Closed Systems and Their Centers

Closed systems circle around a center. This center contains something which is not allowed to be put in question, criticized or changed. The center is absolutized and removed from the sphere of relativity. It gets surrounded with a sphere of faith. On the threshold to the center, knowledge ends, and the access is limited to those who believe unconditionally.

Revealed religions contain their revelations in the center. This is where God spoke to the humans, and what he said there has absolute truth and cannot be relativized in any way. In (other?) cults it is often the word of the founder which has to be accepted without criticism, even when he orders out of divine inspiration that all members of the group have to kill themselves.

Closed systems have an absolute center and everything around it is relative, related to this center. The center decides what is right and what is wrong, and these decisions have absolute power and validity. The center is perfect and everything else is incomplete and deficient. Often, there is a hierarchy among the relative, which states that the closer someone is to the center, the closer they approach completion. Those who stick to that rule, can make their carrier (e.g. in the closed system of a dictatorship), those who neglect it have to face bad consequences (e.g. a prolonged visit to hell in the case of Christianity or Islam).

The center generates rules which keep the closed system closed, although time moves on and the system is constantly affected by new influences. In the Catholic Church, there was the sentence in place: "Roma locuta, causa finita." - When Rome has spoken, the case is closed. Within a closed system, differing opinions are allowed as long as the center has declared the truth, and after that everyone has to be silent and to obey. The closeness has been restored.

For the Catholic Church, Rome, which is the Pope in person (as representative of Jesus Christ on earth) figures as center. In the 19th century, he was entrusted with the gift of infallibility about doctrines. From such a center, all the rules flow which the believers need for leading their lives in the right way. Every new influence has to be checked and be either approved or repudiated. So there was an index of prohibited books, dogmas which were defined by labelling every disbeliever as heretic, inquisitive and painful procedures against members who have opinions of their own, condemnations of thoughts or ideas, which came up outside of the church and against which the believers have to be warned - defensive measures with the aim of protecting  closeness.

Of course such a gigantic task cannot be fulfilled in a world of growing complexity. So it seems that the new Pope has chosen a new direction to primarily take care of the people in need instead of keeping up doctrines, a direction promising more openness.
Martin Luther had stood up against this centralism, which had also caused the split with eastern European Christians in the 11th century. It was one of the concerns of Protestant reformation to blast the Roman center of papacy and to replace it by the sole center of the written revelations. Luther hoped for more opening by establishing an abstract form of a center, but this was no basic escape from closeness. As a consequence, this sector of Christianity had to face an enormous fragmentation. Every new Protestant movement tried to escape the forming of a center by creating a new center of an "even truer" Christianity. Obviously, this caused a dynamics to absolutize the center even more as smaller as the system got. The most segregated Christian fundamentalisms can be found in these evangelical secessionist churches of the US Middle West. An example of the rigid belief systems of these closed circles can be found in the discussions around creationism, an ideological system formed to prove the creation of the world by God as a scientific fact. 

Also in the area of politics, sacrosanct centers are part of the game. Many political movements gather around a central idea which is declared as untouchable. For its realization, all means are justified, as the end justifies the means. Robespierre is a striking example of this delusion when he proclaimed a cult of reason at the peak of the French revolution. All those who were considered of endangering this highest value were handed over to the machinery of execution without mercy.

A plain look at today's crisis and wars does not only show the massive and deplorable destruction of lives, demolitions and dehumanizations happening there. It also gives insights into the center of the relevant ideologies which drive the conflict and war parties. Sometimes, the historical threads in these ideological centers are so densely interwoven that they seem quite complex. Yet, we basically find fears of survival, out of which the respective ideologies promise a sole exit. They also name the main adversary and enemy, who has to be defeated.

Also within the smaller context of the growing plurality of searching for sense, forming of centers play an important role. Although many of these approaches explicitly proclaim opening, they all to easily overlook their own basic presumptions, which stay out of the experiential area in which the insights can be found and which have to be believed. These phenomena can be found in various schools of self-help, psychotherapy, esoteric and spirituality.

