From self-aware to self-worn-out

From Self-Aware to Self-Worn-Out

The Oxygen Advantage: A Book Report

The Oxygen Advantage - Patrick McKeown

Twin Trail or Epic Fail?

Twin Trail or Epic Fail? 

(Spoiler: the answer is the twin trail)! 

Feeling to Healing

 

Feeling to Healing 

I can't believe it's taken me 30 years to recognise the concept of emotions as energy. When described in this way, feeling seems so simple; you just need to let the emotions [energy] move through your body, and then let them go.

I spent such a big proportion of my life suppressing emotions, believing that, if I didn't show them, or acknowledge them, they weren't really there so I could crack on and fool everyone (myself included) into believing I was healing exceptionally well and quickly. I created this persona for myself, as the 'strong' one, the 'resilient' one who is phased by nothing life can throw at her; this came with a self-inflicted pressure to keep it up! Not surprisingly, this eventually led to a great big meltdown where I hit rock bottom, feeling the numbness I'd been craving all along. 

Just last week a thing made me feel incredibly anxious for the whole week. I could feel it physically in my head, like a heavy cloud sitting on top of my brain, pinning me down into sadness. When I acknowledged it, and recognised it as an emotion which needed to shift, I allowed myself to feel. I allowed myself to cry and actually sought tears - through conscious connected breathwork, through meditation. I actively released the tears and shook my body and guess what? It didn't ~fix~ me, but it certainly lightened the load a little at a time and allowed clarity to slowly return. 

The concept of seeking sadness is a bit bizarre. But let me explain - I wasn't seeking sadness. I was already sad. I was seeking a release for the sadness - a way to allow the feeling to be processed within my psyche, felt in my heart, and then released and sent on its merry way. Feelings don't just disappear of their own accord (apparently). Unfortunately, they do need to be felt and processed which can suck, but such is the conveyor belt of one's mind. 

So here's to feeling the fear, joy, despair, anger, gratitude, overwhelm, sadness, delight, euphoria, grief.... and doing it anyway (but only when we feel like it)!

Sophie x

The Untethered Soul: A Book Report

 

The Untethered Soul - Michael A Singer

My initial reaction to the book: 

Who am I? Who is noticing my thoughts? It is me. I exist. Why can’t I control my thoughts? Turn them off instantly? How do I write a book review about this? What is life?! 

“What would it be like if my awareness didn’t exist?” Well I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t /be/. Therefore, I am the ~thing~ behind my eyes, noticing my thoughts, emotions and everything in front of me externally. 

It’s fair to say that the early stages of this book blew my mind (as I observed it being blown)! It was equal parts reassuring and unnerving to think that our thoughts are almost irrelevant. 

The most important messages:

The heart is an energy centre. If you close this off, you can’t receive good energy. It might be closed off when you experience something which makes you feel differently about a person. This energy might be called ‘spiritual energy’ and is influenced by feeling enthused, happy, in love. Conversely, it is also influenced by disinterest, sadness, heartbreak. With this energy, you have the ability to control the ebb and flow. You can stay open by never closing. Closing is a habit which can be broken with training. But do you WANT to? An example for me is seeing 7:56 on the clock and feeling open as this signals Martin’s presence (my late ex partner). I suppose this could have gone either way in terms of opening/closing. Remaining open means choosing to continue receiving the good energy juice. 

Stored/unfinished energy patterns can block your heart. If nothing were stored here, things wouldn’t make as big an impression on you - the intention of this system is to have an experience, feel it and then move onto the next one. This is how it is to be present, living in the now. 

You are separate to your mind. You are an observer of your thoughts - it is not your mind’s job to keep you safe and it will create melodrama with which you DO NOT NEED TO ENGAGE! You can allow the thoughts to occur, simply observe and then disengage. You do not need to action anything created by your mind. Fall behind the noise; stop giving energy to your negative thoughts, and just be aware of them, allowing them to flow through and then disappear. As a chronic over thinker, this has given me a lot to think about (the irony)!

