ALUNA TEMPLE MAGAZINE EDITION No5 'ALCHEMY' | Page 14

‘Take this,’ I was told, and i took the brown paper bag he gave me and put it to
my mouth.
‘Now breathe deeply ten times.’ I did what I was told. It felt a little strange.
Someone held me from behind with his arms around my chest, squeezed tight,
and told me to exhale all the way. Again I did as I was told, and as he gently
laid me down on the floor I had my first out-of-body experience. I was eight
years old.
The next time I was taught about how significant breath can be was when I
fathered my first child. I was only eighteen, and my wife and I attended breath
work classes during her pregnancy, specifically to ease her and our son
through the birthing process. As her coach, that was my first experience as a
breath worker.
Since then I have eagerly
explored all forms that came my
way (see bio), and some of the
most significant shifts in my life
have happened as a result of the
practice.
Correspondingly, I notice that in
the most fearful moments of my
life - the stickiest ones - I don’t
breathe at all.
Exploration © Rolf Gibbs

What happens to your breath when you get shocked
or upset?
Trauma takes away the breath, and the fact that we stop breathing when we
are in difficulty embeds the trauma even deeper in the body.
It gets stuck and obstructs the free flow of energy. This un-ease eventually
leads to dis-ease. For example, we now know that cancer cells need an
anaerobic (deprived of oxygen) environment to thrive, yet we are breathing
less and less.

By breathing deeply, consciously and fully, we are increasing
our oxygen supply and strengthening our immune system too.
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