Creating Neurobiological Agency in Women through Facilitated Breathwork (Part One)
Welcome! In this two-part series, we’ll explore the basic physiological and psychological connections that make facilitated breathwork an effective and underutilized method for healing trauma, stress and pain in the body-mind.
It serves to define neurobiological correlations between emotion, thought and breathing and specific techniques to support a balanced and physiologically beneficial breath pattern. It outlines the basics of a facilitated breath session and four primary techniques for creating the desired outcomes of healing and agency for the breather. In addition, it addresses science indicating that toning the Vagus nerve and diaphragmatic breathing are primary components in the healing capacity of facilitated breathwork.
How we breathe sets in motion an immediate cascade of neurological, hormonal and physiological signals throughout the body. Those signals have the capacity to bring us toward optimal health and agency — or impair our overall functioning and recovery. This article is intended to be an introduction to both how facilitated breathwork transcends the boundaries between physiology and psychology, and what a breath session includes to accomplish a balanced breath and healing of the body-mind. It is worth mentioning that this is one healing modality among many, and that we lack long-term data to show how powerful this technique is as a standalone method.
It is my opinion, after facilitating hundreds of private and group sessions, that this form of facilitated breathwork has the capacity to return to women their agency and health from a physiologically sustainable place. Often the ‘empowerment’ women are seeking is kept at distance via internalized oppression, in the sneaky form of hopelessness, not seeing or believing one has a choice, or in the case of more severe anxiety when strong fear-based responses keep cortisol and inflammation high throughout the body. Without rooting out trauma with the breath, women perpetuate the violence enacted upon them by remaining subject to these neurobiological patterns re-enacted through breath patterns learned at the time of traumatic experience.
HOW BREATH TRANSCENDS BOUNDARIES OF BODY-MIND
It is well established in modern science that every breathing pattern corresponds to neurobiological processes. For example, a longer exhale to shorter inhale creates a parasympathetic response. A longer inhale to shorter exhale creates a sympathetic nervous system response. A slightly longer inhale coupled with a diaphragmatic breath equates to a full or balanced breath that is both resilient (migrates between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity) and oxygenating by nature. It is also affirmed, as we see later, that emotional stress is registered immediately via soft tissue in the lungs, belly, and diaphragm.
Facilitated breathwork is an emerging field of practice with ancient roots in indigenous and shamanic forms of trance state, wherein a coach supports a person or persons to access healing through self-inquiry, conscious breath modification, toning and movement. The combination of the techniques in facilitated breathwork aid in stimulating the vagus nerve, increasing blood oxygen levels, thereby restoring pH balance and moving lymph to detoxify the body. Poage [1] (2016) calls breath the “forgotten” exercise as deep breathing creates a vacuum which helps push sluggish lymph fluid up the thoracic duct on its return to the venous angle where it will connect with the venous system as the body goes from inhale to exhale producing a change in intra-abdominal pressure.
For the purposes of this article, facilitated breathwork will be defined as the careful observation of individual breath patterns and facilitation by a trained breath coach to assist in opening and modulating an individuals’ breath pattern towards a more balanced breath.
Balanced breathing occurs as an inspiratory wave that travels through the length of the torso but also moves from side to side and back to front (three-dimensionality). This wave involves a long slow, deep inhale that starts from the belly. Exhaling involves the gentle art of letting go, resting all but the tiny postural muscles wrapped around the spine (when vertical). There is a natural pause at the end of exhale and before the next inhale is ‘inspired’ to begin’. (Caldwell and Victoria, 2011)
Often there is a ceremonial quality to breathwork that matches the symbolic and non-symbolic altered states that result from the physiological shifts occurring in the body, but it can be applied in clinical settings such as counseling as well. As a clinical psychologist, Morningstar (2016) shares that breathwork reinforces a new paradigm in the field of professional counseling: whole-brain learning. It bridges both hemispheres and accesses the brain stem, limbic system and cerebral cortex functions.
In order to comprehend the power of healing through facilitated breathwork it is vital to understand how intimately the breath, body and brain are connected. As Mayer (2016) notes; Damasio's theory states that we have so-called body loops that consist of signals traveling from the brain to the body and back. This information about the body’s response to an emotional state is stored as rich, unconscious memories of bodily states, such as muscle tension, rapid heart rate and shallow breathing. How we interpret and store emotional or traumatic experience is recorded in patterns of breath; for example, shallow breathing, forced exhales, holding, hypoventilation or hyperventilation.
