What does integration mean when we talk about “integrative” breathwork?
In my “Manual of Breath Therapy” (2004, in German) I have described the meaning of “integrative” on four levels:
“In conscious breathing, the intimate engagement of body and soul/spirit occurs.
In letting the breath happen, scattered, disparate parts of the inner life find each other. As the spiritual realm encounters the physical body, the areas of experience that have become separated from each other in the course of personal development also reconnect.
From a methodological point of view, the aim is to create the best possible conditions for this reunion and finding oneself in the therapeutic process, with the breath as the center and other methods of experience as additional aids. If possible and appropriate, the experience of breathing should be placed in a larger context in order to open up a broader and more multidimensional approach to the areas of psychological problems.
Integrative Breath Therapy uses the broad spectrum of methods that come from various schools of breathwork. The method of choice is found by taking into account the personality, the inner state of development and the physical suitability of the clients and is varied according to the development of the therapeutic process.” (p. 96)
I would like to explain these levels in more detail here.
Ad 1): When we breathe consciously, we not only feel our body through the incoming and outgoing flow of air, but also ourselves in the act of breathing. We are therefore more deeply and intimately connected with ourselves when we are aware of our breathing than when our senses are directed outwards or our thoughts are focused on something. In the moment of conscious breathing, we are one with ourselves; we experience ourselves as an integral whole.
Ad 2): When we engage in a longer breathing process, as it happens, for example, in a connected breathing session, we experience more of ourselves and come into contact with parts of ourselves on different levels. Coming into contact means that something that was previously separated reunites. As I would like to explain, such separations or divisions at the soul level are the result of traumatic experiences. The re-encounter with earlier experiences, which have been stored in the subconscious, increases and broadens our wholeness, our inner togetherness. White or gray spots on the inner map become colorful again.
Ad 3a): The breathing process in a breathwork session is always embedded in the context of the therapeutic relationship between the person breathing and the person accompanying the breather. These two people are connected to each other through breathing, but also through the communicative field they have created together. We assume that an exchange between these persons also takes place on a subconscious level. This interaction can be noticed in the fact we often hear that the therapist can perceive the needs of the person breathing without a verbal exchange taking place. The reason for this intimate form of communication could be that breathing together creates a shared vibration between the two people, a field of resonance in which information flows back and forth.
Ad 3b.): In addition, this aspect of integration includes a practical part of the therapeutic work: during the breathing process, there is a space in which other helpful and effective methods can be applied. First of all, there is the whole area of physical interventions, touching, applying pressure, massage-like relaxation, etc. In addition, there are verbal messages that can be used to provide reassurance or encouragement. If the client comes to the breathing session with an issue, she can also be supported with phrases that help to resolve the issue. For example, if she is afraid of an upcoming job interview, the therapist might say, “You'll do great. Believe in yourself and your abilities.” Or: ”As you breathe in, feel the strength to take control of your life, and as you breathe out, let go of your fear.”
Ad 3c.): The presence of the companion is another influential factor that should not be underestimated. Someone who follows the unfolding inner experiences with a non-judgmental and attentive attitude, without interfering with their own intentions, represents a person that everyone would have wished for as a parent in childhood. With this attitude, it becomes possible to compensate for emotional deficiencies from childhood, especially on the communicative level, and to create the inner space for new relationship patterns. Integration here means that the experience of a new relationship model overwrites the relationship concepts adopted from childhood and incorporates them into the overall complex of the soul.
Ad 3d.): Finally, this point also includes everything that is used as a method after the end of the breathing process. The aim here is to familiarize other areas of the inner self with the new experiences so that the deeper insights into one's own soul life can be connected with what is already well-known. These areas include the mental, the visual and the symbolic level. The transfer of the new insights to different levels of the soul ensures that these experiences can have a lasting effect and that old, no longer useful patterns in these areas are weakened or overwritten. The more sensory modalities that are actively included in the healing process, the more anchors are planted in the various departments of our brain and soul. Examples for these ways to integration are drawing, painting or working with clay; creative processes that enable the right hemisphere of the brain to process and integrate the breathing experience. Writing also supports the integration process.
