Why is breath the access point to freedom?

We live in busy worlds, busy times, everything is always busy, busy, busy. It can be really easy to feel that we've become chained and tied into all of these different things that maybe we don't feel free from.

One of the key things with freedom is a grounded foundation. We must be stable and anchored in our body safely, before we can go out and be free. Otherwise, we might not know where to come back from, or it can create anxiety.

Step 1: Anchor or Ground to become free

One technique is to learn to find true inner stillness in our body. You can use the Body-Mind Stillness Meditation practice here.

The danger is that we try to jump to freedom without a good grounded foundation, and then we're always going to worry that we're going to lose it because we don't feel like we really have security and stability in the foundation of what got us to our freedom. This is often when we see spiritual bypassing occur.

Energetically, we need to have a grounding practice, but also one that helps us to root our experience, to connect into what freedom feels like for you in this very moment, because it won't always be the same.

Karma and Freedom

From a Karma perspective, this is important. Because when it comes to karma, your emotional state is the vibration that you are putting into your action. Then when you're receiving back that cause and effect, you are going to have an effect that has the vibration of those feelings. If the feelings aren't great, your effect is not great.

We want to come into this place where we're feeling free and expansive and clear. So that hopefully we have that impact right on our actions. That will serve other people to move into that space too. Then the karma that's going to come into your life is only ever going to continue to get easier, and smoother and more lovely.

Right, we often just think of the negative karma of those vibrations that weren't so good behind our actions. Here we are focusing on creating good karma or just clearing karma really, by being in a good state.

We've got two breathing practices that can be really supportive for coming into a degree of freedom in the body.

Step 2: Breathing Practice to Calm and Wait to Respond

The first one is the belly breath. This is commonly used in yoga. It's an abdominal breathing technique, or as some say it's diaphragmatic breath, I'd like to make a side note that all breathing is diaphragmatic because your diaphragm has to move for you to breathe. It's just a question of how much the diaphragm is moving. Not everybody wants to take a big belly breath and have a big belly Buddha.

Please give yourself permission to be comfortable with the amount your belly is going to breathe. You are going to be able to take this practice lying on your back, seated or standing. So in any position really is okay.

It can be helpful to let the hands come and rest on the belly. Just where it's comfortable for you. If that doesn't feel comfortable, that's not a problem. But for some people this can be helpful. It also gives us proprioceptive feedback and can be reassuring and a little bit more grounding in our practice.

Then you're just going to focus on allowing your natural breath, whatever that is, whatever space it is to just start to settle into the belly, feeling any tiny subtle movements of your belly rise and fall as you breathe.

I'm not breathing, big breaths, just gently breathing, keeping it soft. Because it's through this softer structure that I'm going to connect to feeling freedom.

To ground down even more, I might focus on breathing even lower into the pelvis into the pelvic bowl. Imagining breathing all the way down to the base of the pelvis, into that perineum area.
Sometimes it can help to imagine that your belly is like a bowl and you're breathing into a bowl that's vibrating. Perhaps you visualise it as a balloon.

Sometimes when I feel really ungrounded, it's easier to imagine I'm actually breathing in and out of my pelvis at the bottom. As though I am breathing in and out through my pelvic floor to the pelvic floor is deeply connected to this diaphragmatic movement, creating a container of support and structure in our abdomen as we breathe.

Hopefully a few minutes of that breathing can just start to calm you free, whatever it was that was going on.

Then from this calmer place what might be the appropriate feeling for you in this situation, and therefore what is the appropriate action for you to take.

Step 3: Breathing Practice to Clear Emotional Patterns

The second practice is the conscious connected breath that we offer through Clarity Breathwork. This is that breath that really brings the attention into the heart. Now, this is not always appropriate, depending on the situation that we're in.

We may need to come to that belly breaths to kind of ground and centre and take some action, but to process emotional situations, deep beliefs that can hold us back from really accessing freedom from our thoughts from our stories, and really help us to feel like we can create from wherever we want to be, is this breath of the conscious, connected breath.

You can do it with your mouth closed or your mouth open. But just pick one of those.

You don't have to have your hand on your heart. But I just love to put my hand on my heart because this is where I'm trying to breathe into my heart space.

I'm looking for a constant flow of an in and out breath and a rhythm that is comfortable for me.

A depth that is comfortable as well for you.

Take 10 of these breaths right now. Relax the jaw. Let the breath flow in and out the back of the throat and create that ocean wave sound…

You're welcome to pop on one of my playlists here and have a breathe along on your own.

Join at any of the ceremonies that are being hosted by me or my Clarity Breathwork teachers themselves here.

DISCOVER MORE ABOUT BREATHING TO SUPPORT YOUR FREEDOM WITH LUMINOUS LIFE.

GET A CLARITY CALL WITH ME TO MAP YOUR BEST BREATH