Morningstar (2016) adds that holding patterns in the body reflect continual messages for protection — flight, fight, freeze responses in the brain. This indicates that during moments of stress, shock, grief or pain we resort to unhealthy holding patterns of breathing that serve us in reducing acute pain or trauma. Later, those same neurological impressions come back through our sensations, emotions and thoughts when the experience is passed, but the pattern of breath remains.
Physiologically, trauma can be as ordinary as the cumulative stress of negative mental patterning (such as fear of future financial collapse) or actual repetitive stress that in turn creates a holding pattern. By common definition a traumatic event, on the other hand, is unique and involves inescapable shock: threats to physical survival and/or psycho-emotional integrity, experienced in circumstances that prevent safe escape. Traumatic events may be one-time occurrences, such as a car crash, a surgery, or part of an ongoing pattern, such as chronic domestic violence, for example. Within this framework, many people, including modern yoga practitioners, fall into the category of holding trauma within the body, but only those having experienced a traumatic event carry the more complex symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Because so many of us hold trauma patterns in our breath, we exhibit other ongoing symptoms such as anxiety, stress or fear. Caldwell and Victoria (2011) state, “When breathing is disordered, anxiety or panic tends to occur and interferes with cognitive processes like decision-making”.
As a seasoned yoga instructor, I would extend the observation of breathing as a “forgotten exercise” (Poage, 2017) even further to yogic sciences, in that, attention to the breath pattern of the individual is almost completely overlooked. Instead, breathing techniques or postures are overlaid atop a dysfunctional breath pattern and fail to have the prescribed impact that traditional yoga exercises claim to have. Trauma-informed yoga may even evolve to combine facilitated breathwork with a daily yoga maintenance routine until an individual is able to secure a truly balanced breath.
This is not to discredit the importance of conscious breathing in yoga or healing practices as an effective means to regulate the body-mind. “When breathing becomes conscious, it tends to alter: attention changes it” (Caldwell and Victoria, 2011). Any breath awareness is a step in the right direction and the use of facilitated breathwork, as described here, has the capacity to unite the unconscious and conscious mind when used with delicacy and accuracy.
The fact that a breath pattern remains when the original trauma or stress has passed means that the physiological processes associated with trauma, such as shallow upper chest breathing, lower blood oxygen levels, cortisol release, muscle contraction, hormonal flooding and activation of the sympathetic nervous system, are also recurring to different degrees. Caldwell and Victoria (2011) state that breathing can be both voluntary and involuntary, and is influenced by both physiological and psychological states, both of which govern and are governed by stress responses. It is as if the original experience of fear or trauma is replaying neurobiologically through the breath pattern, even though cognitively the person may understand that there is no threat. These breathing habits directly impact our agency, the ability to make decisions and feel as if we have choice. It has been noted “that hyperventilation occurs as compensation for blood acidity or for feelings of helplessness, or both” (Caldwell and Victoria, 2011).
Facilitated breathwork allows for conscious access of the (unconscious, involuntary) limbic system, where the diaphragm assists in sending stress regulation signals throughout the parasympathetic nervous system, enteric nervous system and via the Vagus nerve to the amygdala, acting as an ambassador for presence and focused attention. In working with the diaphragm, “a muscle that has characteristics of both a smooth muscle (involuntary) and skeletal muscle (voluntary), thus giving it a somewhat unique capacity to operate both consciously and unconsciously” (Caldwell and Victoria, 2011), we bridge the gap between the unconscious past and the conscious present moment through breath directly through the diaphragm.
So why is it that facilitated breathwork isn’t more widespread in healing and recovery?
As Morningstar (2016) writes, “Proper breath training requires qualities in which modern Westerners are underdeveloped: focused attention, relaxation, internal awareness, and perseverance”. Because retraining the breath can require focus and perseverance, this path of healing may not be for everyone. On the part of the breather, there must be adequate feelings of safety and sufficient education of the technique to induce healing states and, in the end, imprint a balanced breath with all its biological benefits. Alongside the breather’s willingness to engage a conscious breath in order to heal, there needs to be integrity, trust and competence on the side of the coach to properly observe and adjust the breath.
In part two of this series, I will dive into the Facilitated Breath Technique. Stay tuned!
With love, devotion,
Jenna Devi