Nurturing Your Inner Garden: Breathwork is the Fertile Soil for Personal Growth

In recent years, I’ve come to develop a love for producing my own food at home. Everything from looking after chickens for free-range eggs to building planter boxes to grow organic fruits, herbs, and vegetables. And I can tell you now, it hasn’t been easy, but it’s very, very satisfying.

But here’s something that I’ve learned so far: It doesn’t matter if I have a world-class tomato seed, if the environmental conditions aren’t right, the seed won’t grow to its full potential. Let me explain.

The Seed and its Environment

Just imagine that you had a seed from a world-class tomato and planted it in dry, rocky, barren soil. The tomato seed may sprout, but there’s a high chance it won’t grow well or produce anything at all. The same would go if we were to plant that seed in a sandy environment; maybe it would grow a little better. If we were to plant it in standard backyard soils, it would grow much better and produce some fruit. However, it's until we plant that tomato seed in fertile, rich soil, tend to the competing weeds, and nurture it with the correct food, water, and sunlight that it can reach its genetic potential and produce world-class fruit.

And the same goes for any old seed. Its chance of reaching its full potential really comes down to the environment it’s planted in.

We Are No Different

We are no different from the tomato seed. Our ability to reach our full potential comes down to our ability to plant ourselves in a fertile, rich environment and tend to the competing influences in our environment that inhibit our growth.

This could mean addressing things like:

• Lifestyle Behaviours: Cultivating energy and vitality by making conscious choices about drinking, eating, physical activity, and screen time.

• Social Circle: Evaluating the people you spend the most time with; do they embody the values and life you aspire to?

• Self-Talk: Reflecting on your relationship with yourself; are your thoughts empowering or filled with doubt?

• Unresolved Emotional Trauma: Acknowledging and processing unresolved emotional events that shape your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.

All of these elements shape how you show up in the world and influence the life you know you have the potential to live.

Liberating Energy Through Breathwork

If you've been living a significant part of your life suppressing the flow of energy through your mind and body due to destructive habits or a lack of strategies to process old, stuck emotions, then the number one thing you need to do is liberate energy.

Breathwork offers a logical starting point because the simple act of consciously and intentionally changing your breathing rhythm creates immediate change with the autonomic functions within your body which can lead to a very visceral or sometimes very subtle release of energy within the nervous system.

This occurs because due to prolonged exposure to dis-stress or traumatic experiences can lead to chronic Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) activation and patterns of shallow breathing and over time this dis-regulated breathing pattern becomes a part of the trauma response.

This breathing pattern is typically characterised by rapid and shallow breathing and can cause a drop in the carbon dioxide levels in the blood which is known as alkalosis and contributes to further feelings of anxiety and a dissociation to reality.

Breathing is the logical starting place because with conscious connected breathing, we emphasise deep, rhythmic and intentional breathing which reverses alkalosis by:

• Increasing Oxygen Intake: Allowing more oxygen to transfer into the blood stream.

• Balancing Carbon Dioxide Levels: Help dispel excess CO2 in the blood

This process leads to increased blood flow and oxygen circulation in areas of the body that were previously constricted due to stress, along with a release of tension, toxins, and metabolites that were suppressed.

To illustrate this, picture yourself at the beach, attempting to submerge a soccer ball beneath the water's surface. Consider the tremendous amount of energy it takes to keep that ball underwater, especially while manoeuvring the passing waves. Holding the ball down demands increasingly more energy as time passes.

And that is what happens when traumatic memories are suppressed for extended periods of time. Just as with the soccer ball, the longer you suppress these memories, the more energy it consumes.

During a Breakthrough Breathwork Session, the act of ‘letting-go’ transcends the thinking part of your brain, which tries to protect you by holding these memories down and constructing your view of reality and sense of identity in a way to keep you safe.

Instead it allows you to connect with the limbic part of your brain where all the emotional responses are stored and allows the intelligence of the body to naturally do what it is meant to do: to release the chaotic and incoherent energy created by dis-stress through a somatic response…

Which is like letting go of the ball and the energy potential propels the ball to the surface.

Leading to a more coherent autonomic state.

When the autonomic nervous system becomes highly synchronised and organised through intentional breathing it’s sending very synchronised and organised messages to all the other systems in the body and the outcome generally is a biological upgrade.

Why?

Because stress creates a dis-regulation or a dis-integration to the autonomic nervous system which in turn can lead to a host of physical and psychological challenges.

However when you learn how to self regulate, your autonomic nervous system regains its natural rhythm and healing, health and energy soon return.

Although I recommend Breakthrough Breathwork to be done under the supervision of an experienced practitioner, you can still create a state of coherence in a matter of minutes…

Step 1: Find a comfortable position

It’s all about comfort. Find a chair, a nice corner of your living room, or a cushion. Keep your back straight. Rest your hand on your heart or wherever they feel most comfortable.

Step 2: Become of your heart space

Now that you are comfortable, it’s time to notice your body. Focus your attention on your heart space. Feel the touch of your hands on your heart, feel the breath moving in and out of this area and relax any areas in your body where you feel tense or tight.

Step 3: Notice your breath

Redirect your attention to the natural flow of your breath. Intentionally change the rhythm of your breath so that you’re inhaling slowly, gently and deeply through your nose to the count of 5 seconds in and 5 seconds out.

Step 4: Generate a positive feeling

As you breathe, imagine that each breath is flowing in and out directly through your heart space and start cultivating feelings of care, compassion, love or gratitude while maintaining the rhythmic pattern of breathing.

Step 5: Expand this feeling

Breath into this feeling and imagine you can grow this feeling so that it fills your entire body and out into the space around you and continue this rhythmic, intentional breathing for 5-10 minutes.

And this my friend is Heart Coherent Breathing - click here for a guided video

In Conclusion

Just as we nurture a seed in fertile soil to unlock its full potential, we too must create the right internal and external conditions in our environment for our growth.

The seeds of your potential already exist within you and breathwork serves as the fertile ground in which you can plant yourself and liberate the energy needed to break old patterns.

If you’re ready to experience the profound transformation that Breakthrough Breathwork provides, this is your invitation to book a Virtual Breakthrough Breathwork experience today!