Rebirthing and Breathwork: A Powerful Technique for Personal Transformation

Rebirthing and Breathwork

A Powerful Technique for Personal Transformation

CATHERINE DOWLING

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2000 Catherine Dowling

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Edited by Anne Lawrance

Digital edition published 2013 at Smashwords by Catherine Dowling

www.catherinedowling.com/blog

ISBN

Published in paperback in 2000 by

Judy Piatkus (Publishers) Limited

5 Windmill Street

London WIP IHF

e-mail: info@piatkus.co.uk

ISBN 0 7499 2092 0

Cover Design: Rita Toews

Cover Photo: Sara Winter

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1: The Basics

1. In the Beginning

2. Breathing

3. Expect the Unexpected

Part 2: Drawing the Map

4. A Good Womb

5. The Grand Entrance

6. Making the Bond and Breaking It

7. The Guiding Light

8. The Eye of the Beholder

9. Empowerment

Part 3: The Journey

10. How Rebirthing Happens

11. The Happening

12. Rebirthing at Home

13. Journey's End

Appendices

Notes

Selected Reading

Useful Addresses

.

All case histories in this book are included with permission, and all names and life circumstances have been changed to protect confidentiality

Introduction

Breath is our companion - on our travels to deep levels and wide horizons of consciousness - in search of the true self.

[Wilfried Ehrmann, Ph.D., Breath is Your Companion]

Rebirthing is a breathing technique. It is very simple to learn and comes quite easily and naturally to the vast majority of the people who use it. But its simplicity is deceptive. If you were to watch someone rebirthing, you might see their chest moving, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes hardly moving at all. You might see them shift about, yawn, scratch. There might be some crying, sometimes quite a lot of crying. There might also be some laughter. And, at the end of the session, you might see someone so deeply relaxed that they haven't a tense muscle in their body. You might also notice radiant skin, luminous eyes and a face that, at least for a time, looks years younger than when they lay down to begin the breathing session just an hour earlier.

But nothing you can see would give you any indication of the depth and wonder of the world you can't see, the world rebirthing opens up inside the person who is breathing. Sometimes that world is experienced physically. The rebirthee may feel tingling in their hands or feet, changes in their body temperature or localized pain. They may experience waves of energy moving upwards, gathering in intensity until they come cascading back downwards after reaching the head. The rebirthee may see fabulous swirling colors, hear sounds, experience deep relaxation or feel their whole body vibrate with aliveness and vitality.

That world also contains memories from the distant and not-so distant past, memories that have been forgotten and ones that have never been forgotten. These memories are more real than anything we normally recall because in rebirthing they are multi-dimensional. In other words, it is more like reliving than remembering. Although the memories can be very real, the rebirthee always knows where he or she is - lying down in their rebirther's consulting room. This is because, while rebirthing, linear time disappears. We can be deep in the past and fully in the present all at once. And sometimes rebirthees describe what they experience as coming from another lifetime, a previous incarnation.

The inner world is emotional. The rebirthee can feel intense joy and intense sadness. They can feel fear, anger, the pain of loss or abandonment, sorrow, disgust ... And then, as they keep breathing, those emotions fade away. They become integrated, worked through, relegated to their rightful place within the breather. But there are also other emotions: joy, contentment, peace, or satisfaction so intense it is physical as well as emotional. The end result is a growing sense of lightness, freedom and well-being.

There is also a place for the mind. In the same way as our sense of time dissolves into something more fluid, the usual limitations to our thinking also fade away. We cease to think in the forms and structures of everyday life and the result can be very valuable and profound insights into ourselves, others and life itself. These insights are like little epiphanies, moments of real and lasting change and from them life can flow more creatively.

Rebirthing is a journey inwards into the past. It is often about revisiting birth. Birth is a deeply formative experience which can lay down patterns of behavior so strong they affect every aspect of our life. Revisiting birth through rebirthing can help dissolve these old patterns. But birth memories don't arise for everyone. This is because rebirthing is much more than revisiting birth. Rebirthing is also about resolving the many layers of past experience most people carry around with them. And as these layers fall away, the rebirthee can feel reborn in a much broader sense. Then rebirthing becomes a journey outwards - a journey into the world, claiming a place within it, living creatively. It is a journey towards connection, towards a feeling of belonging, not just or necessarily with people, but within the grand scheme of things, the ecosystem or however each person defines what has traditionally been called creation.

Rebirthing is a healing technique, but in rebirthing healing is not just the product of arriving at some form of understanding and intellectual clarity. It is not simply the cathartic release of emotion and it is not only the dissolving of energy blocks in the body. Rebirthing is all of these things. The mind, the body, the emotions and the spirit are all engaged at once in a world where time and normal limitations of thought, feeling and the senses dissolve into a flowing, uplifting experience of regeneration. Because of this, healing through rebirthing is deep and profound. It is experienced with the whole of one's being rather than at just one level of existence. Rebirthing is the difference between believing and really knowing something, between dipping your toe in the water and actually swimming, between thinking about eating a slice of cake and seeing, touching, smelling and actually eating it.

A Personal Experience

I began training as a rebirther in the early 90's. Rebirthers learn a lot from their clients, so every so often I review my client case histories to see if any relevant patterns are emerging. One particular group of clients, mostly women in their late twenties and early thirties, when asked why they wanted to do rebirthing, gave almost word for word, the same answer: 'I don't know who I am and I don't know what I want'. And that was exactly the point in my own life at which I came to rebirthing.