In the field of psychotherapy, it is often the personality of the founder who is established as unquestionable center. Their concerns and insights are kept in this center like a sanctuary, against which every new insight or method has to be measured. There are also guiding concepts, which a therapist has adopted once because they were helping him and which he then applies with every client without taking care whether they are applicable or not. So a constant self-enquiry and self-reflection is important to keep ideologies out of therapy. The guideline to invent a new therapy together with every client helps to get out of tendencies towards closed concepts, as it encourages to constant openness for the experience of the moment.

The exoteric scene is virtually defined by gaining supporters via hidden ideas of centers. Trust your experiences but believe everything which is offered as explanation for them. When you had a good experience, the respective system will explain to you thanks to which angel, alien or ascended master you had received it. In case you had some doubts at these occult centers of the teaching, you get a diagnosis of lack of maturity and consciousness. The only remedy to these ailments can be found in the center.

Spiritual teachers should mark a distinction to esoteric marketing by advising their students to rigorous self-enquiry. “Look for all that is true for you in our innermost core and free yourself from all models and concepts.” Such encouragements are open as they do not pretend to know about the outcome of the search but leave it up to the student in total freedom.

Still, many spiritual teachers have their sanctum, a core of their teaching, and all too often they demand from their adherents to adopt their concepts without willingness to open up the centers of their beliefs. Wherever dependencies and power issues arise in spiritual communities or movements, an underlying center is the cause of the struggle.

By entering into a systemic form of consciousness, we face the challenge to learn to live without absolutized centers. Hence we become aware of the importance of recognizing and naming such centers when we encounter closed systems, and to outline alternatives of how to live without them.

We are used to the idea of an unchanging and always true core inside of us, which always grants us the right direction. This idea gives us inner and outer safety. Yet we have the power and inner strength to lighten up the illusions, which these seemingly safe core concepts and orientation markers claim to provide us with. For any of these illusions we can say good-bye to, we receive a precious piece of inner freedom in exchange.

Open and closed concepts

We bear a lot of concepts inside ourselves (opinions, beliefs, explanations, argumentations etc.). Some of them are conscious, and we have thought about them, had discussions and have accepted them for ourselves. Others are unknown to us although they influence our thinking and acting. They are abstractions and generalizations from experiences, which we have already forgotten.

When we have open concepts at our disposal, we have access to more inner openness. The opposite is true in both dimensions: The more inner openness, the more liberated concepts we are able to understand and integrate; the less inner openness we have, the more we are looking for narrow concepts to build into our thinking and to argue with others.

Our wish to grow implies the need to change and open our concepts. The more fears we have, the simpler our concepts will be. A narrow and plain concept will best give us the safety we are looking for. A closed system provides us with the alleged assertion to have an antidote for any risk and any problem.

Our mind is basically a service institution. It creates concept – connections of thoughts, lines of arguments, philosophies and ideologies -, which fit best to the inner climate of feelings. Closed concepts serve for founding and supporting a narrow emotional atmosphere, e.g. the concept that the world is governed by evildoers, or the concept that life is strenuous. This asserts our actual feelings (helpless or burdened) and enforces the momentary mood we are suffering from.

It is easier to adopt open concepts when we feel relaxed and free inside. When we feel connected to life, we love concepts like: Everything is fine the way it is, or: There is something good in every bad experience.

In such times it is also easier for us to look at our own concepts in a self-critical way and to let go of thought patters which do not seem helpful any more. With open concepts, we can meet the world and our companions more tolerant and accepting, while from the viewpoint of closed mental forms, the outer world can only be perceived distorted and limited. Open systems allow inner growth, and the outer perception becomes ample and encompassing.

Closed Concepts

Closed Concepts are marked by the alternative to be either inside or outside. A simple closed concept is: When you are not for me, you are against me. There is one and just one truth. Those who share it can take part, those who do not, are heretics, ignorants or idiots. This is how closed systems can be easily spotted: Those who question or criticize them will be attacked and prosecuted. For these persons are seen as a menace for the concept and have to be brought to silence in one way or the other.

