THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BREATHWORK TECHNIQUES AND MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT BREATHWORK - SOMA Breath

So there are a few misconceptions around breath work that I want to try and clear up in this video. Now, there are so many different breath work styles out there, it can be overwhelming to understand which one should you choose and what does each one actually do. So I'm going to help you by understanding the mechanism of breathing and how breath works to be able to ascertain what is the right technique for you to choose the given situation. Okay, so let's talk about some of the really popular types of breathwork and breathing practices that exist today. So you have holotropic breathwork, which was created by Stanislav Groth. He was.

An amazing psychotherapist who used LSD for the first time in psychotherapy and then he needed a replacement for it when it got made illegal. And he discovered that these breathing practices, which he called holotropic breathwork, could actually create psychedelic effects similar to like lsd. So he developed this.

Holotropic breathing practice.

Then you have like rebirthing, which kind of originated around the similar time by Leonard Orr.

And he claims that actually he was given this technique by an immortal yogi called Babaji who lives thousands of years and gave him this technique who said that this technique is what will lead to your own immortality and to share it with the world. So we're going to go into that method as well and explain to you the ins and outs of it and whether there's any legitimate reason for his story being true. So then.

There is like the Wim Hof method.

And then there's Soma breath, which is what we've created. And then the kind of original breathing practices from like African shamanism, Russian shamanism, the Vedic practices, from yoga, Tantra, Pranayama, the Chinese Qigong system, they all exist as well. But really breathwork was given as a name more to holotropic and rebirthing. That's what breathwork was recognized as until more recent times when Wim Hof came in, became the super famous celebrity and made breathing practices more famous with Wim Hof method. He gladly say that he's the one who made breathwork the.

Household name almost that it is today. So let's talk about the fundamental differences between these techniques because it's really important, really, really important to understand. So holotropic and rebirthing are pretty similar where holotropic also has a feature of music.

Most holotropic breathing sessions are going to be involved in music and what it is, is very rhythmical, but you do it in your own rhythm. Breath where you're, you're breathing quite fast rate, I think, in through your mouth, out through your mouth and letting go on the exhale.

It's like that. And I've also seen holotropic breath that done where it's like more like Kapalbhati, which is a Pranayama technique where you're.

Sucking in your belly or breathing out fast through your nose at the same time as sucking in your belly.

Like that over and over and over again. And the other, the other breathing practice where you're breathing through your mouth.

Is also a type of Brastrika from Pranayama where you're doing very fast like hyperventilating style breathing. And the idea is you just do this for like an hour, even two hours.

And this is supposed to trigger a, in the own words of like Stanislav Grof himself, like a near death like experience which triggers like hallucinations.

Kind of past life traumas become cleared because you become like you release them from your muscle memory through your this rhythmic breathing. But it's like almost like inducing trauma to clear trauma. It's like waking up trauma through a controlled trauma from breathing in this hyperventilating like state. The triggers, it kind of wakes up like suppressed emotions. They've been suppressed for a long time. So some people at the end of these sessions get intense laughter, they scream, cry. Some of them have like crazy panic attacks as well at the end of it because they're just so spooked out by what's going on. But now let's look at that and rebirth things pretty much the same. Rebirth is the same thing, but it doesn't usually have so much of a music component. But the breath is similar where you breathe in through your mouth and then let go.

Let go on the exhale and you do this lying down. You'd have a sitter just like in Holotropic Breath Away. You'd be, you'd have somebody sitting down with you. But the mechanisms are same. It's this hyperventilating style breathing that triggers this kind of trauma release at the end. Now.

Let'S go into this and see whether the science of this and the physiological effects of this to see how it could be working the mechanisms and whether it's really a beneficial thing for your health or if it's something more for your psycho spiritual mental health. So.

When you breathe like that, you are hyperventilating. Like I know that there's going to be a lot of debate around this. People who do holotropic breathing and Rebirthing will will argue that this isn't hyperventilating. But I'm a pharmacist, I'm a scientist. I understand the physiological, like the way the breath works. This is hyperventilating. Okay? Whether you like or you're breathing at what hyperventilating mean, it means is breathing at faster rate than normal, okay? And when you breathe at faster rate than normal, hyperventilating, ventilation, it means that you are breathing out a lot of excess carbon dioxide. You're breathing out carbon monoxide faster.

At faster rate than you normally would at rest. And your breathing. And obviously oxygen, Oxygen doesn't change much. Like when you're breathing, even deep breathing, you're pretty much, or even just slightly breathing, you're saturated with oxygen in your red blood cells. But what's happening when you're hyperventilated, it's really affecting the carbon dioxide. So you're breathing out lots of carbon dioxide. And what that means is that you don't have enough carbon dioxide in the system to get the oxygen off the red blood cells into the cells where it needs to go. So you actually. And it's the Bohr effect. It's called the Bohr effect. That gets the oxygen off the red blood cells and allows that oxygen to go to where it needs to go in your body, into the organs and the tissue cells. Now what happens is you end up getting.

