Breathwork and Coaching
At first glance it might seem seem an “interesting” pairing – Life Coaching is about talking, asking questions and helping people see things from different perspectives, whereas breathwork is an active breathing meditation where you don’t do much talking at all! So how do the two, quite different, approaches work together?
Life Coaching is a cognitive approach, we use our brains to think about what’s going on in our lives, where we want to bring about change and what we’d like our lives to be like in the future. There’s a lot of thinking, and processing, and talking(!) in coaching. A lot of big questions, maybe even starting to think about something from a different perspective. In coaching we can often work towards an end goal or resolution – that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have a definitive “end point” in mind, you might focus more on getting some clarity around a particular situation, or talking something through to better understand your options.
In contrast, breathwork involves us being in our bodies. breathwork is a somatic practice, a “mind-body” practice. It originates from India and is a form of pranayama. Breathwork helps us to connect back into our bodies – when we ignore our bodies, our emotions and feelings, they don’t disappear. When we push our emotions down and away, we don’t fully process them and so those emotions and feelings stay in our bodies. A great example of this is when our bodies get stiff and tight, often around our upper back and shoulders, when we are stressed. Conversely, have you noticed how relaxed you feel after a good massage? As the tension held in your body is worked out by the massage therapist, your brain follows suit and you can feel SO much more relaxed. Breathwork is a way to help you connect back to your body and, as such, it’s not uncommon for people to cry or laugh or even yell in a breathwork session! While each session is different for each person each time, the releasing of emotion is often a common occurrence.
So why combine breathwork with coaching?
Often there are two parts, or two factors, involved in making any change in life (be that making a change to your life, letting go of limiting beliefs etc) There’s the brain part, the perceived “rational” part and there’s the emotional part that lives in your body.
If we take the example of letting go of a limiting belief – there’s the “rational” side of the belief and understanding how that impacts on your life and there’s also the deeper side. That deeper side might, for example, be an old memory of something someone said to you when you were a kid. Breathwork helps us tap into this deeper layer and to tune into our bodies, once we start to do this, we can allow ourselves to feel all the feelings about it and then, we can start to let it go.
Let me give you an example:
Let’s take the limiting belief that “I am a bad dancer.”
When we talk it though we start to understand that this limiting belief means that we NEVER dance, not at a family wedding, not at a party, not even in the kitchen. We know that we want to dance but we also think that we aren’t any good at it so we hide ourselves away and never dance.
When we introduce breathwork, we might find that we had a lot of sadness or anger about never having hit the dance floor. We may also start to feel into the frustration of sitting on the sidelines when we really wanted to jump up and join in.
Breathwork might also bring up an old memory of being a little kid and dancing in the kitchen when someone came in, laughed at us and made fun of our amazing little kid dance moves.
Through breathwork we can connect back in with that feeling of being that little kid in the kitchen and tune into how that must have felt. We can allow ourselves to cry about it, we can allow ourselves to get mad about it, or maybe even laugh about it! Through breathwork we might also connect in with that little kid version of ourselves and let them know that they are an AMAZING mover and that person was just being mean.
Breathwork can help us to get a deeper understanding of our own selves – it can help us to unpack the feelings that we may have pushed down or away, because we were unable to process them at the time.
As we get more in tune with, and start to know our own selves better, we can make decisions from a more aligned place – rather than just from our brain telling us what we “should do.” We can start to realise how much we are carrying around with us and start to put it down. We can get clearer on what we truly want AND why it’s important to us. We can feel into what truly right for us, the path we want to take and the way we want to show up and live in the world.
Breathwork can help in SO many different areas of life, from relationships with others, to learning to truly love yourself, even helping you find your way in the world!
If you’re ready to explore coaching and / or breathwork, why not book in for a 15 min chat to find out how breathwork and coaching can help you.
You can also try breathwork for yourself with me downloadable guided breathwork meditation.