Closed systems have preformulated explanations for everything.  Whatever happens had to come according to the concept. As people live in sin they have to be punished by a catastrophe. As they have improved their ethics, they have been spared from a worse breakdown.

Such closed systems own a kind of explanation generator, which is able to produce explanations appropriate to the rules. It takes care for the concept to stay sacrosanct under any possible circumstances.

Take the example of thought is creating reality. What we think becomes real. What is real, is real only because we thought of it. I think of someone, and the person calls me. The rule has been proved. I think of someone, but the person does not call me. So I have not thought of her clear or intensive enough or had an unconscious barrier against being called. The rule has been proved again, with the help of additional rules generated from the basic rule. Whatever surprises me in the world of real experiences, because I had not thought of it, serves as proof for the rule.

Another example: Someone advocates a certain method of healing or a certain remedy. It has been helpful for him and now he wants to help someone else, whether for money or not. This person gives a try but gets no benefits. So one could assume that the method or the remedy do not work for everyone and for everything. In this case, the system stays open: Research can explore the conditions for healing to take place. When the system is kept closed, the message is that the person has made a mistake in the application or has not had a strong enough belief in the healing powers.

Spirituality and Religion

The world-wide civil society has to move beyond the interpretation courts of single religions as they are full of defensive and aggressive closed concepts. The notion of spirituality, which is on the way of slowly transcending religion, is an indication for that necessity. From the viewpoint of spirituality, there are no significant differences between religions on the level of deeper truths, which are the open concepts within each religious system. Rather, it seems that every religious tradition approaches the sanctuary on a different path and describes it in a unique language by highlighting certain aspects mor distinct than the others.

If we are to find a form of spirituality adequate for the whole of mankind, we need the most open concepts we can find. We have to attune them in a way that the differing formulations can be heard as part of a common and generally shared inner sound.

The Inner Way to Open Concepts

We only can adopt truths when we are ready for it internally. Otherwise, they would threaten us on an unconscious level, and we reject them. Only when our soul has been liberated from these fears which adhere to our limiting concepts, we can put a concept into practice which we might have understood intellectually before. We need the inner vastness of liberty from fears to be able to carry a grand truth.

When we grasp an idea before being able to carry it, it can serve us as guiding star, as motivator for bringing it to fruition. Concepts can prepare for a change by providing the mental fundaments. They can hurry ahead and be comprehended before the inner change happens. They can provide the power needed for facing the fears which we have to encounter. We read a book or listen to a presentation, we get inspired and our inner conceptual world changes and enlarges. This motivates us to give new perspectives a try.

On the other hand, we can use ideas to deceive ourselves. For concepts which are more open than those we used as fundaments of our lives so far, endanger the correspondent emotional scheme. For instance, the concept “You do not need faith to be happy” can encounter the fear about how to live without faith, especially with someone who had used a system of faith as supportive backup. The idea questions a rigid conviction which so far had been a crucial element of inner safety.

So it is also important in the transition to opened and enlarged concepts as we need them in a worldwide civil society, to take care of the emotional inhibitions and restraints and to work on them. Only then can we turn an idea into a living reality with more wideness and openness.

Two Truths and Language

Language develops in the sphere of conventional consciousness. Generally, verbal communication serves the purpose of taking care of sharing a common view of reality. "Is this the sun?" asks the child. "Yes, this is the sun," replies the father. "Do you love me?" asks the person freshly in love. "More than anything else," is the answer which transforms the own prospect of reality into a shared one. Many of our verbal remarks come from this need for reassurance. They start with an insecurity, and by talking this insecurity either diminishes or grows, depending on how secure or unsecure the addressed person reacts.

"Do you understand me?" asks the grown up and means: "Can I feel safe in the relationship with you?" When the answer comes: "No, not at all," then the insecurity grows and the wish comes up to go on talking till safety is restored.

