface between voluntary movement and the more passive activities of your organs because it can be somewhat controlled by conscious effort. But, when we let go with our attention, breath continues to flow into our tissues and feed our cells.

Sadly, many people have forgotten how to breathe. Fear, worry, and stress contract the tissues around the rib cage and bring in only a small amount of air, just barely enough to maintain basic functions. Some people teach that there is a “proper” way to breathe, for meditation, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, relaxation, labor, etc.

It’s easy to learn a breath pattern that serves a particular activity and then to get stuck there indefinitely. These patterns, which at first liberate us from our own neurological rut, transform into a prison with no alternatives. When you have one choice, you have a prison, two choices is a dilemma, and having three choices equals adaptability. We’re striving for adaptability.

Breath is a powerful tool, and when you develop awareness of your own pattern, you can alter it to accompany sports, change your emotions, increase or decrease muscular tension, activate your organs, strengthen your singing or speaking voice, and to support or change the curvature of your spine. And you thought breath just oxygenated your blood! By working with the flow of breath in your body, you basically go beneath all the harmful and damaging movement patterns you’ve learned throughout your life and reset your body in a neutral place. This is, of course, a process and a practice; however, for profound physical and emotional changes, there is no greater lever than breath work.

Your ribs function much like Venetian blinds that hang in a window. If you’ve ever looked at a skeleton, you’ll notice that the rib bones are flat and wide, not round like most people assume. In a living body, the ribs – actually, all bones – are flexible, soft, and pliable. Unfortunately, science studies dead bodies that are devoid of fluid, so we mistakenly think of bones as dried up, rock hard structures. The reality is quite the contrary! In fact, even in dried bone, if the bone is chipped or broken in half, you will see a honeycomb of very fragile calcium strata that looks like a delicate beehive.

Living bone is more like a sponge than a rock. Yes, it’s more stable than muscle or connective tissue, but our bones, like the rest of our body, hold a lot of fluid in them. This allows your bones to adjust to breath and other subtle rhythms within the body. As you inhale, your whole body should open up and go into external rotation (palms moving outward, legs rotating away from the hips, spine extending – imagine a starfish reaching outward with all five arms), and as you exhale, your body should subtly reverse the movement, coming inward towards the fetal position.

Did you know that everywhere you have ribs, you also have lung space? You have just as much rib bone in your back as you do in the front of your body, therefore, you also have just as much availability for breath and movement in your back.

The primary muscle to initiate breath should be the diaphragm; however, most people are unaware of how their diaphragms function. It is a large, dome shaped muscle that spans your costal arch (the front, lower part of your ribs, where your abdomen begins). As you inhale, the dome flattens downward, toward your feet, pulling air into the chest cavity. When you exhale, the muscle relaxes and is pulled back up towards the sky, pressing air out of your lungs.

Breathing rhythms are too small to notice most of the time. They are overshadowed by the greater vibrations in our world – cars, music, chatting on the telephone. We rarely pause long enough to pay attention to our breathing, and equally as dangerous, when we do pay attention, we are usually trying to control and manipulate it rather than allow it to flow naturally and fully. Breath should move organically to release blockages of tension and negative emotion that have been stored in the body.

Trying too hard to control the breath can result in pain, discomfort, or reduced range of motion if you become fixated in one type of breath work. Try the following exercises to begin. monitoring your breathing. I find it easiest to do this while lying down, but you can also sit in a chair if that’s more comfortable. Allow your breath to flow in and out of your body in a natural rhythm. You may be surprised to discover that you take in very little air! That’s okay, don’t try to change anything just yet.

- Notice whether you pause after you inhale or exhale or if you just keep on breathing.

- Do you feel your breath more in your chest or your stomach?

- Does your stomach rise or drop inward toward your spine as you inhale?

- Can you feel your diaphragm pulling downward toward your feet as you breathe in?

- Spend a little time focusing on your diaphragm and imagining the large dome flattening out when you inhale, resuming its dome-like shape as you exhale.

- Do you feel movement in any other areas of your body when you breathe, such as your spine, hands, feet, arms, legs, or even your head?

- Do you have more breath in the front of your body or the back of your body?

- Begin to explore the edges of the shape of your breath. For example, if you feel your breath makes a narrow tube down the center of your body, start feeling where the edges of the tube exist. How far down does it travel? Breathe into the edges as you explore.

