How is it different from slow breathing?
Slow breathing calms the nervous system down. Connected breathing does something else. It brings energy and sensation up, and with them, the feelings you've been holding down.
Both have their place, and I use both. Some days your body needs to settle. Other days it's ready to feel.
Where it comes from
Long before breath was studied in labs, it was held as sacred. People across the world have worked with the breath for centuries, as medicine, as prayer, and as a way back to the body and to something greater than ourselves. In Arabic, nafas (breath) and nafs (soul) share a root. The breath and the spirit are one.
Conscious connected breathwork, as it's practiced today, took shape only in the last few decades. But it stands on this much older ground. When I guide breath, I try to honor that it doesn't belong to any one method or teacher. It belongs to all of us, and our ancestors have been breathing this way toward feeling for a very long time.
What does it feel like?
Everyone is different, and the same person can have very different sessions. These are some common experiences:
- tingling in your hands, or around your mouth
- feeling hot or cold
- cramping in your hands, which passes when your breathing returns to normal
- waves of emotion, like crying, anger, laughter, or all of them at once
- memories or images rising up
- a deep quiet afterward
- nothing at all
Why I use it with chronic pain
Breath is the bridge between your conscious mind and your autonomic nervous system, and conscious connected breathwork is a beautiful way to walk across that bridge together.
When pain is protecting you from something you haven't been able to feel, the breath can give that feeling a way to move. I wrote more about this in What does breath have to do with chronic pain?
What happens in a session?
We begin by arriving: grounding, settling in, and making sure you feel safe enough to breathe. Then I guide you into the breath, and support you to stay with whatever comes up in your body. Afterward, we take time to rest and reflect, and I give you simple tools to use between sessions.
We move at your pace. You can slow down or stop at any point.
With love,
Leyla
