Connect With Your Luminous Self: Breathwork Meditation

Guest post by Jenna Reiss

You are magnificent, we already know that, and I hope you do too. But your magnificence can get hidden or be forgotten when we’re faced with survival or emergency mode. That’s not a state we can live in for an extended period of time, and yet that is what we are experiencing in 2020.

Breathwork and meditation are tools that can create stability, peace of mind and trust in the unknown path ahead. More specifically, breathwork meditation* has the ability to help you clear, move through conscious and unconscious belief systems you hold in your body, so that you can connect with the innately compassionate, friendly, luminous self that you are. 

If we haven’t learned before, we certainly are learning now that taking care of yourself mentally and emotionally is important to living a happy life. What seems to have become more apparent now than ever is how your self-care practices help guide you through difficult times. Here’s how breathwork can help you take care of yourself when there is so much unknown and instability around you, and really, these are ways of being that you can adopt today without ever even trying breathwork. 

1. Feel it to heal it. There’s s no way through pain, or difficult times, but through. When you lay down for breathwork, your body will show you, give you the experience you are in need of healing. It's a time to let go of the active mind, which is very busy these days, and in the process of doing so, helps you see through anxieties and fears. In order to “feel better”, or to not feel consumed by your fears, we must first feel what we are being asked to heal. As uncomfortable as it can be, healing requires feeling, and it’s in this process of feeling all emotions that you learn to work with your fears and anxieties so they don’t own you, but rather shape you. 

2. An unveiling of explosive GOODness. Breathwork isn’t always going to feel GOOD, and it isn’t always going to wrap your healing up in a pretty bow. But eventually, over time as you heal, as you move through some of the stickier energies, the pain, it will feel like an unveiling of explosive GOODness in your life and in the world around you. When you’re feeling what you need to feel, and healing what you need to heal, the joy in life becomes brighter, too. Sometimes it takes a trip through some darkness to get there, but it is possible. I witness it everyday.

3. Connecting with your own authentic heart. Breathwork will support you in chipping away at your pain, at your darkness, at your unconscious beliefs, and help you feel more you. There’s this beautiful authentic heart within you, that magnificence that gets bogged down in life. That’s not something we can stop, but what we can do is make the conscious choice to heal, to grow, to accept evolution and even embrace it, so that we can feel connected to ourselves. Breathwork connects you to your natural state of being, your own authentic heart living inside you. 

As with any meditation practice, the trick with breathwork is that you can’t lean on your practice with an expectation that it’ll make you feel better. As soon as you start doing that, you take the magic out of the practice. But when you can let go of expectations, of the need to get anything from the practice itself, that is how you’re able to reap the real explosive GOODness that comes from daily practice with healing. 

Breathwork meditation is a powerful practice to support you in caring for you and your wild, authentic heart. You deserve to stand firmly rooted on solid ground. You deserve to be cared for.

*If you’ve never heard of breathwork before, here’s a brief explanation of the practice:

Breathwork is an active meditation aimed at moving energy in the body. You breathe through an open mouth, deep into your belly and then into your high chest or heart, and then exhale. The practice continues on like this for a handful of minutes, until you rest your breath, relax, and feel the GOODness that is your own energy. Throughout the process you might scream, you might cry, you might laugh, until ultimately you release. Every experience, every session is individualized and is always the experience that you and your body need as it relates to your healing. Feel free to reach out to Jenna if you have any questions about your practice, or lean on the below resources for more information.

About Jenna

Jenna Reiss is a celebrated healer, author, and breathwork coach based in Los Angeles, California. Follow Jenna here.

Image: Terricks Noah

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