The simple act of noticing your breath will begin to shift the pattern. Don’t try too hard! That negates the purpose of the exercise.

Here’s dessert:  a guided meditation to help improve your breathing.

Today’s blog is by Seattle, Washington’s Sukie Baxter, Holistic Arts Practitioner and Wellness Consultant. Sukie helps clients achieve amazing mental, physical, and emotional vitality. To learn how to rejuvenate your body and soul using natural health strategies that get real results, register for her free weekly articles at http://www.SukieBaxter.com.  Thanks Sukie!!

This is a very good and thorough article I thought you might like from Deike Begg, Rebirther and Rebirthing Trainer, Psycotherapist, Author of Rebirthing-Freedom from Your Past, and Astrologer based in London.

Rebirthing is about rebirth of the soul. In Rebirthing you are taught how to consciously connect to your soul by connecting with spiritual energy and drawing it inside yourself with the breath. The effects of this are immediate and permanent. Every little step of progress is irreversible and every little step is an initiation for the soul.

Essentially, Rebirthing is a breathing therapy in which you consciously connect to the divine power of the universe so that it will cleanse and transform you. It is not first and foremost concerned with the birth process and reliving the birth trauma. There are many people who have never experienced a rebirth in that sense during their sessions.

The Rebirthing process itself is based on a very specific advanced breathing technique. Developed in the early 1970s, mainly by the American Leonard Orr, it can have the most amazing results physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Although it is safe to practice and powerfully life-enhancing, you should not attempt to do it on your own at first. The changes that could occur during a session including variations in body temperature and strange feelings and visions, for instance need to be facilitated by a trained practitioner in order to provide you with the fullest benefits and lead you through to the final high point when you can experience your own bliss, inner light and union with a greater whole.

There are many misconceptions concerning Rebirthing. It is not a form of hyperventilation, quite the opposite in fact; nor is it primarily a form of relaxation. We don’t smother people with pillows or restrain them in any way. The individual lies down on a mattress and will breathe in a certain way for about an hour. During this time the most extraordinary things can happen.

We must remember that we exhale approximately 70% of body waste. Only 3% is discarded by defecation, 7% by urination and 20% through the skin. This means that during a session of deep Rebirthing, when we breathe in a certain way, and when the breath reaches deeper into our cellular structure than anything else we know, a profound cleansing of our being takes place. One belief is that we store memory (of traumas, accidents, shame etc) in the body as chemicals and when these get released through the cleansing breath they leave the body and can no longer affect us in negative ways. So in that sense after each Rebirth one is a different person. Although Rebirthing is not a quick fix, because you need to do the breathing, which can stir up all kinds of blockages, it is the fastest working therapy I know.

How I Developed My Rebirthing Work

My Rebirthing work developed out of my rich psychotherapeutic training background, with a sound grounding in Psychosynthesis, Jungian psychology, Gestalt therapy with its emphasis on voice dialogue, past-life therapy and astrology. For 17 out of the past 26 years I have undergone various types of psychotherapy myself. They were an adventurous journey and a wonderful opportunity for self-discovery. (Psychotherapy is not to be confused with psychiatric treatment, which often only employs the use of drugs.)

I particularly took to guided imagery and Gestalt therapy. In guided imagery a person is taken on an inner journey, for instance up to a mountain top where they might meet their Higher Self in the form of a wise being, or into a cave deep within the bowels of the Earth to encounter a lost and perhaps long-forgotten fragment of themselves. Guided imagery, properly used, effectively employs the imagination to access memory. But on its own, without conscious connected breathing (the Rebirthing breath), it cannot bring about the physical cleansing process of the cells nor the brilliant and supernatural visionary experiences encountered in Rebirthing.

Gestalt therapy also uses the body as a sounding board and as a link to hidden fragments of ourselves, but here the eyes are generally kept open and one experiences oneself as one is in the very moment of therapy. It is a ‘here and now’ therapy. Much attention is given to body language, quality and tone of voice, tightness of muscles, etc., and the client is encouraged to go along with the fantasy they are having in the here and now and to act it out in the session. The therapist then guides the client, through various techniques to discover that all his or her conflicts rest somewhere within their own nature, and gradually, psychic contents that were previously disowned and projected onto other people, are re-owned and subsequently integrated.