My main takeaways: 

• If needing to re-centre myself, I can say ‘hello’ in my mind over and over and become aware of the fact I can hear this. 
• When your energy store (in your heart centre) is full, it begins to overspill into other chakras and then externally, and this is the energy received by everyone around you. You can become a ‘source of light’ for people in this way. 
• A samskara is an impression which is kept in the heart. It could take the form of a blockage which restricts the energy flow. A samskara could also be a positive experience! 
• Happiness is a choice but it is a vow, a promise, an oath. It requires commitment, despite events that might occur, even after you take a vow of happiness. If you can allow happiness to happen, regardless, you have become spiritually free. Keeping your heart open is key to this, regardless of what happens. You can use affirmations, meditation, visualisations to re-open your heart if you feel it starting to close. 
• Resistance - don’t resist your response to events. The events need to be processed at a psyche level. Resisting the process will lead to you becoming closed off and will affect your enjoyment of other situations. 

Standout Quotes: 

“You’re not even a human being; you just happen to be watching one.” 

“The ultimate trick is to not close [your heart centre]. Don’t let anything in life be important enough that you have to close.”

“If you protect yourself (close off) you will never be free.” 

“Everything will be OK as soon as you are OK with everything.” 

“If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience….What good does it do to not have fun?” 

How it could be improved:

Chapter 17 - Death - On a personal level, I didn’t like this chapter. It felt a little insulting since I’ve had 3 major bereavements and death is a very real concept for me. The book generally is quite blunt, which I actually love, but this just hit a bit of nerve for me. I can’t quite put a finger on why - maybe because I felt like I was being taught to suck eggs! However, I understand the sentiment of living life as though you’ll die soon and appreciate that most people probably don’t live this way (myself included at times)! 

How it will inform my practice as a Breathwork Facilitator:

I will take the visual aspects of this book and reframe them with my clients - for example, ensuring your heart is filled with energy (your cup is full etc), before giving out energy to others. This way, they can show up as they wish to. Breathwork sessions could incorporate this way of thinking through meditations/visualisations, in order to open up the heart to be receptive of such goodness. I have done lots of work myself around self prioritisation and boundary settings and feel this could resonate with many people and may help with intention setting during sessions.

The Reality

The Reality 

Breathing is easy, right? Sure. But breathing correctly is actually quite difficult - at least, for us in this day and age, it is. 

The more knowledge I acquire in the field of Breathwork, the more annoyed I become at myself for not seamlessly incorporating everything I’ve learnt into my life. I got to thinking about why this is (about the time I should be completing my daily breath work practice, coincidentally)! 

I’m almost 30 years old and no-one ever taught me how to breathe. Surely breathing should be something we’re just good at? Apparently not! I feel a bit miffed that no-one in my vicinity had this knowledge to teach me at a young age. But now I know! And now I need to try and undo 30 years of unconscious ways of life…. OK a bit dramatic but the sentiment remains. 

Having completed a course via Oxygen Advantage which taught me the science involved with functional breathing, and how we have become quite bad at this, I have been really mindful of my breathing. I’m now at a stage of having accrued a good amount of knowledge to be able to start applying it, e.g. when breathing at rest, when sleeping and whilst starting a training programme for an upcoming 10k (gulp). I think this is something I feel I can implement because there is scientific proof as to how it works and the results can be seen or felt (improvement in running stats for example). 

But what about the Breathwork that aims to regulate your nervous system? This is the good stuff, the holy grail. So why, then, is it this that I find so difficult to implement into day to day life? (Here I am talking about a dedicated daily Breathwork practice as opposed to applying strategies ‘in the moment’ which I think I’m OK at)! Perhaps it is the daily stressors of life and routine. Working a corporate job full time, maybe a low level stress has become the norm and my baseline - if I veer too far away from this, am I still going to be me? Am I still going to be able to perform in my job as well as I have been doing? Do I even want to? Am I….. afraid of improving myself? Afraid of success? Or am I just lazy and haven’t found a routine in which my daily Breathwork practice just fits nicely into yet? 