A lot of oxygen in your red bloodstream, saturated for a long period of time and not enough oxygen to where it needs to go. And this creates in your symptoms system a state called respiratory alkalosis. And actually you've probably experienced this yourself by accident.

You can get respiratory alkalosis by talking a lot. When you talk for a long period of time, you might get a little bit light headed. And that's because you're breathing a lot of carbon dioxide, okay? And your oxygen is staying stuck to your red blood cells and not going to where it needs to go. So you're getting dizzy, you're feeling a little bit faint, okay? That's why taking some time to have a pause, having a meditation, just not talking actually is really good for your physiology because it stops you from over breathing, from breathing out that carbon dioxide. But when you're.

Like hyperventilating, doing a rebirthing session or holotropic breathing session, same thing's happening. And what's going on now is that you're not getting oxygen to where it needs to go. You may not get a suffocation feeling, okay? You might not feel like suffocating because you think, oh, if you're not getting oxygen to where it needs to go, you feel like it's suffocating. You don't get that because the suffocation thing comes from your lungs and you're constantly breathing. But what's actually happening is you're depleting the cells of your, the rest of your body of oxygen. Okay, it's diminishing, not completely suppressing it, but it's diminishing the oxygen from going to where it needs to go. This leads to respiratory alkalosis, which causes panic attacks, it causes vasoconstriction, you get contraction, it releases emotion. Obviously because of the panic, the state of panic, anxiety, your body literally things is going to die, all right, so you're triggering this state.

However, if it's just done for a short period of time, let's say you do it once in a while, it's not like a chronic thing. That's why if you do this every single day, it's going to lead to, to disease in the body. It's going to negatively affect your body. Just look up respiratory alkalosis, consequences of that. What it does for your health, it's not very good because your body is trying to do whatever it can to maintain a perfect pH. Your body requires perfect ph, which is the acid alkaline balance created by oxygen and carbon dioxide for you to function. And when it goes off balance, you've got disease. So doing holotropic breathwork lots of times a day, doing it every day of the week is not a good idea. Same thing with rebirthing. These should be treated with respect and caution because there is beneficial things that can come from this stress response you're initiating on the body, which is this psychotherapy, therapeutic effects. It's like you get, you hallucinate like you're going through an acid trip. And.

This can have psychotherapy. And if you do it with an instructor who's trained, it can be very beneficial in that right context. But it's not something that you should just do willy nilly on your own because that can lead to problems, especially with your blood pressure, your heart, health and other issues.

But these techniques are also discussed in the ancient school of breathwork, Pranayama. And the similar technique would be Kapalbhati and Bastrika. And these techniques are also also known by more well, astute yogis to also have harmful consequences if you overdo them. And some yogis make a mistake and of thinking that these are beneficial. The reason why they make this mistake because they have a misconception over oxygen. They think that oxygen is this, this thing that we need lots of. We need to deep breathe, do lots of deep breathing. If this was true, that oxygen is the powerful healer that it's been touted as being, obviously it's essential. We need it to produce energy. But too much oxygen, as said by Helmut, sees the guy who coined the term oxidative stress, the doctor like too much oxygen also can cause corrosion like rusting effect, inflammation and disease. Because oxygen is corrosive, it creates fire, it creates byproducts of its metabolism that causes damage to cells. So.

Yogis who really understand this, they'll say, you don't do too much Bhastrika, don't do too many reps of Kapalbhati. You should, if you're going to do that, you must always follow them with breath retention, which is kumbhaka, bhaya kumbhaka and tara kumbhaka, where you're holding your breath. You hold your breath because it corrects the physiological state. It also can, with certain breath retentions, invoke a positive stress response on the body. You may have heard about this in Wim Hof method where he uses the breath retention. There's a reason for the breath withhold in the Wim Hof method. It's very important. Same thing with Soma breath. We derive it from pranayama, which is a specific method of rhythmic breathing followed by breath retention after the exhale and then breath retention on the inhale. And this sequence has many therapeutic benefits because if you don't do too many reps of rhythmic breathing and you do in a gentle way, which doesn't over.

Cause over stress on the body from too much oxygen, it does in a balanced way. This is what we do in Soma breath and it also prepares you because carbon monoxide is what triggers your brain to breathe again. When you blow out all the carbon dioxide.

