As any participant in the Breathwork Mastery RBM will know, when we are experiencing the joy of peace after a release or the satisfaction at a resolution of an issue, or simply the contentment of being in a body that is aware of breathing as well as a sense of being in touch with self and others, the inhale and the exhale have no force or pressure. If you check it, the breath can be full yet dispersed at one, two, or three fingers’ distance from the body. On the other hand, when an unresolved event surfaces in a session and there is still an overloaded emotional charge held in the body-mind, the breath spontaneously deepens, or pressure and force are added as the recall of the event, or the electromagnetic charge as a bodily sensation, unravels. Surely this is the other side of the Swara Yoga teaching: if the breath is dispersing more than 10 finger widths from the body (while lying down), excess energy is being lost. In this case, it is necessary for the excess energy of the emotional charge held in the body, holding the event unresolved, to be dispersed by the increased length of the breath!
In 1997, I surveyed 1997 more than 15 Rebirthers and Breathwork Trainers around Australia as a personal project to see where we met and what our differences were. We all agreed on the instruction “full, conscious and connected breath” for our clients during breath sessions. The only differences in the breath instructions were whether we used force or pressure, and whether we added pace. This is the main distinction between Rebirthing, Breathwork, and Holotropic Breathwork, and between Leonard Orr and Stanislav Grof trainings. Now, many Breathworkers have since trained with both founders or with Sondra Ray.
At the few sessions I attended with Stanislav Grof, the founder of Holotropic Breathwork, the instructions added: “breathe faster and harder than normal”. After a period of pressure/faster pace/force, the breathers also spent quite a long time in the retained breath – a breath hold. It was an unconscious breath hold.
Conscious breath holding, known as kumbhaka in Yoga, is a voluntary practice and is practised as both external and internal retention. According to the yogic understanding, it is this practise, the voluntarily retained breath, that drives the prana into the sushumna nadi, the pranic energy flow in the spine, the main energy flow. When sushumna flows strongly enough, and there are no obstacles, there are varying degrees of self-realisation.
Additionally, the pressure or force on the breath, whether exhaling or inhaling, is a yogic pranayama called Ujjayi, translated as the psychic breath. Of the five pranas in the body, Ujjayi affects the one in the head (throat and face). This prana, called udana, maintains muscle strength and is intricately linked to the other pranas. The other pranas are in the chest, the waist, the hips, and throughout the body. Each governs a distinct body function. In these five cases, prana is not translated as life force. These five pranas are distinct energy forms of prana that distribute the life force once it enters the body with the breath. The body then lives and functions through the interactions of these five pranas. When they fall out of balance because of patterns of limited breathing or thinking, the five pranas cannot sustain full-body functioning. At the extreme, they all exit.
In Rebirthing and Breathwork Mastery RBM, we know the psycho-emotional state is evident in the breath. In Yoga, breath control directs the mind to a higher-than-psycho-emotional state. This, of course, takes time and practise and involves purifying the body’s pranic energy flows as a prerequisite.
In Swara Yoga, the natural length of the swara breath flow at exhalation is 7 to 12 finger widths, just between gaining and losing energy. However, emotion and excitement raise the length to 12 to 36, singing to 16, eating to 20, walking to 24, sleeping to 30, exercise and copulation to 36 and strenuous physical exertion to 36 to 100 finger widths, which explains what else we do to try to discharge overloaded emotion and psychological pain if we do not have access to Breathwork. Also important to Swara yoga is the duration of the inhale versus the exhale, the subtle breath versus the gross breath, the speed or pace of inhalation and exhalation, and uniformity.