So language serves also serves as an instrument of the ego to reassure itself about itself, in an effort to reduce its fears. By talking and sharing it wants to create safety. This is why people like to talk so much and so often. For instance, when a few people attend a concert or a movie, everyone is focussed on oneself during the performance. Afterwards, the need for talking arises on how to create the understanding necessary for restoring a shared reality after a time of singular experiences, and thus restore social security. It is as if the storage of safety is used up after some time, so that we have to rebuild and reload it now and them. Our egos need the coordination with the other egos to be able to relax.

Thinking as Inner Talking

Large parts of mental activities are internalized talking. E.g., when I write a text like this, an inner voice talks the sentences prior to writing them down. Each change I want to make is first discussed in an inner discourse. Also here, thinking acts as protection as what I write should make sense for others. When someone told me that my writing is incomprehensible or silly, this creates an insecurity in my ego which I want to prevent by writing as clearly as possible.

It is obvious as well that I become unbalanced when reading a text which I consider as uncomprehensive or silly. By such a labelling I try to create safety again. By asking someone else to share my opinion I can even do more to it.

The sphere of speechlessness

We do not need language in the sphere of ultimate truth. Here, everything is crystal clear and does not need any explanation. We do not have any insecurity of doubts so we are not dependent on reassurement. We even cannot communicate what we experience as it cannot put into words, according to all mystics. To talk about the unspeakable is trying to translate the absolute into the world of the relative. In any, even the best translations from one conventional language to the other, lot of the original meanings get lost.

Yet in this case, even the undertaking of translation is bound to fail from the beginning. For it attempts to transfer nonlingual experience into language. This would mean to press the infinite into the form of the finite. Timelessness should fit into the framework of time.

So as soon as we are talking about the states of experiencing the absolute, we are already back in the world of conventional consciousness. Here, some share our understanding, some don't. Some affirm our view, others devaluate us. The more we talk the more we get entangled in the complex pitfalls of the conventional world, which are sodden with fears and mistrust.

The  problem of esoteric

Mysticism lives in a communicative nowhere land due to the difficulties and misunderstandings connected with expressing mystical experience with the means of language. This is why mystics in all societies got into problems as soon as language became a media of accusation and justification in the course of history. To share experiences which question the conventional consensus and to state additionally that these highest insights are only available in a certain framework of experience, has been a scandal which caused prosecution and severe punishment. As a consequence, many teachers passed their wisdom only to inaugurated students which again fed the distrust of the outsiders.

The mystic would say, "When you want to understand what I mean you have to enter the same realm of experience in which I am." This realm is not easily accessible of anybody, so it is "esoteric" which means only open for insiders. Yet anybody can become an insider and it is not necessary to become part of a school, cult or secret society. Still, everyone enters this realm by his/her unique entrance.

The critic of esoteric might demand: "So tell me, what there is inside." The mystic might answer, "I cannot express it in words." This will cause the critic to frown and say, "What a nonsense. Everything can be expressed in words. How should I or anyone else otherwise understand what this is all about?" The mystic will reply, "You can find this truth only inside yourself. By closing your eyes and exploring inside yourself it will become apparent to you." When the critic follows the suggestion he will probably become a meditator, when he refrains from it he will stick to his skepticism and talk disapprovingly about the mystic and about mysticism.

This is the border between the rational and the transrational area, the border between the conventions and the ultimate. For crossing it, the conventions of language have to be left behind as well, including the ideas of general validity based on them. Spiritual insights gain their validity in the sphere of introspection and who knows this world can easily communicate with someone who is familiar with it without any need of conventional language. Those who do not know it will not have any use for verbal descriptions similar to explaining colours to a blind person.

