Yesterday’s women’s workshop, Shake-Breathe-Live, was amazing. Here are my learnings and takeaways arising from my personal experiences of the practices:
- Learn how and when to say the Hard No: reconnect with that subtle, wise Yes/No intuition – because if not, as the TRE showed me, boundaries get breached and anger builds.
- Spend time with shamanic women: suddenly this feels crucial now. The stage of my life, and the world, calls for powerful women healers collectively getting their hearts and heads into alpha/theta brainwaves in natural environments… with fire. [One participant: ‘For the last 18 months I’ve been holding on to my magic like this...’ Stacks two shaking fists in front of her as though holding a rope for dear life. IKR?]
- Shake it out; exhale it out: daily, in any environment – just release it. (Non-exhale of acidic CO2 -> acidic, inflamed, hot system. Sound familiar?) NB. Qigong, swimming, walking are also good for this coherent breathing and shaking out tension. Breathe+ app. recommended for intentional breath work.
Grant me ferocity and peace in equal measure, oh my God.
Let’s read.
-71- It is well to know that you do not know. To think you know when you do not is sickness. When you are sick of sickness you will no longer be sick. True Persons are not sick because they are sick of sickness; this is the way to health. (The Tao Te Ching 71)
Heavens. Spot on – whether this is about physical or mental sickness. For me, things shifted in my mental health when I started to imagine the rest of my life under the kosh of depression and addiction, and decided, ‘No‘. So, how about physical health? Yesterday’s training day had some really good learning in it, didn’t it? Where next with this? How to hold on to the magic in me which heals myself?
*Goes off for an internet fiddle about… and ends up finding this*
Video’s Key Message: Breathe into the pelvic junk drawer
Difficult experiences and memories go into our ‘pelvic junk drawers‘ in the lower belly – and therefore, many of us breathe only in our top chest so as not to have to touch those emotions. Intentional breathing clears out those emotions from our pelvic junk drawers (better than alcohol, drugs or food will ever do…).
Reminder/News to self: the reason I’ve never enjoyed deep breathing exercises is that it is uncomfortable and unpleasant to go in and touch/feel/heal the emotions in the pelvic junk drawer! (Hence, I eventually found TRE which served the pelvic clearing purpose in another way…)
However, in dodging deep/intentional breathing (to dodge the feels) I also deprive myself of:
- clearing the emotional trash folder
- alkalising the body
- accessing alpha/theta states
Wow. As Lao Tzu says, ‘when you are sick of sickness (dodging the feels) you will no longer be sick (dodge the feels).’ It could be that my M in MEDS stands for ‘mindful breathing‘ as much as ‘mindfulness’…? The mindfulness alone can be a bit dissociative… My need is to get my mind deeply in to my body. Qigong achieves this too. I need to breathe.
Video’s Key Message: Fill your torso 360 degrees
- Sympathetic Overdrive/Dominance –> fight/flight state prefers inhalation to get oxygen going to muscles, vs exhalation which is for expelling toxins and is therefore not a priority when you’re being chased by a lion) –> Shallow breathing –> Low Heart-rate Variability –> Chronic stress, poor health, high toxicity, low vitality, low self-belief
- Breathe with your nose and fill your torso 360 degrees – try these exercises:
- 1 breath in; 3 out
- Block on nostril and take 10 breaths; swap sides
- Inhale one nostril; exhale the other (alternate nostril breathing)
- Breathe for 3mins in each of these 360-degree torso-expansion children’s breathing poses:
So, hi. Breathing into the pelvis, torso, lower dantian… I’m starting to get the message. What is your message for me today?
Breathing in to the lower chakras assures your groundedness. As the frequency of the planet attunes, becoming especially grounded is your only real priority. You can sit about and think thoughts but your actual given task at this moment is to anchor yourself, anchor light, anchor the frequencies of peace, unity, love and light. It’s kind of like ‘busywork for souls’ in that the visible output is not apparently significant but the actual impact is phenomenal.
Why not take it upon yourself to play with these breathing techniques – as it were, as part of your ‘busywork for the soul on Earth’? It may seem like it’s a trivial, or insignificant, or non-intellectual use of your attention… but that is truly only because you do not know the impact you are having on yourself and on the collective frequency when you clear the clutter out of the cosmic trash folder in your lower chakras. You are doing a service unto others. You wanted to learn about STO. Well on this occasion it’s about clearing out your stuff. Ok?
What happens when I clear out the stuff?
When you clear out the stuff your own frequency shifts imperceptibly. You become lighter. Do you hear that? Lighter. More Light.
Am I overweight because that’s the way I’ve chosen to ground for now?
Yes! You knew you had to anchor, so instead of getting lighter, you got heavier. The lightness you are invited to receive is not about weight, it’s about absorption of Light.
Hence the qigong.
Precisely. Though you virtually refuse to do it.
:-/
If you knew that your ONLY role on Earth at this moment was to do qigong, would that make a difference to you?
It would if I believed it.
You would believe it if you could see what we see. We see you weeping as you undertake your qigong because you are going fearlessly into the darkest places within you, and clearing them all, and absorbing cosmic light. So yes, no wonder you dodge it. You are avoiding the emotional pain. It’s understandable.
Ha… Sounds familiar. That’s why I don’t want to go to sleep at night too. Don’t want to be left with difficult emotions and thoughts.
Breathing – whether mindfully, intentionally or in qigong, swimming, walking or singing – is your passport to getting Lighter:
- Less weighed down with a heavy, dark pelvic junk drawer
- More filled with cosmic Light
I am breathing down deeply and feeling lighter