My name is Em, and I work the front desk of Ashburn Natural Wellness. I also have a practice offering integrative breathwork sessions, and as the holidays draw closer, I wanted to share some tips and tricks from the field of breathwork to accompany you into some times of potentially heightened stress.
Before I share some tips, you might be wondering: What is integrative breathwork? Or breathwork at all? Breathwork is a healing modality that is gaining more mainstream popularity, but can still be mystifying – especially since breathing is already something we’re always doing, so knowing what makes something “breathwork” can be confusing.
To me, breathwork is simply bringing conscious attention to the way that you’re breathing, and trying out different methods of breathing to meet the moment you find yourself in. Integrative breathwork is one of many types of breathwork, and it’s focused on noticing, expressing, and releasing built up or unconscious tension, energy, and emotions that are stored in the body.
While breathwork has only recently started gaining popular awareness for some (thanks in part to books like Breath by James Nestor), it’s generally thought of as being part of a large body of awareness practices that date back thousands of years in the East and South Asian cultures of China, Japan, India, and Tibet. However many cultures, especially the intact Indigenous cultures around the world, have developed philosophies and relationships to breathing unique to their cultural and geographical setting (which often get lost in the commodification of wellness).
The breathwork techniques that are most well-known right now involve intentionally controlling how we breathe, and each one revolves around how much or little to breathe, how fast or slow to breathe, and how much to hold the breath or let it go.
Breathwork is important for so many reasons. It can reduce anxiety and stress, regulate our nervous system and emotions, and build our resilience for challenging situations. Many of us typically aren’t breathing at even one third of the capacity of our lungs, and when we minimize or suppress our breathing, it’s harder to recognize what’s happening in our bodies and hearts.
When it comes to the holidays, we need to be paying more attention to how we’re doing, not less. Consciously breathing is one of the best ways to drop into an immediate connection to your internal state and check in on how you’re doing.
This holiday season, you can use breathwork as soon as you notice yourself becoming activated, whether or not anyone else is even in the room. See if you can notice the first signs of stress coming on: Maybe you’re managing the logistics for your family and feel the first heat waves of overwhelm, or your family member just said that thing that activates you every time, and you feel yourself starting to shut down.
In any situation of activation, the first trick is to get present to what’s happening inside of you, so that you have more information around how you might need to respond. Here’s one way to do that:
First, you guessed it: Take a breath.
Next, notice all of the places you feel the breath enter your body.
Make a little bit of an effort to let your belly and chest fully expand on the inhale.
Let the exhale go completely, without any holding back or hesitation. Notice what it feels like in your body as the air exits. If you are feeling particularly stressed, you can elongate your exhale, slowly releasing all of the air from your lungs until there is nothing left.
Continue breathing in this way, noticing two different things:
You can do conscious breathing while in a conversation, you can do it somewhere private with your eyes closed, you can do it all the time anywhere (because that’s what’s already happening whether or not you’re taking advantage of it). It only takes a shift of awareness.
This might seem extremely simple, and it is. That’s what’s so wonderful about it. Try it out and see what happens! When you tune into your own breathing, the information can come fast and clear. Once you’ve got a good conscious breath going, you can more easily stay present to the signals your body is sending you and respond accurately and accordingly. The more you do it, the easier it becomes to recognize how you are doing and what needs to happen next.
If you decide to try out some conscious breathing, please let us know how it goes! And if you’re interested in going deeper one-on-one or learning more about the integrative breathwork sessions I offer, you can head over to my website to learn more.
Good luck out there!
Discover the everyday benefits you can experience from integrative breathwork! Em Chiappinelli, from Everyday Aliveness, discusses three key points when looking at how breathwork transforms our mindset: Breathwork brings things to the surface, Breathwork builds emotional awareness and resilience, and Breathwork creates a sense of connection to something beyond ourselves.
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