The differing accesses

Some people need a teacher or guide, others find themselves suddenly and spontaneously in the sphere of the absolute. Some stick to a certain method for a longer period of time, others change from one practice to the next. Some collect the insights into the infinite like pieces of a puzzle, to others a gigantic door opens up at once. Some of the experiences are singular and fleeing, others return in a similar form, some stay permanently, others can be recalled by will.

Some reach the sphere of the absolute via language. They hear words or read texts which send them on the journey. But as soon as they have found a place where they know that they have arrived, they realize that they do not need language any more for being able to stay in this place, and that they do neither need language to return to it. So silence which is also the freedom from words, becomes a steady companion. Slowly and persistently, the power of silence becomes stronger than the talkativeness of the conventional world.

Some of the saints like to talk and like to talk a lot. They want others to take part in their experiences true to the quote: "For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of." (Luc 6, 45)
Some of the listeners are taken away by such speeches as the words are soaked in a spirit which lets them make out what is meant. It is the clarity and power of the speech and not the words which convey the good message. They are permeated by a sense of not-wanting which comes from inner freedom.

There are ears used to only hearing what they expect and to reject anything challenging the habits of listening. They will have difficulties in being touched by the talk of a saint. They will perceive power instead of surrender, craving for approval instead of love and stubbornness instead of freedom. The tenser the ego is, the tenser its range of receptivity (chronical stress stiffens the muscles which move the auditory ossicles, thus limiting the ability to hear certain frequencies). The fearful ego only hears what it wants to hear, which is mainly itself with its anxieties and cravings. When hearing has been opened and expanded, it becomes easier to hear the frequencies of the final truth and to resonate with it.

Listening consciously to music (not just allowing it as a kind of background noise or just listening to one's favorite hits repetitiously) changes habits of hearing. So this can serve as a good preparation exercise for leaving the areas of convention behind and gaining a taste of the absolute. This is why many musicians feel close to the absolute.

There are mystics who do not talk at all or just converse about trivialities of daily life. They are only present with those who want to be together with them in silence. And there are others who only look deeply into the eyes of people and embrace them.

These are some of the possibilities of hinting at the great mystery, which beyond conventional talk awaits everyone who want to open up to it.

"These words are for someone who needs words to understand. But someone who understands without words - how would he need words? ... Someone who hears a low tone, how would he need talking and screaming?" (Rumi)

Two Truths

 “The conventional and the ultimate these are accepted as the two truths. Reality is beyond the sphere of the intellect; intellect is called 'concealing'.”
“Relative and absolute - These the two truths are declared to be. The absolute is not within the reach of intellect, for intellect is grounded in the relative.”

(Santideva, Bodhicharyavatara 9.2 – in two translations)

Shantideva

This classical text from the Mahayana-Buddhism written in the 8th century reminds us of an important distinction which most likely has been encountering us on our inner search and by dealing with its resistances since its beginning. This distinction will be used for a series of articles on this blogsite using it for different issues related to spiritual serach.

Conventional and final truth point are two ways which we as citizens of this planet have to go through in one form or another and more or less always simultaneously. The ultimate truth is also the original truth. It is like the amniotic fluid which has been surrounding us from the beginning onwards. We take everything it offers us for granted and as straightforward. As soon as we are born, our parents tell us this and that, and we trust them blindly. Thus, our conventional thinking is formed, our criterion for right and wrong. When we believe what brain researchers say it guides 95% of our behaviour, of our decisions and thoughts.

Conventional truth can be accessed by our outer senses as it says in the Buddhist scriptures. It derives its contents from objects and processes we perceive, like the sun and the moon, the clapping of hands, the smell of peppermint. It trusts in anything which is presented by the outer senses.

It acts like the doubting Thomas in the New Testament: “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” Conventional truth needs proof from the visual and haptic reality, otherwise it remains skeptical. It is only the outer perception which guarantees safety. All which comes from inside fosters doubt and could always be different. With thinking, it has an instrument at hands which is always able to negate by creating the opposite to everything which exists, and can even negate its negation and so one into infinity.

