Group-Breathwork or
Individual Breathwork Sessions?

Group-Breathwork is currently a form offered for practicing Conscious Energy Breathing. Group sizes and experiences can range from just a few 'breathers' and one facilitator, to 60 breathers, one facilitator and several assistants or more.

Leonard Orr, founder of the world-wide conscious breathing movement practices, supports, encourages and teaches High Quality Individual Sessions. He does not practice or teach group breathwork. Learn-to-breathe-energy.com is an educational site, created to promote and spread this message. Of course, everyone is free to choose!

At learn-to-breathe-energy.com, we also recommend that you receive high quality, one-on-one individual sessions with a well trained Breathworker, especially if you are a first-timer (new to Breathwork.) Here are the reasons why:

Individual Attention and Feedback

Just as it would be impossible for one Massage Therapist to treat three or more people at once, it is impossible for a Breathworker to 'Rebirth' more than one person at once.

In an individual session with a well trained Breathworker, the Breathworker is observing your specific breathing patterns and holding tendencies. By listening to your breath, the Breathworker can guide you specifically into a deeper, more open, connected rhythm. This can only truly be done with one-on-one attention and feedback.

With this vital feedback from your Breathworker, you will receive assistance that can help you if you get stuck in pushing the exhale, with-holding the exhale, or shallow breathing. This is important, because freeing your breath and healing your breathing mechanism is the main purpose of Conscious Breathing.

A good Breathworker is also highly intuitively and 'tuned in' with you. This enables him (or her) to offer you emotional support, ideas and thoughts that expand beyond what you currently believe to be true about yourself or possible in your life. The mind and the breath work together to create your entire life experience. This connection is a vital aspect of healing with Breathwork and should not be overlooked.

Even if in a group-breathwork session there are many assistants or one assistant who stays with you the whole time, there are still some legitimate draw-backs.

You deserve to be in a space where you can, for maybe the first time in your life, feel your own energy, your own life-force, and be present to whatever needs to be healed there.

It is far less likely that you will experience the deeper levels of sensitivity and softness of your energy body, your physical body, and your feelings in a large group of people releasing their own emotional energy. The emotional energy of a large group can be overwhelming. Leonard refers to it as emotional energy pollution.

We compare it to being in a room filled with thirty crying babies, vs. being in a room with just one crying baby. The thirty babies are likely to hear each other crying and feel the pain and fear each of the other babies, and respond to that stress with more anxiety and fear. Versus the one baby, who being supported and tended to by a conscious, loving presence, will relax and come to a deeper state of peacefulness and grace, easier and faster, without any excess drama.

Also, it is a scientific fact that we release 70% of all bodily toxins through our breath. Yes, 70%! The benefits of practicing connected breathing by yourself rather than in a large group are obvious here!

Leonard Orr, points out that during a breathwork session, the individual's personal kundalini energy is activated by the connected breathing. Rising from the base of the spine, the kundalini energy meets with the breath, and is activated with prana, or life-force energy. Learning to breathe energy is a sensitive and highly charged energetic experience! Breathing in groups interferes with the delicate, yet powerful kundalini energy process.


Tetany

Tetany, sometimes spelled tetny is the hardening or cramping of the muscles that can occur during breathing sessions. It is caused by an ineffective breathing habit that creates an imbalance of oxygen and co2 levels in the body. (An inability to exhale without pushing or forcing it, or inability to exhale completely without with-holding.)

It is important to mention that the body always releases the inhibited breathing pattern and returns to a deeper state of balance and relaxation. The experience of tetany is nothing to be feared. Please see our page on Tetany, tingles, and body sensations

Tetany is reported to be more of a common and more intense experience in group sessions than in individual sessions. This is most likely due to the lack of individual breathing guidance and feedback. Also, the excess drama of group sessions are likely to bring up more intense feelings of fear, anger, and rage in the 'breather.' These emotions perpetuate the experience of tetany.


Overview

All in all, the benefits of high quality, individual sessions far outweigh the drawbacks and ineffectiveness's of group-breathwork. Still, many Breathworkers and organizations offer group rebirthing as their main venue for Breathwork healing.

We encourage Breathwork newcomers to get a good, solid foundation in individual sessions, so that they may experience the benefits first hand.




May you Be Blessed,

Sara Dawn
Webmaster
Learn-to-breathe-energy.com
SaraDawn.com