Connecting to and easing your breath is your medicine.
Why try conscious circular breathing?
For many reasons, there are many benefits. Below are the reasons from participants in a conscious circular breathing workshop in which Nicole participated. Why practice conscious circular breathing?
- To feel better
- To get into the body
- To relax
- To find clarity
- To reduce anxiety
- To manage stress
- To heal
- To process grief
- To feel more safe in my body
- To integrate past trauma
- To increase my self-awareness
- To find my own voice, to connect to my authentic self
- To tap into my life force, my vitality
What is conscious circular breathing?
Conscious Circular Breathing helps you get out of your head and into your body. You’ll intentionally breathe more than you normally would, continuously breathing in or out, encouraging energy to move throughout the body. With this breathing technique, you’ll eliminate the gaps or pauses between inhaling and exhaling. You will actively bring air in, taking a deep unrestricted breath, a larger breath than normal or needed for your metabolic activity. As you exhale, let it all go. There is no need to control, lengthen, or restrict the exhale. All you have to do when you exhale, is release and relax. At the bottom of the exhale, you’ll start your next inhale again, actively pulling air in, taking a deep unrestricted breath.
Your brain waves typically shift and you relax into your body. Your blood chemistry typically shifts, and your nervous system is stimulated. Similar to working out, your heart rate and blood pressure may rise and you may experience an energetic activation. You’re connecting to your vitality, to your breath, your energy source. By continually pulling the breath in or releasing the breath out, you may experience more energy, a buzzy feeling, lightheadedness, and/or a deep sense of calm in the body. You may experience some tingling, involuntary muscle spasms, changes in body temperature, or other sensations while you breathe. This is all normal, welcome, and part of the process. This is a self-regulating process. If at any point, you are uncomfortable, simply stop and rest.
What to expect in a group session?
Individual sessions can be tailored to meet your needs and interests. Group sessions typically last 2 hours and roughly follow the outline below.
- Arrive and Overview
- Group Check-in
- Warm-up Practice, connect to your body and breath
- Conscious Circular Breathing, 30-45 minutes
- Relaxed Breathing inviting the pauses to return,15 minutes
- Transition back to the room
- Group Check-in
- Close
Music is often played, volumes may vary. Others may occasionally make sounds. Please wear comfortable clothes you could move, sit, stand, and lie down in.
Try Conscious Circular Breathing
Tell me more
Breathwork helps restore balance. Breathwork influences and impacts the physical, emotional, and mental energies within you, Breathwork may open the door to an expanding consciousness, connection, or awareness. One may use breathwork to explore one’s inner world of sensations and emotions, and to allow these sensations and emotions to move through the body. Breathwork helps to reconnect to the body, to develop a “felt sense”. Through breathwork one can breathe with all feelings, including anger and terror, to release stuck or suppressed energy or feelings. Breathwork is healing, helping to support and integrate the entire body and being.
Breathing is a great teacher and model of the flow of life. We must act and we must relax. We take in an inhale, working to pull air into our bodies. We release the exhale and allow breath to flow out. If we do not take a full inhale or we force an exhale, we disrupt the natural and balanced rhythm.
Taking open healthy breaths or deep unrestricted breaths connects you to the energetic flow in your body. A rapid and uninhibited relaxation on the exhale allows for the recoil of the lungs that presses inwards at the same time the diaphragm is recoiling upwards, giving the heart a hug or a squeeze. This rhythmic squeeze and release supports heart health, blood flow, or immune system, and the greater energetic wave that moves throughout the entire body into all your cell tissue.
Conscious Circular Breathing supports an open healthy breath, a deep unrestricted breath, with full diaphragmatic and chest movement on the inhalation, and full and easy relaxation on the exhalation. This is very different from a resting or sleeping breath, which can have minimal movement and be very shallow. With conscious circular breath you connect to your inner flow, your action and relaxation phases, moving energy throughout the body.
Caution
While breathwork is typically safe for everyone, this intentionally over breathing technique will create a dynamic and atypical situation in your body. Heart rate and blood pressure generally increase and the nervous system is stimulated. Breathwork is a self-regulating process. You can decide how much effort you want to bring to the breathing practice. Please consult your doctor if you have any concerns.
This breathing technique (conscious circular breathing) is contraindicated for anyone who has the following conditions. Other breathing techniques may be very beneficial, please work with Nicole one on one in an individual session.
- Pregnancy
- Epilepsy/Seizures
- Untreated or unmanaged high blood pressure, hypertension
- High eye pressure or glaucoma or detached retina
- Unmanaged bipolar disorder
- Psychosis/Schizophrenia
- Aneurysm or recent stroke
- Recent major surgery or significant injury
- Diabetes (may experience unpredictable blood sugar changes)
- Asthma (bring your inhaler if decide to participate)
Please consult your doctor about practicing an overbreathing (hyperventilation) technique if you have any concerns or questions. Please note that this technique is different than the typical hyperventilation breathing pattern that someone may do if they’re under a panic attack; The key difference being that with conscious circular breathing the exhale is relaxed, not forced.
Please notify Nicole if you have any health or medical conditions. You are always responsible for your own health.
By breathing fully and freely, we can live fully and in the present moment.
