BREATHWORK


Long story short: relationships had always been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for me – sometimes great and sometimes disastrous, but more or less manageable. Deep into adulthood my inner life


really started growing pear-shaped after having children of my own. Everything from my own childhood that I had been able to contain was suddenly too much. I knew some serious inner work was required with a now eight- year-old step-daughter and newborn twins to care for. Twenty-odd years of consciousness and mind therapies were not cutting it any more. Through what I consider a happy


conspiracy of the universe, I discovered breathwork and body psychotherapy. This new way of healing my disarrayed life felt like a powder keg and a large, soft blanket all at the same time – something that allowed me to let go and trust myself to feel fully, breathe properly, move my body, express myself and connect to an original sense of myself… all while being witnessed and lovingly supported throughout. As uncomfortable as this was at


times, my sessions left me in a state of connection, feeling more love and joy, physical freedom in my body and, most of all, deep mental and emotional peace. I was less driven, anxious and moody. Family and friends felt the positive effects directly. My relationship to the world started to change, and, most surprisingly, the mine-field- difficult relationship with my mother transformed. After I had ‘forgiven’ her and given up on the idea that we could ever connect in a healthy way, our


46 JULY | AUGUST 2017


relationship began to transform – all without her knowing a thing about what I was doing in my healing work. The truth is she only changed in


response to me. Releasing the grief and sense of childhood loss around her in particular was very hard – it brings tears now, remembering – but the opening it created in my heart for myself and for my family was worth each tear. Everything changed. Because I saw us differently, it changed the way I related to myself as a mother and a woman. Suddenly all my relationships with women bloomed. I also quietly fell in love with myself, and my intimate partnership reflected that too. Throughout, it was my body that was leading this process of healing; not my mind. Here’s the most interesting part –


the deeper I explored what my body held, the more I discovered what my thoughts, beliefs and judgements really were, and the more I came to realise there is no thought without an emotional and energetic correlative in the body. None of these processes exists without


a correlation in our consciousness either. Since then I’ve read the great quantum science discoveries that reflect this, and so much more, but how nice it is to feel it in the body and my relationships. To my delight I now realise that in a


way the gurus were right, but what they could have been saying is, ‘You are not JUST your body’. You are not just pure consciousness either. Everything really is connected and it’s important to include the body as a source for spiritual, mental and emotional healing. The body, after all, gives us the sensations of our experiences upon which we build a sense of who we are in the world. When we hurt, it affects our whole


self. The protections we adopt against feeling that hurt show up as problems in our relationships way down the track, even when we want good things and do what’s right to bring them about. The armour we’ve built against hurt


is unconscious and doesn’t discriminate between positive or negative energy. This is a dilemma when it comes to love. Love is, after all, energetic in


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