My Rebirthing technique rests on the shoulders of these two therapies because both are ideally suited for use for breath work. Without their deeper dimensions breathing therapy can be shallow, meaningless and dull.

It is also important, if one wants to work in this meaningful way with the breath, to have an understanding of other cultures, of mythology, fairy tales and astrology. The imagery that can emerge during sessions is often of an archetypal (collective) nature, belonging to ancestral or racial memory and frequently of cosmic dimensions. It is a region diametrically opposed to our ordinary conscious world, a region that is inhabited by strange beings, shapes, colours and lights. It is useful for the Rebirthing therapist therefore to know, for instance, that a snake is a symbol of wisdom, as well as a frightening image for some; that a spider, as Maya, is also the great celestial spinner of illusion and fate, even for those with a spider phobia.

During Rebirthing people frequently see images of various planets, stars and constellations, and knowledge of astrology can be invaluable for the practitioner. The birth chart not only tells me much about a person’s character, but also reveals the current cosmic conditions with which they need to co-operate. It can tell me whether a person is about to have a nervous breakdown or a spiritual emergence. It is interesting how many people come to Rebirthing when their birth charts are ‘activated’ by one of the outer planets, i.e., Uranus(sudden, unexpected changes), Neptune (dissolution of former way of being, sacrifice and renunciation) or Pluto (death and rebirth and empowerment). Certain planets promote a rapid Rebirth, others indicate that major blocks to the flow of energy to and from the soul exist and need to be dealt with and dissolved. This might take two or more sessions.

The bodywork of Gestalt therapy has proved immensely helpful during breathing sessions, whilst guided imagery not only makes it a joy to work with people’s emerging stories but also enables me to guide them more deeply into their inner worlds. And my work with sub-personalities (different aspects of ourselves that co-exist within us) greatly facilitates the process of integration of different parts of one’s being.

Your Journey

With Rebirthing breathing you enter totally new territory, a terra incognita. You find yourself in the strangest lands and circumstances. Whilst you will not lose your connection with the world you live in here and now, you can at the same time have experiences of another world, a different dimension and time. The ‘trick’ in Rebirthing is to allow yourself to dwell in that unknown world for long enough for a transformation to occur. That world lies in what Deepak Chopra in his book Quantum Healing calls the ‘gap’. In this gap creativity, inspiration, super-intelligence and supernatural visions have their abode.

You would not set out on a journey through unknown terrain without a map or a guide. It would be foolish to start out on your own without someone who knows what lies ahead, knows the road and knows how (but not where) it might end. The same applies to Rebirthing; you need a skilled guide to help you over tricky hurdles and to hold your hand or encourage you when you feel stuck or think you cannot go on. It is the consciousness that we bring to breath work that is the determining factor. Also, during the first few sessions you may need a great deal of encouragement just to keep breathing, for if you don’t breathe properly nothing will happen. After several years of Rebirthing I still prefer to do my breathing with someone else present, if only to keep me breathing and from dropping off to sleep. If you are willing to do the work, to breathe as never before and trust the transformative powers of the breath, you will make contact with universal forces.

The Buddha taught that conscious inhalation and exhalation leads eventually to the knowledge of liberation. When we breathe consciously we become aware of that which is normally unconscious. If we change the rhythm of our breathing we change our minds and the way to change the rhythm is to give conscious attention to breathing. When we give attention to breathing and rhythm we transform air into magical essence.

In order to get the best out of a Rebirthing session you will need to suspend your disbelief in a force greater than yourself. You will need to remain open to the incoming breath, keep breathing calmly and ‘wait upon the will of heaven’. If you breathe, relax and allow things to happen, rather than trying to control them, you will have a Rebirth. You will come to a natural end of the breathing cycle when you either open your eyes spontaneously or drift into a gentle ‘yoga’ sleep, but before that you will have had one of the most astonishing experiences ever.