The Absolute

The final truth we experience by directing the feeling to the inside. This sense is part of us from the beginning of our existence. It connects us with the organismic flow which is the basics of our lives. The experience of this flow of life provides us with the genuine experience of final truth.

Later in our lives, when we are filled up to the top with conventional truths, we are only able to experience the final truth in specific moments in which we feel totally connected to life. This can happen by simply being in nature, by meditating and very often, when a deep going inner process of healing could resolve fears which were in the way of entering this level of experience.

The ultimate truth is simple, clear and convincing in itself. It does not need a proof, it simply is there. We feel connected with all, we are in the moment, time and space is not important. We do not have questions or doubts, the mind is very calm and the head is empty.

We can experience this sphere of the absolute in different nuances, and probably every individual has his/her own entrance to this realm. Apart from that, it seems that there are many different categories of experiencing the final truth. This is why we can name different peak states as opposed to "one" state of enlightenment as assumed by some teachers. The absolute can meet us as overwhelming experience of nature, as opening of the heart, as shower of light or deep inner silence and in many more other forms. All these experiences have a boundless feeling of inner freedom in common.

They also have in common that they are bodily experiences. Even though our body may feel different compared to the usual self perception - probably hollow, weightless, flooded by light or transparent, we still have a conventional consciousness about it at the same time, which becomes obvious when we for instance visit the toilet in such states of consciousness. This criterion forms an important distinction to dissociative states which we experience in a situation of traumatization. According to the necessities of the situation, we can switch from a state of absolute truth to a process of relative truth without being exposed to shock, aggressive feelings or disorganization.

The art of switching between the levels of truth

As much freedom we can gain, as much freedom is given to us – we are not spared of having to cope with the realms of the relative truth and make our living there. We live in our three dimensional and timely bodies with its processes, diseases and weaknesses. We live with our mixed feelings and changing moods. We live in this society with its people and structures. For all these areas, genuine strategies, genuine knowledge and multiple skills are needed which we can derive from the conventional truths.

The more we dive into the realms of the absolute truth, and the more we have learned of the art of switching from one level to the other, the more of the higher realm of the sphere of inner freedom will flow into the realm of the relative. We become more equanimous towards the challenges of daily life, we get less and less entangled in fears and worries and find easier to the hearts of other people.

Prenatal Traumas and the Healing Power of the Breath

We took our first real and independent breath immediately after birth. When working with conscious breathing – why should then issues coming up which have to do with prenatal experiences in which breathing did not even exist? The second question I want to discuss in this article is how conscious breathing can help with healing these early wounds.
When working with clients, I notice how many problems and distortions stem from traumatization dating back to the time before birth. We can imagine traumatizations like chains. When we had a situation of shock similar situations later on bring up this shock, not in all details but with the same patterns of sensations and feelings. This is what we call retraumatization. After the original traumatic experience, by repeating the experience in similar form retraumatization after retraumatization is lined up on a trauma chain. 

The last link of the chain is an actual experience in which we notice unpleasant symptoms or feelings which do not seem appropriate to the present situation. We get enormously angry at something which later on would seem like mere nothing. We get a diffuse fear and do not know why. We react defensively towards someone without any reason on the outside.
When we find back to the first and original experience of the trauma along this chain, and only when we find back to this event and not to a later retraumatization, we can experience a deep going healing which will help to dissolve the reoccurring symptoms and feelings. This is why we often have to go back to the prenatal phase of our lives when we want to cope with a problem at its root.

In the prenatal phase of our development, there are especially many crucial events. An organism which has very little inner organization and strength is highly vulnerable in any difficult situation. Survival is permanently at risk and there are only a few simple strategies to cope with such threats. The well-known fight-flight response as a reactive pattern of the sympathetic nervous system requires an organism which is able to act independently and free in time and space. In case of threatened survival, the embryo cannot run or fight, it can only withdraw by contracting every part which can contract and by switching to emergency programs with a minimum supply of energy (“primal withdrawal”). We will later discuss how this reactive pattern can or should be treated in breathwork.