It allows you to hold your breath longer than you normally can. And so you'll be able to hold your breath for longer periods than you thought you possibly could. And this means that your oxygen levels in your bloodstream actually go down a bit because it's getting consumed. The carbon dioxide rises, oxygen goes down because it's. You're not getting new oxygen by holding your breath. And it's all going into the cells where it needs to go through the Bohr effect because you're raising carbon dioxide. And this actually can have very hyperoxygenation effects of getting the oxygen into the organ cells and the tissue cells where it needs to go rather than it being stuck to your red blood cells. This can be very therapeutic, very healthy. And it's the secret of the mystic yogis who actually preserve these traditions for thousands of years up in the Himalayas. And it's just become resurfaced in, in our recent time. So this is what I've been very fortunate, blessed to learn and share with the world. And so with this awareness of the breath and understanding the role of oxygen and how oxygen can be both very extremely beneficial but also corrosive if it's stuck to your red blood cells, it can give you an understanding now of the mechanism of these techniques like WIM HOF Method, rebirthing, Holotropic and obviously so breath and Pranayama actually is of complete science about this and this is what we base our teachings on and it teaches you each of these techniques. It doesn't like miss out on it. There's eight core techniques in Pranayama. We've taken the most scientifically proven ones that are most effective for your day to day life and made a system out of it that you can use and, and things like the WIM HOF Method and SOMA Breath, we give you daily activities you can do that actually really energizing, good for your health, help you reduce against stress and things like that. In Soma Breath, we also go into the realms of altered states of consciousness with our longer awakening sessions that actually also mimic like what happens in holotropic, but does it in a more subtle, safe and.

More precise way, using the breath and music together, the music being driven by the breath. So it's a really powerful.

System in SOMA because it's not just one size fits all. It's a plethora of different techniques. Now the thing with Holotropic and rebirthing is that they are not meant to be done every single day.

And touted as healthy breathing habits because they encourage mouth breathing and they are hyperventilating whether you like it or not. I can argue this in court. They are hyperventilating and they don't have an emphasis on the breath retention part like we do. So you've got to do them with precaution and do them with an instructor and do it somebody who really understands the psychotherapeutic effects of them and the right time to do them and how to deal with traumas that might come up and be triggered. This is also things that we train our own therapists to do in our SOMA breath courses who do these more Advanced techniques. So holotropic and rebirthing are advanced techniques and they're great for their intention. But when there's people out there saying that they're these cure all techniques and that they are the normal way to breathe and that's how we should be breathing, they're very confused and they're going to cause problems. So we're not into that, we're into the real facts. And Stanislav Grof never said these are, this is how you should breathe normally. Okay? He never mentioned that normal breathing which is discussed in Pranayama should be through your nose and out through your nose and it should be silent and quiet. You don't need to be deep breathing. It's not about the depth, it's all about breathing through your nose and having like as being as efficient at using oxygen as possible. That's what the system of yoga Pranayama does is it means you need less oxygen to create the same amount of energy oxygen efficiency. So your breath becomes quiet, silent, your breath rate slows down, you become more calm, you don't get the panic and the fizzy head of over breathing that you get when you hyperventilate. You don't. And panic attack actually is triggered quite often from hyperventilation as well. And one of the cures for panic is breathing through a paper bag and taking in that carbon dioxide. And that carbon dioxide actually helps you get the oxygen where it needs to go and calms the nervous system down. So that's why nasal breathing, slow breathing rates is how you should breathe normally. However, it should be not forced. And if you have to force yourself to breathe slower, that means actually and, but you really need to breathe more and it's, it's uncomfortable to breathe slower. Then it means you haven't trained, you haven't got healthy. So you need to start doing anaerobic exercise. You need to start doing techniques that actually improves your oxygen efficiency. Buteyko went deep on this. He also studied yogis who are doing this stuff in Himalayas. And we do it as well in Soma Breath. We go very deep into healthy breathing habits you can do every day. And then we also go into all these other techniques you can do on one off occasions, special ceremonies and events you can do to create these spiritual experiences you can get from holotropic and rebirthing. So.

This, hopefully this video is cleared up some of the misconceptions about breathing and the fact that normal breathing is very different from what you do in techniques. They should not confuse techniques, any of these techniques with normal Breathing, normal breathing, as I said, through your nose. Your nose is a filter for the air. It actually purifies the air, preserves it, prepares it for absorption through the lungs, and it also slows the breath down. And you may have seen yogis doing this alternative nostril breathing. Again, what that does slows the breathing right down. And this trains you to have a slower breath as well. And here's the thing. In Pranayama, longevity is associated with your breath rate. They studied animals and they showed animals that live a long period of time. They, like elephants, turtles, they have very slow breathing rates, like two to four breaths. And animals that live a very short time, like rats, mice, they have very fast breathing rates. Okay? They have like 20 to 30 breaths per minute. They only live like two years. Humans have the conscious ability to control the rate of our breath. That's right. We can change our physiological state because of that is very, very interesting. So that's why conscious control of your breathing and these are all conscious breathing techniques, they can have different effects on physiology with different intentions, different purposes. So having an awareness of all of those techniques is really good. It can help you become a master of your breath. Understanding the science is really good as well, gives you good foundations so that actually you're well equipped to really take advantage of how important our breathing is to our overall health and well being. So I hope this was useful and has like, enlightened you a bit and also helped you clear up any misconception, misunderstandings you might have over each of these popular breathing techniques that are out there. And if you like this video, then why not subscribe to our YouTube channel? Subscribe. Going to be releasing more videos like this. We've already got lots inside the channel and you can also sign up for our free masterclass where we go into this in a lot more depth. And you can also learn about how to become a Soma breath instructor and also have a taste of our breathing meditations, which will really, really start to dramatically improve your life in many different areas. All right, much love, many blessings, peace.