Sometimes the most amazing images of brilliant colours and patterns appear before your inner vision. Sometimes there is a very bright light, so bright that it ought to hurt your eyes but doesn’t. Sometimes your whole body can feel as if it has become infused with this light, causing you to lose all sense of normal bodily awareness. (You have probably heard and read much about the divine light. Well, this is the only way I have ever been able to ‘be in the light’ and to have the light enter me.) Sometimes a numinous figure, a wise or even Christ-like being appears. Aldus Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, talks about similar experiences but with the help of hallucinogenic drugs, and puts it like this:

“Sometimes people see visions, which may be of Christ Himself. Sometimes they hear the voice of the Great Spirit. Sometimes they become aware of the presence of God and of those personal shortcomings which must be corrected if they are to do His will.”

For some of you what I have been talking about here is familiar, but for those who have not yet had an experience of entering that other dimension all this will have little meaning. I do hope, however, to have aroused sufficient curiosity for people to experiment, if possible, with a skilled Rebirther who has already visited transpersonal realms.

Deike Begg, D.F.Astrol.S, Dip.Psych.&Ed, UKCP, FAPAI, APAI

www.deikebegg.com

Breath Awareness – by Leonard Orr
Intuitive Breathing (tape) – by Leonard Orr
The Rebirth Seminar (2 tapes) – by Leonard Orr
Rebirthing in the New Age – by Leonard Orr & Sondra Ray
Leonard Orr’s books & tapes as well as a selection of other very valuable materials are available for sale on his web site (rebirthingbreathwork.com) or at Inspiration University, ph (540) 885-0551- fax (540) 885-1230

Information about the Leonard Orr Training Center is available on his web site. Or call (540) 885-0551

Rebirthing, as a natural therapy, has powerful application as a tool of spiritual healing, and has helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to improve their health, even as far as overcoming medically incurable conditions.

Technically, Rebirthing is a form of prana yoga, or air-based spiritual purification, which happens to have developed indigenously within the western world.

Even if you don’t currently suffer from ill-health, Rebirthing can give you much more personal energy, boost your sense of aliveness, and improve your resistances to common diseases such as colds and flu.

We as rebirthers work from the point of view that people’s mental, emotional and spiritual states have an enormous influence on the health of the physical body, and we use many of the tools of metaphysical healers such as Louise Hay in our work with clients.

From our perspective, society pressures individuals into keeping most of their emotional pain suppressed, akin to households in a strange town being told not to put their rubbish out on the street for collection. In such households, the rubbish accumulates and rots within the house, eventually making the house unliveable. The same is true of the human body if we don’t practise good habits of emotional and spiritual hygeine.

For years, we have seen people’s health improve after they rid their bodies of years of emotional blockage. In our view, the subconscious effort of keeping emotional blockages suppressed puts enormous strain on the body’s systems, especially the immune system. When these blockages are released, the body has more resources available with which to combat illness, even repair and regenerate damaged organs and tissues.

One startling example of this was a physician in the South Island of New Zealand who was dying of non-Hodgkins lymphatic cancer. Before rebirthing, this poor man was devastated by the condition. I (Pauline Avis McNab) reached out to him. Within five weeks of his first Rebirthing session, he recorded clear bone marrow tests, clear blood tests and clear CT scans – a complete absence of the condition which was otherwise sending him quickly to an early grave. To this doctor’s credit, he did comply with all of the requirements of my healing programme, including frequent private sessions, weekly group session and attendance on my practitioner training course. In this time, he had numerous dry and water rebirthing sessions. This healing was featured on a nationwide TV documentary

(New Zealand, November 1991, Paul Holmes Show, TV1)

Rebirthing founder Leonard Orr, on that same TV documentary, said that he knew of “many thousands of cancer cases, and many hundreds of AIDS cases” that had cleared up completely where Rebirthing was the main or only healing process used.

To us, healing of any physical condition is a mundane natural occurence which takes place automatically when people release the underlying emotional pain which has caused this condition. Such pain may be triggered by traumatic events in adult life — and/or, it will likely have roots much earlier in life, even as far back as a person’s birth and time in the womb!

Rebirther Sondra Ray observed that, while a nurse, a large number of her oncology ward patients had suffered a major emotional upset within the year prior to their cancer diagnosis

One thing we must stress is that healing is a journey for each individual. The wonderful tool of Rebirthing, while enormously powerful, is not enough in itself to bring about automatic healing. There are two other essential components:

• The willingness of the client to follow all instructions given, to feel all of their feelings, and be willing to accept deep and fundamental changes in their inner and outer life, and
• The supportive presence – the clear and empathetic vibration of the practitioner(s); many clients report that they had been partly aware of given emotional blockages, but could not have released them save for the supportive vibration of their therapists.

