Rebirthing Breathwork and Being Nature We are conceived into the world as deeply aware and conscious beings. As young infants we perceive the world holistically and directly. The central self, which later creates the experience of being a separate autonomous person is not yet formed and there is a minimal self/object differentiation (Sills, 2015). The first years of life are crucial years in the formation of a healthy and well-adjusted self. When things run smooth enough and basic needs are being met and negotiated in a good enough manner, a continuity of being and a well balanced self system can evolve (Sills F. 2009). However, when life circumstances become too overwhelming and beyond the ability of the infant in this early open state to process and integrate into their system, a fragmented and disjointed structure of the self-system might take shape. According to best-selling author and addiction specialist Gabor Mate, the young infant has two basic needs; the first need is the need for attachment, in the form of contact, connection and love. The second need is the need to be authentic, which is the need of the infant to be in touch with their inner experience and be able to express it in the field of relationships without danger of rejection (Phil Borges. 2019). The infant's very survival depends on the parents unconditional acceptance in this intimate relationship. This is crucial both on physical, emotional and spiritual levels. For instance, when the infant experiences the mother or central caregiver as unloving or unaccepting, the infant must protect its very survival by splitting from the parts of the self that have not been recognized and appreciated by the caregiver (Clarke, Clarke and Scharff, 2018). The rejected parts that were disowned during the core relationship of the infant with their caregivers, will develop into what american psychiatrist Daniel N. Stern termed schemas-of-being-with. These become the fixed ways of relating later in adult life (Sills, 2009). At the core of these inner adaptations are the rejected parts, While early psychological theories assumed that psychological development was the sole product of the first years after birth, as psychological theory developed, also the centrality of earlier developmental stages grew. Otto Rank, who was one of Freud’s direct disciples, proposed in his 1923 book Das Geburtstrauma the hypothesis that the shock of the birthing process is a preliminary source of anxiety, which in later life serves as a foundation for all psychological formations. As psychoanalytic theory developed over the course of the 20th century, other prominent figures such as Donald Winnicott and Frank Lake researched into the early roots of psychological disturbances. Frank Lake was one of the first clinicians to suggest that personality tendencies are already in place by the end of the first trimester of pregnancy (Lake, 2005). This was backed up by neurological research performed by Ronnie Laing, a psychotherapist who worked in the 1960’s. Laing speculated that the cells of the body have a type of memory that is biologically kept on the cellular level (Sills, 2009). Lake theorized that the sources of psychological issues could stem from the “Umbilical Effect” where the fetus experiences the stress of the mother through its complete dependency on the mother and her biology and psychic states while being in the womb. When the womb environment becomes impossible for the fetus to endure, it would enter into a state called “transmarginal stress”, a state which causes the fetus to switch from a “life-affirming” into a “death-affirming” state (Speyrer, 2022). If personality formation is shaped by such early precognitive experiences, how does one get access to such primordial and early information? Lake, along with other clinicians of the time, was experimenting with using LSD as a therapeutic tool. During the psychedelic sessions the deeply ingrained effects of early psychological and biological structures were surfacing into the conscious awareness of the patients. Lake found that some patients were reliving their actual birth experiences in vivid detail. This was repeatedly emerging with many different clients. Lake initially ignored those findings since it did not sit well with neurologist understanding of the time, but he eventually compared the patients experiences with their birth histories and could see there is a correlation (Lake, 1969). Working parallel to Lake in the Czeck republic, Stanislav Grof also researched the therapeutic use of LSD in therapy and was having similar findings (Grof, 2012). When using LSD became banned by government regulation, Both Lake and Groff started to use forms of breathwork techniques to induce the same altered states of consciousness. Groff later called the method he developed holotropic breathwork. In my personal journey, I attended a long term therapeutic process with a therapist that incorporated Grof’s Holotropic breathwork, rebirthing and biodynamic techniques with talk therapy sessions. Delving into the states of consciousness induced by breathwork techniques, I repeatedly experienced traumatic memories and images. While some of the memories were from my personal history, many others certainly did not come from anything I have personally experienced. Some of the memories were very archetypal such as scenes of war and destruction. Some were more personal, but still I could not attribute them to anything I have directly experienced. While those experiences did not come from the scope of my personal past, they seemed to resonate strongly with my inner psychology and emotional structures in ways I could not deny. During one session, I found myself in a very strange state. The best way I can describe it is non-being. There was pitch blackness, a null emptiness. At that moment, a flash of lightning came with extreme velocity and ignited everything. In fact, it was only in the face of the lightning that appeared out of nowhere, that I knew I was in a non being state prior to that. As that lightning flash came into being I could see that what brought it into being was the distilled essence of all my desires: the desire to become. The “I” was the propelling force of the lightning flash. In that fraction of a second I recognized a part of me that originates from an inconceivable place which is before being altogether. For many years, I attributed that vision to the moment of my individual conception into the biological dimension, but as the years went by I could see that it could be even more basic than that. We are used to seeing things as having a linear direction in which there was a past, there is a present and there will be a future. But as Buddhist thought suggests, the universe is coming into existence out of primordial emptiness in every moment, and in that sense, the individual becoming is also the universal one. That experience had a profound effect on my life. My individual “I” became more rooted in an eternal ground which brought a deep seated sense of equanimity. The experiences I had during the rebirthing therapeutic process had a deeply healing and lasting effect on my life. During the rebirthing sessions, I could see for myself how the breathing process is dissolving what a moment before seemed like the hard and sturdy barrieres of the material realm. It was paving the neurological roads between the small self and the