Ironically, I feel if I had more time and space, I’d spend much more time ‘breathing.’ It is for this very reason that I need it - because I don’t have the time or space - the perpetual vicious circle continues.

Perhaps the new year will bring some clarity and perspective to all of this. Or maybe it’s just one of life’s tribulations. Either way, it is a fairly good problem to have, in the grand scheme of things.

In summary: I’m finding it difficult to complete a ‘daily Breathwork practice’ but I’m not too mad about it (for now).

Sophie x

The Body Keeps The Score: A Book Report

The Body Keeps the Score - Bessel van der Kolk

My initial reaction to the book:

This book is heavy. How does Bessel deal with this stuff? Neurological stuff has become normal to me so it skews my perception of the commonality of such diseases. How did he become so OK with dealing with this and hearing about these horrific events?  He alludes to it a few times, about having his own psychotherapy but how do you REALLY become OK with constant exposure to this level of trauma? 

The concept of trauma being stored in the  body is quite a new concept to me and, when I’ve tried to explain it to my peers, I’m usually met with skepticism. The book helped me to consolidate this knowledge and really get behind this thought process.

The most important messages:

Trauma is complicated, messy, unique. 3 people could have the same experiences and have entirely different reactions and long-standing repercussions (or not). As such, there is no ‘one size fits all’ 

Diagnoses are not always helpful. Sadly, diagnoses open doors to certain treatments, but the ‘business’ aspect of healthcare really shines through when discussing diagnoses and how these can be damaging for all involved. Treat the person, not the diagnosis. 

My main takeaways:

 “Working with trauma is as much about remembering how we survived as it is about what is broken” - this quote stuck with me. It changed my perspective of trauma / survival - it is easy to think about everything lost but really important to remember everything we still have and can take forwards with us.

Approaches and treatments in this field are ever changing. Neurofeedback was one of the final concepts discussed in the book and it was indicated this could become huge. I am particularly interested in this from a Functional Neurological Disorder perspective; is there a link between this diagnosis and trauma, and thus this treatment (or any other treatment approaches mentioned in the book)?

In Breathwork there is a lot of talk about ‘emotional releases’ whereby stored trauma is effectively moved/removed from the body. However, this book highlighted the importance of not only supporting people with the ‘release’ itself but of holding space for them to explore that afterwards. I’m interested to see how this will work moving forwards; we are not mental health practitioners so where exactly are our remit boundaries in the world of Breathwork and trauma?

On a personal level: 

Section 6: Taking Action talks about stress hormones and how, if utilised whilst the disaster is occurring, a person is less likely to become traumatised. I believe this is what happened with me when I found out Martin had died; I contacted his landlord to inform him, I cancelled an appointment I knew Martin had scheduled for that night, I went to speak with his Dad and I went home to take delivery of my food shop which I’d ordered the night before. 

During the initial few weeks, I wanted to help in any practical way I could but was at a loss when I was informed I couldn’t be involved with sorting the utilities as I was no longer on the bills and I was not a next of kin. I had always thought this was a way of me taking control over a horrific situation. However, this book taught me it could have been more to do with the stress hormones carrying me through the trauma. 

How it could be improved:

Personally I found it very heavy and I struggled to engage with it. However, I realise that is the whole point. Trauma is not easy. I wonder if it might be more accessible in a different layout. I found the order of the book a bit complicated with many different sub-sections. As such, I didn’t feel it flowed all that well. Lots of repetitions as case studies given early then referred back to later. I would have preferred a case study for each topic to consolidate each aspect.

How it will inform my practice as a Breathwork Facilitator:

I will never assume how someone’s experiences might have affected them. I will always try to make my approach individualised. I feel that working through trauma may be helpful in both 1:1 situations and group settings but that this will differ for everybody. 

I will also ensure I spend a lot of time learning how to hold space in order to provide safe spaces for people to feel and discover. I will need to be prepared for anything coming up and will need to be able to support people through this, not just opening up emotions/trauma and then sending them on their way.