Some (but not all) rebirthers possess this supportive vibration to a level which can facilitate the healing of medically incurable illness. Attaining and maintaining this healing vibration is a demanding process which requires rebirthers to rebirth themselves frequently, to practise this and many other spiritual purification techniques on an ongoing basis, and maintain a level of relative isolation from mainstream society. We at Rebirthing New Zealand work hard on ourselves each and every day. From this discipline, we have been able to facilitate many otherwise medically impossible healings.

One last thing we must stress on the subject of healing of ‘physical’ conditions (and we put the word ‘physical’ in quotes, because we see all so-called ‘physical’ illness as mental/emotional/spiritual illness accompanied by bodily symptoms):

You cannot change and stay the same!

If there’s something wrong in your body, then a priori there’s something wrong in your (past and/or present) life. If there’s anything in your life you are unwilling to let go of – whether it be place of residence, relationships, job, career, lifestyle – your healing prospects could be cruelly limited.

In all the successful healings we’ve seen, people have been willing to let go of everything – marriages, financial assets, jobs, everything – but after the healing, they in effect have not had to give up much at all, except for their dysfunctional relationship with themselves, others and the world around them. They have even kept their money, but enjoyed it a whole lot more with a whole new perspective on life.

If you are looking towards Rebirthing as a healing option, you can maximise your chances by being as frankly honest about yourself and your life as possible. Through your healing journey, you can expect many of your perspectives on life to change dramatically, as you head into a reality of emotional lightness, personal freedom, mental clarity and spiritual empowerment.

http://www.rebirthing.co.nz/benefits/health
Filed under: breathwork, health, Longevity, personal growth, Relationships, self-help, spiritual purification ]]> http://discoverbreathwork.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/new-zealand-article-on-health-benefits-of-rebirthing/feed/ 0 drmichelle http://discoverbreathwork.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/latest-leonard-orr-rebirthing-founder-article/ http://discoverbreathwork.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/latest-leonard-orr-rebirthing-founder-article/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:06:28 +0000 drmichelle http://discoverbreathwork.wordpress.com/?p=54 ]]>  

Intelligent Energy

Let’s pause for a moment to celebrate three unique innovators who died this year: Curtis Allina, Art Clokey, and Walter Morrison.

What–you haven’t heard of them? I bet you know their creations well: Pez, Gumby, and Frisbee.

I dare you not to grin when saying those three words! Pez, Gumby, and Frisbee collectively represent fun, silliness, play, and many more happy emotions we want in our lives today.

When each of these gentlemen’s obituaries appeared within a month of each other, it made me pause. What lessons did their innovations teach? As I strive to be more creative and innovative, what inspiration can I take from their journeys? After exploring their lives and legacies further, here are the top three things I discovered:

1. Great Innovation Can Happen Even if Life’s Hard
You’d think that if you were a master of something as creative, as inventive, as FUN as any of these three playthings, that you probably lived a charmed life. But that was far from the truth:

• Clokey was sent to live in a children’s home when his mom’s new husband rejected him after his natural father died in a car accident.

• Allina’s family perished in concentration camps in the 40s, leaving him as the sole survivor.

• Morrison, a WWII pilot, was shot down and spent 48 days as a prisoner of war in Stalag 13.

Those setbacks didn’t get in their way–in fact, they may have led to even greater creativity and innovation. For example, Morrison’s aeronautic skills helped him refine his original flying disc. The abandoned Clokey was eventually adopted by a well-known composer who introduced him to an artistic life that certainly led him to pick up a handful of clay.

2. Accept Whatever Comes
Gumby’s 1956 debut on “The Howdy Doody Show” led the stop-motion character to his own short-lived series and ongoing syndication. But his popularity faded in the 70′s, and creator Clokey struggled financially, according to published accounts.

Then a young comedian named Eddie Murphy played a foul-talking Gumby on Saturday Night Live in the 80′s. Many expected Clokey–the man who created TV’s religious-toned “Davey and Goliath” and who once planned to become an Episcopal priest–to be shocked and ashamed at how his creation was mangled.