In addition to that, the embryo as tiny and rather instable being reacts especially sensitive to the different disturbing influences from inside and from outside. “Peanuts” in the view of the grownups like a collapse of the mother or a fight with the father can be experienced as catastrophes by the tiny embryo.

The Theory of Cellular Memory

In the therapeutic work, the breath is always an important support and this can happen in two ways. In our clinical experiences, we can often observe that conscious breathing leads to remembering events dating far back beyond birth. Obviously, during intensified breathing the cellular memory is opened up. It releases recalls from the earliest stages of our development. So we can access memories which are not (or not mainly) saved and coded in the cortex. We know from brain research that a large part of our memory and especially the conditionings of fear are stored in the areas of our brain which are not accessibly by consciousness.

These forms of storage seem to correspond with the cellular memory. We can assume that even single cell organisms must have the capacity to safe memories in order to be able to survive. So we can imagine that for instance the egg cell right after conception has passed on its memory database to all the following cells which develop in the subsequent cell divisions. So all cells of the organism will dispose of this information when the organism develops and expands. 

Probably, the transmission of information works selectively so that not every new cell contains the information in the same strength and calibration. This would explain why certain experiences of fears from the prenatal phase can be felt in certain areas of the grown up body (as contraction, pressure, tension etc.) while other parts are free from these sensations. 

Scientific research in the area of epigenetics has shown how the mechanisms of cellular memory work. It has already shed light on the proceedings of storing and transmitting information on the cellular level. This fascinating area of biological research gains more and more public attention and gives a strong support for considering many diseases and psychological disorders as caused by early, prenatal and even transgenerational traumatization. Basically, it shows that we are only weakly determined by our genes but that the circumstances in which we started our lives and grew up determine our fate to a high degree.

The Evocative Function of Breathing

How does engaging in conscious breathing open up the cellular memory? It could be that the specific ability to remember and the accessibility of the cellular memory we can experience during a breathing process have to do with the deepened state of relaxation. When turning inside by giving the full attention to the breathing, a trance like state is entered. By abandoning the linear logical thought process, the associative abilities of our brain become more active and deliver memories connected with emotions, especially with fear. 

Another possible explanation is that memories come up as a consequence of the metabolic changes in the body as they happen due to the intensifying of the breathing. As we accompany these processes with our awareness, different systems of storage could start to cooperate. Thus, complexes of sensations which can be felt as rather amorphous and ambiguous on the physical level, could reveal their contents which is linked to an early trauma. This meaningful content sometimes comes in form of images, sometimes of felt ideas or any other form of intuitive knowledge.

Another explanation relates to the scientifically proven fact that stress the mother has to deal with during pregnancy can reduce the oxygen supply for the embryo. This will cause anxiety and stress in the unborn child. The attention directed towards the breathing in a session can bring up the memory about the lack of oxygen in dramatic situations of the prenatal phase. For breathing is the successor of the umbilical cord as oxygen supplier.

Here we are on the ground of assumptions rather than secure knowledge as these connections have not yet found a comprehensive theoretical explanation as far as I know. Maybe all these and/or other circumstances we do not yet know work together to allow the often stunningly deep insights we encounter during conscious breathing processes.

The Metaphorical Function of Breathing

This is the evocative side we can see as support by the breath to climb to the depths of our souls. Yet conscious breathing does not just serve for awakening of memories but also for integrating the issues which arise from layers of our lives far beyond conscious remembrance.

For this we use the metaphorical power of breathing. Breathing is the metabolic process closest to us as it is permanently active on and can be observed consciously at any time. By experiencing our breathing we experience the self-organization of our bodies, or, as seen from another perspective, the flow of life itself which develops its healing power throughout ourselves. We experience that we are alive and that it is this power of life which keeps us alive.

