Why is Conscious Breathing also known as Rebirthing? What is Birth Trauma?

Listen to Connected Breathing

What does Birth Trauma have to do with Breathwork? The moment of your birth was also the moment of your first breath. Your birth experience directly affected your personal breathing patterns. This is often difficult to understand or wrap your mind around, until you experience healing your birth trauma through Conscious Breathing - Rebirthing.

Conscious Breathing is also commonly known as Rebirthing, due to the fact that many people remember and heal the trauma of their birth through the connected breathing technique.

Our bodies are like giant containers of information. Experiences, traumas, various sensations, and memories are stored in our bodies on a cellular level. Our birth is one of these.

Somehow, in our 'modern day science and civilization,' we got the idea that babies don't feel or have consciousness at the time of their birth. Birth is our first experience of the outer world, -our first direct contact with people. It is also the moment of our first breath; our first experience of breathing air into our lungs. At this moment, breathing often becomes associated with pain and fear, which is why Conscious Breathing Rebirthing is essential to healing the Birth Trauma.

Transitioning from the warm, cozy, completely protected environment of the womb to the outer world was our first experience of major change. I believe this is why people commonly experience and associate change with being painful, dramatic, and life threatening.

'Traumatic' barely describes the experience. Your birth was very likely an experience of pure, primal, terror, pain, and survival. The struggle to pass through the birth canal, struggling for your first breath, separation from your mother, (yes you were very conscious of her presence, emotions, and thoughts while in the womb,) as well as dealing with a dramatic temperature change, contact with rough surfaces, bright lights, deafening loud voices, and an extreme sense of urgency and drama in the delivery room are just a few of the different aspects many of us dealt with at the time of our birth.

As conscious, living beings, it's more than likely that we made some very primal, preverbal decisions about life, the world, and ourselves at the time of birth. Some possible core experiences stemming from birth trauma are: I am a burden, I cause pain, I'm not wanted, I can't hide, I'm too big, I cause problems, change is hard, I'm not strong enough, I can't make it on my own, living is painful, life hurts, love hurts, and many, many more. Practicing Conscious Breathing Rebirthing brings these unconscious ideas to the surface to be released and healed.

If the concept of Birth Trauma is new to you, I recommend reading Frederick LeBoyer's book, Birth Without Violence Birth Trauma and it's effects on the individual and society as a whole, is a fascinating subject to study. It is something that has impacted every individual on the planet.

The effects of healing Birth Trauma with Conscious Breathing Rebirthing, and preventing future traumatic births on a global scale may be too beautiful for our current minds to even imagine. But it is definitely something to aspire for!

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