my second great awakening . . .

After my first awakening I immersed myself in many different courses in self development, excited as I was to pursue this where I could. One of these courses included an introduction to this breathing technique, which meant that for just one evening we would be doing something called ‘rebirthing’.

Now I must confess I had my doubts about this and for a time even considered skipping that particular segment of the course altogether. I honestly wondered if I might not be better occupied spending the evening in a local hostelry! The term rebirthing had never come across my path before, and a part of me thought, here we go, this is some new agey thing. I even thought it might be the kind of breathing they do in prenatal classes!! Such was my ignorance at the time! And, as I was the only bloke in the class I was, shall we say, a tad apprehensive. However, while I’ve been called many things in life, timid was never one of them. So I thought, hell, if I’m doing this course I’m doing it all. I’ve always been like that, if I start something I like to do it thoroughly; I like to finish stuff.

Well, I can tell you what happened that night knocked me to the floor! (that is if I hadn’t already been lying on it!) Suffice to say it was nothing like I had been expecting. As I started breathing I felt this incredible connection with everything. It felt as if a force was lifting me up towards the ceiling, literally pulling me out of my body. This wasn’t scary, in fact quite the opposite. At one point I thought I was going to die, but death held no terror, rather a fearless encounter with the possibility of infinite love. Should I die I knew I was going to a place so beautiful and safe that I almost welcomed it. Ok it was a bit scary but nice scary, if you know what I mean! I really felt a lot of divine energy in the room that night. Afterwards I felt really spaced out, like punch drunk. But I also felt amazingly good. I remember the others in the room being a bit taken aback at my experience, so perhaps it was slightly unusual. What I experienced that night can only be described as total Bliss.

Now it’s important to emphasise that not everyone has this feeling of utter bliss the first time they try rebirthing, or even if they’ve been doing it for some time. Obviously everyone’s experience will be uniquely theirs, and different. But I can honestly say that I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t had some experience, some positive reaction to it. I’ve yet to meet someone who’s tried rebirthing and said nothing happened. Yes there was some discomfort in the experience too, I got a lot of tetany (that’s tightening in the hands or extremities), and yes there was some fear. But it was like the place I was being drawn to was where fear would end forever. And the fear was me, or my body, actually resisting going to that place. Mad as it may seem, while really wanting to go there I was fiercely resisting it at the same time. After that first experience I started going for regular rebirthing sessions. I’ve had similar blissful experiences since then, although not every time I breathe, but I had it a lot in those early days, accompanied by a sense that I had severed a connection with my earthly lineage, and formed a new higher one.

For a more detailed account of rebirthing, its background and features, see here

The Breath is Life.

When we breathe we take in prana, which is life-force energy, also known as chi or ki. The manner in which we breathe determines how much prana we take in, and how efficiently we live our lives. There is a natural balance between the oxygen we take into our bodies, and the carbon dioxide we expel. Also the amount of prana we ingest and apana we release. However, most people do not breathe properly, and breathe in a shallow kind of way. They do not complete their breath. You can observe this if you watch people talking, most people start a new sentence before finishing the one they’re on. Further, if you observe the movement in their chest, you’ll notice they’re starting to inhale the next breath before they’ve completed exhaling the one they’re on. This form of incomplete breathing, called subventilation, is seen in some asthma sufferers, and can lead to anxiety, and the inability to relax properly; symptoms endemic in today’s society.

The opposite to this is when the exhale is forced out, in a panting manner. When one breathes this way the body restricts the amount of oxygen being released from the blood into the tissues, and carbon dioxide levels become depleted. This is known as hyperventilation, and is usually what happens when people start rebirthing. Hyperventilation is caused by too much rapid, middle chest breathing. Conscious connected breathing is clavicular, or upper chest breathing. It is circular in nature, that is one breathes through the mouth without any pause between the inhale at the top and the exhale at the bottom. The process should be smooth and even, and the rhythm allows us access to unconscious material.

But, eager to succeed, as we all are in the beginning, people try too hard and so force the exhale, resulting in hyperventilation. Also because we have resistance to this unconscious material we push against it, thus exhaling too strongly. This can lead to the condition known as tetany, an involuntary contraction of the muscles leading to a temporary paralysis of some part of they body, usually the hands. It can also occur in the face or the feet as well. I used to get it a lot around the waist. It is characterised by a tightening feeling, which if prolonged can become quite painful. It is perfectly harmless though and will pass as soon as you soften the exhale. However, instead of doing this people tend to break the circular rhythmic breathing altogether, for a few seconds at least, which of course interrupts the rebirthing process.

Did you ever notice that during a crisis situation people have a tendency to hold their breath? Undoubtedly you’ve done it yourself at some time, like when you were up for an important interview, or awaiting the results of tests in a clinic. We have a tendency at such times to subventilate, to automatically shut down the very mechanism we need for survival at the crucial moment when we need it. This could be a lot to do with our birth process. It’s like a spontaneous thing, something happens, bang! we stop breathing. Almost like some part of us is saying, ‘God, now I want to die’.

Emerging from the womb to the outside world is a hugely traumatic experience. When a newborn takes its first breath often the throat is filled with mucus and amniotic fluid, thus the sensation is like that of breathing through mud. Now here’s the scary bit. This first breath happens at the moment the umbilical cord is severed, so it can feel like death! Now if the oxygen supply has been cut off too quickly, which is usually what happens, you experience your first breath as a kind of gulping phenomenon. This is a bit like being submerged in water and suddenly as you’re wrenched back out the air rushes into your throat violently, encountering tiny walls of water that blocks its passage. The air battles for space. For a few moments you feel like you’re choking. To the newborn this can be quite terrifying, and often results in the act of breathing itself being associated with pain (hence our subventilation tendency). Having not yet mastered the art of breathing on its own yet, the child panics and thinks it’s going to die.

And with that emotional trauma, that terror, that momentary belief that it is going to die, a false idea gets imprinted on the brain. This is the first thought you have about yourself, your new world, and it’s often a thought about scarcity, i. e. lack of air. And we carry this with us throughout our lives. Thus any crisis can be a replaying of that first breath, resulting in an unconscious injunction not to breathe. Sadly few ever realize that this is a very unnatural state to live in. We don’t know who we are without our pain, without our fear. When we get rebirthed, when we learn to breathe again, whether you experience bliss as I did, or not, we begin the road back to full knowing of who we are. Then, instead of accepting our limitation, we can truly say with the poet, that, “trailing clouds of glory we come, from God, who is our home”.

That’s my personal account of my first experience with rebirthing, or my ‘second great awakening’ as I like to call it. For a detailed account of conscious connected breathing, or rebirthing go to

Breathwork - the science behind conscious connected breathing.