Somatic Breathing

Somatic Breathing Therapy is a form of conscious breathing that teaches you to breathe fully and freely and helps you:

• Get more oxygen to your body and brain
• Recharge your energy
• Reduce stress
• Integrate issues from the past
• Focus your attention
• Relax
• Alleviate pain

It also helps you step back from emotional reactions and access the intelligence of your own body-mind, and establish new patterns and responses in your life. It offers an increased freedom of expression, and a connection to your true self as well as an overall feeling of personal empowerment.

Pain is often the reason an individual will explore Somatic Breathing.  Pain is a signal to let us know that we have been injured or ill.  Pain is also from tension and discomfort caused by how we respond to stress.  In its ultimate form, pain is an essential part of our natural survival system, warning us that something is wrong and motivating us to give our body urgent attention.  Yet, at this point in our journey we want nothing to do with this bazaar signaling response.  

The first stepping stone to Somatic Breathing is an invitation or permission to simply explore your own body. This is often the last thing a sufferer of fibromyalgia may want to to do.  After all, days are spent subliminally hovering over your own domain brandishing any connection with pain.  Yet, in order to understand what is happening to your body, this is the first and essential component that must be proceeded with caution to get to the root of the problem.  

Try the following exercise each day

1. Ask your body for permission to explore.
2. Close your eyes and begin a deep, slow, consistent breath.
3. Look inside your body for an area free of pain (could be your ear, forearm).
4. Relish in the sensation of this pain free area.
5. Now allow yourself to feel where your body hurts.
6. Take this at your own pace. If one area hurts too much, find another more tolerable area.
7. Focus on that area and allow that area to expand, take up as much space as needed.  Don't try to change anything.
8. Continue breathing.
9. Next, return to the pain free area sensing as you breathe in and out.
10. Repeat this process several times by shifting back and forth through various areas in your body.  
11. Send your breath to all those painful areas you sense.

This is a pain relief process and builds over time.  You must consistently work this breathing exercise into your daily routine to feel substantial effects.  It is simple and can be done when you wake in the morning and retire for the evening.  As you continue your practice your "pain-free" areas will begin to expand.  

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