The Beginning

Who the heck is this?

Hey! Sophie here. I'm an almost 30 year old red-headed Yorkshire lass just starting my journey with Breathing Space to become the best breathwork facilitator Yorkshire ever saw. 

This belief in myself is not something I'm hugely familiar with - it has grown in the last few years and particularly since May this year when I experienced by first Conscious Connected Breathwork class whilst on a 'wellness' retreat in Greece (I use the term lightly as the trip was run by regular party goers who were aiming for chill vibes. They did alright to be fair). 

But who is she REALLY?

Ya gal has been through some shit. The shit started when my ex died in 2020. This was bruuuutal I can tell you. Him dying changed my perspective on literally everything in my life. I was pissed at couples walking down the street holding hands. I was reluctant to pay off my credit card because what was the point? I might die tomorrow *shrugs nonchalantly* (Obvs I did pay my credit card because ya gal has anxieties that override everything else)! 

BUT

Whilst navigating the classic stages of grief, I realised I was actually quite liking the person I was becoming. Pre-trauma Sophie was proper square. She was a rule follower to a T and her life was lacking fun because of this. I had been a people pleaser and would prioritise everyone else’s emotional well-being waheeeey before my own. Shortly into this grief journey, I started to become more selfish but in the best way. Being selfish isn’t a bad thing. Being selfish means introducing boundaries and honouring your own emotions and wellbeing before anyone else’s. I have feelings too dammit, and they’re absolutely valid. 

Since 2020 I have also lost both my Dad and my Cousin. Again, this was horrific to go through. Sadly, feeling quite experienced in the realm of grief by this point, I was able to draw on the journey I’d already navigated and seemed to handle these things fairly well (in the grand scheme of things). Don’t get me wrong, I felt incredibly guilty for feeling OK again much sooner! 

My dry sense of humour has always been a masking tool I’ve drawn upon. My ability to joke about ~dark~ stuff is one of my favourite qualities. However, in the last couple of years my spiritual side has ventured into sight and I am exploring all kinds of weird and wonderful woo woo worlds (top marks for alliteration here). Because of this, the dark humour no longer served me QUITE as well. I was being forced to confront and FEEL things.

I saw a post today about the term 'lifequake'. "A significant and unexpected shift in the trajectory of your life that initially feels devastating but has the beneficial outcome of catalyzing personal growth, transformation and rebirth." Not sure who to credit for this but all hail this being! Thank you to Martin, Jaygo and Dad for being my lifequakes (although, given the choice, would've preferred you not to have been)! 

Why Breathwork?

Having worked in the NHS for 7 years, I got myself into a bit of a mental pickle. I know it isn't something I want to do forever but what the Dickens could I do instead?! Cue the aforementioned wholesome trip to Greece in May 2024. We had a list of add-ons to choose from beforehand with breathwork being one of them. I didn't give it much thought, thinking it sounded a bit lame or me. Obviously I got FOMO from everyone talking about the AMAZING experiences they'd had. 

Thankfully, more sessions were put on so I signed up. Boooooyyyy am I grateful for that! It was a conscious connected breathwork session. It was hard. It was uncomfortable. It was weird. I was feeling a bit on edge anyway so it wasn't much of a surprise when I started crying. I wasn't quite ready for the full on emotional release that followed, though. We breathed with open mouths into the belly, chest, head, on cycle for about 20 minutes. The facilitator touched my abdomen and it was like she was literally pushing tears out of my face. Incredible. Suddenly, I realised what I had to do. I NEEDED to become a breathwork facilitator. So here I am - one seminar into the Breathing Space Breathwork Facilitator Programme, going for gold.

What's the plan?

So what's next? Well, I'm going to put my absolute all into the course. I'm going to learn everything I can and experience everything I can to make me the absolute best facilitator I can be. I hope to help people through their lifequakes so that they too might go for gold.

Sophie x