When we have to deal with unpleasant and burdening experiences in our lives it always helps to become aware of the breath which reminds us of life moving on, as terrible the present situation might be. We realize that there is a life force which moves on while we are entangled in some drama. This power drives us whether we are aware of it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. It is with us when we enter the drama, and it is with us when we find a way out of it. The breath is always flowing with all these motions of the waves of life. So breathing can become a carrier with the symbolic power for life itself which is stronger than our consciousness and mightier as the control we like to exercise upon our lives.

Trust in life does not mean anything else than acknowledging that it is this power which carries our lives and which leads us on despite all the turbulences and distortions which cause our suffering. As the Arabic saying goes: “The dog is barking and the caravan moves on.” All the terrible and dreadful experiences have their place in this process. They are part of the caravan although it cannot be stopped by them. The moving caravan is the symbol for the flow of life power, which is portrayed in the self-realization of the organism we can perceive in our breathing at any moment.

The Symbolic Healing Power of Breathing

By taking this symbolic power of breathing with us when healing prenatal traumas, we can use it to reconnect to trusting life while the client is feeling despair, hopelessness, emptiness, and pain. “Feel with your breathing how the power of life carries you, with all these feelings which are there now.” By this, the facilitator can remind of the power of the flow of life which offers trust, until eventually the fearful and burdening feelings have resided and given way for a deepened trust, connected with inner safety.

When working with a lost twin, the breath is an indispensable help. At some point of the inner work, the client reaches back to the moment when this first companion in life died and vanished. Here he will experience very intense and deep feelings of pain and despair which seemingly come to no end. The feeling of loss and incomprehension can be immensely huge. 

The facilitator will encourage to accept all the feelings as terrible as they might be, and at the same time to feel the flow of the breath which guides trough this experience, as the constant and reliable power of life. At some point in time, the experiencer realizes that it is this life power which allocates the fate, may it be the gravest of all. For one twin it means an all too early leave, for the other a life to an end much later on. By accepting this major power which distributes fates without any influence from our side, it becomes easier to let go of guilt feelings which are often connected with going on in life in the face of a close companion dying. 

Trust in life is restored, deepened and enriched by a new dimension which indicates that life is a permanent process of giving and receiving, giving and receiving from individual life and from chances in life. As in any breath: Giving from one’s own and receiving the other, as a steady ongoing process which embraces and transcends every single life.

Primal withdrawal in breathwork

As long as strong emotions like anger expressed by kicking and screaming or sadness expressed by intense crying prevail during a breathwork session, the client deals with issues from perinatal or postnatal experiences. Intense breathing which comes with these strong emotions indicates that events from the childhood are processed. Withheld emotional energy which had to be suppressed rises to the surface and seeks its physical expression.
Minimising the breathing by contracting the breathing muscles is a sign for primal withdrawal and for re-experiencing prenatal traumatization. In case the facilitator motivates the breather in such a situation to intensify the breathing, the prenatal trauma cannot be accessed. The energy will move away from the early event and stuff from later experiences of retraumatization can come up. The breather can feel relieved but the symptoms related to the prenatal trauma will come back. Methods of breathwork focused on intense breathing alone thus cannot access or heal prenatal traumas characterized by primal withdrawal. Even worse, such approaches can reinforce the inner protection mechanisms against re-experiencing the trauma contents.

Instead, the facilitator should accept the shallow breathing pattern and carefully help the client to feel the contractions in all detail and allow the withdrawal come fully into the present moment. It is also useful to let the body of the breather go into the posture of withdrawal. By breathing gently into the tensions and by suggesting feeling the breathing as a source of trust and of the ongoing energy of life, the contractions can slowly resolve. Sometimes the client gets images, feelings or even words which indicate the event that has come up. Following this information, the therapist can deepen the healing experience. Often, it is helpful to explain the context of the prenatal experience after the breathing process so the client is able to integrate the outcomes of the session. Cognitive understanding of what has happened in the session as well in one’s own history is valuable for a sustainable integration which also needs the consent of the mind.

Recommended reading:
Arthur Janov, Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script That Rules Our Lives. Nti Upstream 2011