I had just returned home after several years in the United States where I had been busy developing an ulcer and chronic back pain from the stress of teaching in a New York City high school. As a child I had many ambitions, most of them secret. I wanted to write books and to find a job I would love and which would make me want to go to work in the morning. I was told many times that such a job didn't exist and as for the writing, in the depressed Ireland of the 1960s and '70s, book contracts were the prerogative of other people, not me. So instead I trained as a teacher. It was a nice, secure, respectable job helping people and doing good in the world. But the first time I set foot in a classroom as a teacher I knew that I was in the wrong job.

Most of my clients who identify their problems as not knowing who they are, also have good jobs they don't like and sometimes even hate. They stick with those jobs for the same reason I stayed with teaching for so long - it was something I 'should' do. The word should is very important. For many people it becomes a kind of tyranny. I should stay in a job that is leading me to a nervous breakdown because it is all about helping others and I should help others, or because it pays well and at my age I should be earning lots of money. I should solve people's problems for them, feel bad when my partner feels bad, phone someone I have no desire to talk to, keep my mouth shut when I am bursting to express opinions that others won't like, say 'yes' when I mean 'no' ... The list is endless. I have found for myself and my clients that the word 'should' can be a gateway into the past and to what is troubling them most. For example, when a child molds themselves to the needs of others, they tend to lose sight of themselves. They begin to forget what their own needs are and soon they are making choices and decisions based on what they should do rather that what they want. The result can be a deeply unhappy child. As an adult the wrong career choice or a bad relationship can simply be the visible face of issues that run very deep. Beneath the surface can lurk depression, the loneliness of never connecting honestly with another person, shyness and the feeling of suffocation that comes from walking around imprisoned behind a facade from which there seems to be no escape.

For me, the necessity of finding a new career was the catalyst that set off a series of coincidences that fall into the category of what Carl Jung called 'synchronicity'.[1] I could do something about a career, the rest I was stuck with for life. But the new career and the new way of being began one evening on a bus.

I was coming home from yet another failed interview when a woman I hadn't seen in nearly twenty years boarded the bus. She was embarking on a new career that combined traditional health practices with complementary therapy. I had never heard of complementary therapy. She suggested she and I go out to dinner with her cousin whom I had known in secondary school and gave me her phone number. I promptly lost it. About a year later, while clearing out some boxes, I came across the tiny piece of paper with her phone number on it and within a week the three of us were sitting in a restaurant in Dublin talking about rebirthing. My friend from school had become a rebirther. Listening to them talk I thought they were both totally bonkers. Of course I couldn't possibly rock the boat by saying this, so I just listened and nodded in what I thought were the right places. But one thing I couldn't deny was that my old school friend was a very much happier and younger looking woman than the one I had last seen over 10 years earlier.

Sometime later another friend heard a rebirther trainer speaking about rebirthing on a radio show that he normally never listens to. There was a training course coming up and my friend suggested I go to the introductory talk. We both went. I can't remember the exact details of what was said at the talk, but what I heard was that this breathing technique offered me the chance to escape from something I believed I would just have to live with for life. In the light of this, career opportunities became irrelevant. It was something I wanted to do for myself.

Before being accepted for the course, I had to do a rebirthing session. I told my rebirther that I didn't really have any problems, I just wasn't fulfilling my potential. She got me to lie down and begin the breathing technique and it was one of the most physically painful experiences I have ever had. Every joint in my body locked in tetany and I could feel something terrifying and heavy pressing down on top of me. In hindsight I would say it was the memory of a very difficult birth, but at the time, all I knew was that this technique worked. I realized that training in rebirthing was the right thing for me to do.

During my training I came to understand that rebirthing is about freedom. It is a fast and amazingly effective way of liberating our core selves from inner constraints, from the tyranny of 'should', from the strait-jacket of a lifetime of conditioning. The result is a life lived creatively, a life lived in daily contact with who we are, not who we think we should be.

So what of childhood dreams? I had many jobs in my life before becoming a rebirther. Some, like waitressing, I enjoyed, at least for a while, but the enjoyment or satisfaction didn't last. In the years since I trained as a rebirther, however, I've enjoyed work I never would have envisaged for myself before then. But what has surprised me most is that I have been able to do something I never thought I was capable of - public speaking. Now I give lectures, run courses in personal development, chair committees and speak at conferences - all things I would have once found impossible. This discovery of hidden talents, abilities and interests is something I have seen again and again in clients and it never ceases to amaze them.

Who Does Rebirthing?

Rebirthing is a journey towards freedom. But the obstacles to freedom are many and varied and it is these obstacles that propel people into seeking therapy through rebirthing. They include:

* relationship difficulties or patterns that keep repeating themselves in every relationship

* not knowing who you are or what you want

* not living up to your potential

* feeling trapped in a way of being, stressed out by efforts to please others

* stress

* job-related problems

* depression

* anxiety, panic attacks, phobias

* shyness and low self-esteem, lack of confidence

* general unhappiness with what seems like every aspect of your life

* an inability to feel

* abuse

* simply wanting to get to know yourself better and enjoy life more.

This list is not exhaustive. People come for all sorts of reasons and rebirthing addresses all these issues and more. But it is important to remember that rebirthing isn't just about resolving problems. It's also about feeling more alive, free and in touch with the self.

How to Use this Book

This book is written as an introduction to rebirthing. But just