But according to interviews, he loved it, although he was happy it was on late at night when children were sleeping (remember, this was the pre-TiVo era.) By accepting someone else’s interpretation and going with the affectionate outpouring, the edgy performance rejuvenated Gumby, and put the green guy in the hands of a whole new generation.

3. You Don’t Have to Create to be Creative
Pez was originally a Viennese mint, marketed to adults as an alternative to smoking. In fact, the stemmed dispenser was designed to look like a cigarette lighter. When the idea emerged to repackage the candy for children, company exec Allina had to persuade the conservative, European home office that the change would make sense.

Pez historian (now there’s a job!) David Welch told The New York Times that no one really knows exactly whose idea it was to put heads on Pez dispensers. However, Welch shared, “The idea came from the United States. And for the idea to have come out of the United States and made it to Austria where it could be approved, Allina was the only guy who could have made that happen.”

So whether Allina actually envisioned a Santa head on a stack of peppermints, we’ll never know. But he was the one to enable the creative move, to actually make it happen, and in the end, is credited with making the now multi-million dollar industry come to life. Not a bad legacy.

Speaking of legacy, it is worth noting one other thing these three men had in common. They all lived long lives: Pez’s Allina passed away at 87. Gumby animator Clokey died at 88; and Morrison, Frisbee’s father, died at 90. They left behind not only their respective innovations, but also buckets of inspiration for the creative spirit in all of us.

Where do you find your innovation inspiration–at work, outdoors, or at home in your garage? From music, TV, or a stroll through the mall? Who inspires you most–people you know well, or people you’ve only known from afar?

** To comment on this article or to read comments about this article,
go here.

About the Author:

Darcy Eikenberg, ACC, is an accomplished coach, consultant and business leader, with experience motivating individual and team behavior to achieve business results. Her focus is coaching and mentoring aspiring individuals and professionals/teams needing guidance and support. Before founding Coach Darcy LLC, Darcy was Principal, Internal Coach, and Senior Communication Consultant at Hewitt Associates. Darcy is VP, Marketing for the Georgia Coach Association and a graduate of Northwestern University.

An event such as this usually happens within  the first few moments of our birth.  Reading Dr. Fredrick LeBoyer’s remarkable book, “Birth Without Violence“, can help you to understand how present and impressionable newborns really are.  All babies are conscious of every single thing happening around them from the moment of conception!  So imagine, or recall if you will, being pulled from a nice, warm and cozy environment in which the temperature was constant, you had 24-hr “womb” service, and all that you needed was provided without even thinking about it.  You’re pulled from this environment out into a cold, painfully bright, loud room by people  who are doing the best job they know how to do, but are innocently and unconsciously having their own painful birth trauma reenacted for them thereby bringing their fears into your birth experience.  Welcome to the world!

Once you’re out, it is now imperative that you are separated, cleaned and assessed.  The lifeline you have breathed from, eaten from and played with for nine months is suddenly cut  so quickly that you have a sense of panic, of fear that there isn’t enough air or life (later this can extend into love, food, money, sex or happiness).  This is where our breathing mechanism becomes faulted. Then you are taken abruptly from your mum and cleaned with harsh cloths and soaps by someone who is innocently doing their job very efficiently but with their own unconscious memories coming up.  Let’s face it, the act of delivering a baby has been mechanized and almost dehumanized.  It can be very cold and callous to a sensitive individual.  This is where the personal lies are most often created.

In scenes such as those above, a baby could have the thought, “Life is hard, “Life is a struggle”, “Men hurt me”, “Women hurt me”, “I have to experience pain to live”.   And that is just with a “normal” birth.  Add elements such as forceps, vacuum extraction, Cesarian or breech and the thoughts are much more intense.  Since the baby is conscious and thinking these thoughts, they will wonder, “What did I do”?  “What is wrong with me that this happened to me”?  The personal lie is then thought:  “I am not good enough”, “I am bad”, “I am unloveable”, or “I am unworthy”.

The personal lie could come even earlier, perhaps during the 1st trimester when the parents have just found out they are pregnant and innocently have some fear going on, not to mention their own unconscious birth trauma memories coming up for them.  The baby picking up on this energy of fear similarly wonders, “What did I do wrong”, “Why is this happening”. 