higher parts of the self, making hidden parts of being accessible to conscious awareness. Every such experience was paving new pathways that were expanding my sense of self and disposing of any no longer needed unconscious identifications I held. It was creating a continuity of being and brought a fundamental shift in the way I was engaging with my personal-historical material. I could see that there were a number of stages in the breathing sessions. Prior to entering the subtle states, there was a period of meeting with resistance which came as a difficulty to breathe freely. I was encountering the habitual tensions and contractions of my persona. In those moments I was struggling with my shallow breathing pattern. This was also accompanied by a subtle frustration of life, familiar emotional tones and personal beliefs about myself. At this stage I was finding it hard to continue to breathe deeply. My body felt constricted and the different body parts felt as if they are not working as an integrated whole. Then there would be a transition point in which I would still be struggling but would enter into the inner dimensions of my situation. This was the time of passing through a type of birth canal in which difficult archetypal emotions, memories and images used to come up. Then, at a certain point I would pass through a threshold in which something in the resistance would unhitch, at that point I would move through an invisible barrier and my breathing pattern became naturally fluent and deep. There was no resistance and strain anymore. My experience of self would change from something tight and constricted, to an expansive field of presence accompanied with a sense of love, joy and empowerment. With the aid of the breathing process, I was making the back and forth movement between states of constriction and states of spaciousness. I could see that a big part of how I perceived the external world was a result of the habitual ways in which my energetic field was constellated. I learned how my ordinary sense of self was a result of a rather constricted state of affairs, and how constriction and effort were obscuring an inherent spaciousness that was deeply embodied and present. Those recognitions shifted something inside. I learned there was a possibility of being, which was spacious, extensive and with a porous relationship to the environment. Those experiences also shifted the way I was relating to difficult experiences in my life. I no longer compulsively tried to push away or fix uncomfortable inner states and experiences. I intuitively knew that those actually contained valuable information and life energy that can be made accessible. When I arrived at Karuna, and I heard Maura talk about CPP’s assumption of inherent health and the pristine core of the self, I knew I was in the right place. One of the possible reasons that breathing is a powerful tool that can change our state of consciousness, is that our breathing serves a big part in regulating our energy field. The breathing pattern holds within it the ways we hold our boundaries, inner forms and approaches which we found useful in the meeting of our bodies and energy field with life external circumstances. The circular breathing process brings us face to face, and potentially beyond, the habitual breathing pattern which is our way of retaining the boundaries of our self constellation. During the rebirthing process one can go past the constrictions and blocks of the habitual breathing pattern, and enter into a state of naturally occurring deep breathing, similar to that of a newborn. In the state of deep natural breathing, one naturally experiences their inherent place in the world and there is a sense of inherent value and well being. According to Maura Sills, healing occurs in emptiness (Sills, 2000). The back and forth movement between the habitual breathing pattern, and the full breathing state, is an expression of the inherent to-and-fro movement between form and emptiness. Frank Lake described a similar movement in his dynamic cycle theory. The dynamic cycle describes how the infant develops a sense of wellbeing and belonging in the early life stages (Sills, 2009). This process that is made by the infant, is a movement of renewal and healing potential that is available at any life stage. The inspiration for the dynamic cycle theory came to Lake from the events of the life of Christ as written in the scriptures. Lake recognized in the life of Christ an inflow and outflow movement between attention to the world of men, and abiding in the unconditional love of God, the father. In abiding in the Father’s unconditional acceptance and love, Christ rooted his being nature in source. Christ taught the people the revelation that the relationship to God is not solely the relationship of a privileged few, as it was common to regard in those days. Christ’s revelation to men was that God is within the heart of all. As we are conceived into this world, our being presence meets with the external world of objects and circumstances. The meeting between the inner core, and the external environment creates sets of coping strategies which become habitual and automatic. While these strategies have their reasons and logic behind them, many times an unconscious split is created between parts of the self we become identified with, and other parts which become rejected or remain undeveloped. In this process, a separation screen is formed between the inner core and the external environment. The rebirthing process holds the potential for an experience of reunion with our somatic-energetic ground of being. It is not a mere mental recognition. It is an actual vibratory event in which the vibratory frequencies of inner and outer become integrated into a coherent whole. As being-nature is experienced, the client may notice for the first time that unhealthy patterns are structures that exist within a wider field of awareness. Making this distinction naturally relaxes the client's unconscious identification with the unhealthy patterns. In order to establish a lasting change the client needs a way of integrating the realizations made during the therapeutic process into the wider life context. I refer to this process of integration, as the creation of the beneficial narrative. A narrative that is based on inherent health and life affirming principles. References and Bibliography Sills, F. (2009). Being and becoming : psychodynamics, Buddhism, and the origins of selfhood. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books. Sills, F. (2015). The Core Process Pre- and Perinatal Booklet. The Karuna Institute. Borges, P. (2019). Gabor Maté – Authenticity vs. Attachment. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3bynimi8HQ. Clarke, G.S., Clarke, G.S. and Scharff, D.E. (2018). Fairbairn and the Object Relations Tradition. Routledge. Lake, F. (2005). Tight corners in pastoral counselling. Birmingham: Bridge Pastoral Foundation. Speyrer, J. Birth Trauma and Pre- and Peri-natal Feelings of Death and Dying: First Trimester Intrauterine Trauma, Birth Trauma Transmarginal Stress With Paradoxical Reaction - The Views of British Psychiatrist, Frank Lake, M.D. by John A. Speyrer. [online] Available at: http://primal-page.com/lakefr.htm [Accessed 3 Nov. 2022]. Grof, S. (2012). Healing our deepest wounds : the holotropic paradigm shift. Newcastle, Wa: Stream Of Experience Productions.