What is important to know is that everyone walking on this planet has a personal lie; a very negative and untrue thought that is serving to sabotage their results or challenge their efforts in all aspects of their lives.  Granted, even the most successful people don’t appear to have any demons haunting them, but all one has to do is  look at some of the headlines making the news today to see that everyone has something thwarting even the best of intentions.

What do you do with the personal lie?  How do you get rid of it?  This is where a trained Breathworker is invaluable!  S/He will help you to discover your personal lie and then recommend some home activities for you to do to reprogram it.  You will learn from your Breathworker  that we do one of three things with these thoughts:

1.  We act it out.

2.  We overcompensate for it.  (the overachiever or the obsessive/compulsive tendencies)

3.  We project it onto to other people, places or things.  (“Nothing is ever good enough”)

Discovering and reprogramming your personal lie is an incredibly powerful and empowering thing.  So are the other tools you can learn from and work you can do with a Breathworker.  And since your personal lie impacts ALL aspects of your life:  work, money, health, relationships, and happiness, ALL aspects of your life stand to improve from the work you do with your Breathworker.

My passion and life’s purpose is working with pregnant women and their significant others to help them to clear their birth trauma BEFORE the delivery, better yet with women/couples who desire to have a child so that the entire process of conception, pregnancy and delivery can be a clear and divine one.  The other aspect is working with the “authority figures” (more about this in future posts) so that they are clear in the delivery and bringing little to none of their own birth trauma fears into the room with them.

It’s a wonderful process and a worthy one…one I hope you’ll assist me with along the way as a supporter, a client, a referral source or a happy rebirthee!

~Namaste~

The second site is www.terrylarimore.com, who is an LMSW (Licensed Master Social Worker) among other certifications.  Her collection of readings and writings is wonderful.  I highly recommend the article “Babies Are Conscious”, by Dr. David Chamberlain.

The last piece I wish to share with you is some information about water birthing.  I began my education about water delivery in 2006, when I first attended an LRT, Loving Relationship Training.  Not a lot ws discussed about it at that point, but I remember a seed was planted.  While training to become a Certified Breathworker/Rebirther, we talked extensively about the subject and saw footage of a live water birth and a live hospital birth.  The difference in the reactions of the baby were incredible!  In the water birth, the baby was so calm and peaceful versus the hospital delivery in which the baby was tense and anxious.   I knew then that I wanted to share this information with other medical professionals.  I also knew that I would deliver this way if I ever were pregnant (the training was in January and I conceived in February).

Today, I found a wonderful waterbirthing site for your review.  Should you want to investigate the benefits of this form of delivery or know of someone who would benefit from this information, this is a great site to go to:  http://www.waterbirth.org/

Here are some of the FAQ’s:

Why is water birth not available in more hospitals?

Waterbirth International works diligently with couples who want to use warm water during their births in a hospitals. We have been very successfully with obtaining approvals for our portable pools in many hospitals in the last ten years. Hospitals are more cooperative today than ever before as doctors and midwives begin to see the benefits of allowing women to make their own choices.

Waterbirth profoundly demonstrates that a woman is empowered by “giving birth,” not “being delivered”. Many health care providers are seeing women take charge of their birth experiences and welcome this attitude and do what they can to facilitate a gentle birth. But others are still “locked into” the medical technological model of birth and have a harder time being convinced of the efficacy and safety of waterbirth. As couples become more informed of their options, they are assuming more responsibility for their own birth experience. If you would like one of Waterbirth International’s midwife or physician consultants to work with your doctor or hospital, simply contact us. We’ll call and discuss the approaches to take and the steps that are necessary to change policy.

 What prevents baby from breathing under water?
There are four main factors that prevent the baby from inhaling water at the time of birth:

1.  Prostaglandin E2 levels from the placenta which cause a slowing down or stopping of the fetal breathing movements. When the baby is born and the Prostaglandin level is still high, the baby’s muscles for breathing simply don’t work, thus engaging the first inhibitory response.

2.  Babies are born experiencing mild hypoxia or lack of oxygen. Hypoxia causes apnea and swallowing, not breathing or gasping.

3.  Water is a hypotonic solution and lung fluids present in the fetus are hypertonic. So, even if water were to travel in past the larynx, they could not pass into the lungs based on the fact that hypertonic solutions are denser and prevent hypotonic solutions from merging or coming into their presence.

4.  The last important inhibitory factor is the Dive Reflex and revolves around the larynx. The larynx is covered all over with chemoreceptors or taste buds. The larynx has five times as many as taste buds as the whole surface of the tongue. So, when a solution hits the back of the throat, passing the larynx, the taste buds interprets what substance it is and the glottis automatically closes and the solution is then swallowed, not inhaled.

For a more complete description, please read Barbara Harper’s Waterbirth Basics

 What is the temperature of the water?
Water should be monitored at a temperature that is comfortable for the mother, usually between 95-100 degrees Fahrenheit. Water temperature should not exceed 101 degrees Fahrenheit as it could lead to an increase in the mother’s body temperature which could cause the baby’s heart rate to increase. It is a good idea to have plenty of water to drink and cold cloths for the mother’s face and neck. A cool facial mist from a spray bottle is a welcome relief for some mothers as well.

 How much does a waterbirth cost?
If you rent a portable poolfor either home or hospital birth, it usually costs about $375, which includes the rental fee, shipping both ways, and all the extras that you might need. Some insurance companies do reimburse for the expense of the pool rental. If the hospital has permanent birth pool equipment, there is not really even any need to let your insurance company know that you have had a waterbirth. Just in case they may object to the process, it is always safe to inform the insurance company that the baby was born vaginally. It really doesn’t matter if the baby was born in the bath or on the bed – it is still a vaginal birth.

  Can I have a water birth at my local hospital?
Waterbirth International diligently works with families who want to have a water birth in a hospital environment. Hospitals are more cooperative today than ever before as more and more women have made their choices heard. Many people start the process by inquiring if they can bring in a portable pool kit for labor.  There are a series of steps that need to take place in order to assist hospitals and providers in adopting protocols for water labor and birth and the use of a portable pool. Our Gentle Birth Pool Kits have been used in hundreds of facilities, including several military hospitals (no easy task!). 

Our Executive Director, Barbara Harper, is available to work with each family to assess how much is needed to get policies changed or established.  Our success rate with hospitals and providers is about 95%. Call to discuss this aspect of our work if you want to help your local hospital institute a water birth policy. We ask that you become a memberof Waterbirth International or provide a donation in order to help us with the cost of effecting these changes.

  How long is baby in the water after the birth?
Here in the US, practitioners usually bring the baby out of the water within the first ten seconds after birth. There is no physiological reason to leave the baby under the water for any length of time. There are several water birth videos that depict leaving the baby under the water for several moments after birth and the babies are just fine.

Physiologically, the placenta is supporting the baby with oxygen during this time though it can never be predicted when the placenta will begin to separate causing the flow of oxygen to baby to stop. The umbilical cord pulsating is not a guarantee that the baby is receiving enough oxygen. The safe approach is to remove the baby, without hurrying, and gently place him into his mother’s arms.

  When should I get into the water?
A woman should be encouraged to use the labor pool whenever she wants. However, if a mother chooses to get into the water in early labor, before her contractions are strong and close together, the water may relax her enough to slow or stop labor altogether.  That is why some practitioners limit the use of the pool until labor patterns are established and the cervix is dilated to at least 5 centimeters. 

There is some physiological data that supports this rule, but each and every situation must be evaluated on its own.

Some mothers find a bath in early labor useful for its calming effect and to determine if labor has actually started. If contractions are strong and regular, no matter how dilated the cervix is, a bath might be in order to help the mother to relax enough to facilitate dilation.

Therefore, it has been suggested that the bath be used in a “trial of water” for at least one hour and allow the mother to judge its effectiveness. Midwives report that some women can go from 1 cm to complete dilation within the first hour or two of immersion.  The first hour of relaxation in the pool is usually the best and can often help a woman achieve complete dilation quickly. 

I am so honored and grateful be able to make this decision for myself and my baby.  It’s exciting to think about how easy and gentle the experience can and will be.  Now, because I am aware that thought is creative and that the baby is a divine child of God, he/she may have the desire to have another kind of experience for his/her own life lessons.  I am respectful of what is meant to happen as part of the Divine plan for my life and for the baby’s life.