Ad 3e.): These integrative activations are about creating connections and links where there have been fault lines running through the landscape of the soul. Traumatic injuries cause interruptions, i.e. discontinuities within the psyche. There is a before and an after, and in between there is a gap. The before was still good, while the after is dark. The reason for the deterioration is hidden because it had to be split off due to its intensity of pain and fear. All experiences that had to be suppressed because of their intensity and could not be integrated leave white (or black) spots in the course of one’s life story. Due to trauma, the narrative flow, which normally links the events and forms the meaningful whole of a continuous life experience, disintegrates into incoherent parts. In moments of healing, it is possible to reintegrate previously excluded experiences, that is, to integrate them into the context of one’s life. In a sense, the flow of breathing, which guarantees and represents the continuity of life but which faltered and was interrupted at the moment of traumatization, is restored retrospectively.
Ad 4): Modalities of Breathing
In this context, integrative breathing means that the modalities of breathing are adapted to the client as opposed to adapting the client's breathing to a predetermined form of breathing. So initially there is no right or wrong breathing, but the breathing of the breathing person as it is. The facilitator may sense or notice that the breathing is restricted, held back or blocked in one way or another, but he does not intervene immediately. Instead, he allows the breather to have time to perceive for herself how her breathing flows or falters, and to allow the breath to unfold its effects within the breathing person. So trusting the power of the breath is at the center of integrative breathwork, and not the ideas, expectations or self-experienced notions of ideal breathing of the facilitator. Integrative breathing is about self-experienced breathing, how it works in the moment and how it changes when it gets the attention of the breathing person.
Relying on the breath as such means that no special knowledge about optimal breathing is needed to bring the healing power of the breath into effect. Methods, such as physical interventions, massage techniques or other means to bring breathing into a desired or expected form, are initially unnecessary; the idea is rather that breathing itself comes closer to its best form when it gets the space to do so. This space is created by the attention of the person breathing to their breathing and by the compassionate presence of the facilitator.
Better and Worse Breathing
Sometimes clients come to me with the question of what the right or optimal breathing would be. An integrative view of breathing implies that there is a suitable breathing for each situation, but no generally valid form of breathing for all times. Our breathing reacts automatically to our current state and the level of activity in which we find ourselves. It constantly adapts to the needs of our body and soul.
At the same time, we notice that this adaptation works better or worse. Often our breathing is too shallow and too fast for the needs of the current situation, as a result of acquired dysfunctional breathing habits. This kind of breathing provides us with enough oxygen to ensure our survival, in other words, with a minimum to enable us to carry out our activities. But it does not promote lasting health and well-being.
Respiratory therapy in the narrower sense begins where blockages and restrictions of breathing become conscious and the accompanying person can offer support from their own knowledge and from their own experiences of the possibilities of breathing, in order to resolve the obstacles that stand in the way of deeper, fuller and slower breathing.
As we know, shallow and rapid breathing is always stressful breathing, which in many people has become chronic over the years, often starting in childhood. They suffer from stress all the time, although they hardly notice it anymore because it has become a habit. In these cases, the organism is constantly in a survival mode, and this mode drains the energy reserves of the body and psyche without contributing to regeneration and replenishment of the energy depots. Shallow and rapid breathing is an indication that the person is exhausting their resources, which will sooner or later create physical or emotional problems. The unused potential in terms of depth and slowing down breathing leads to stiffness and rigidity in the respiratory muscles. In addition, shock experiences or emotional injuries, e.g. through humiliation or embarrassment, lead to a reduction in breathing depth and thus to an acceleration, which further inhibits the breathing and restricts its mobility and flexibility. These inhibitions can even develop when someone has experienced as a child that their liveliness was not appreciated by their parents; to adapt to this condition, there is the simple option of reducing the tidal volume, and suddenly less vital energy is available. Traumatic experiences, which are often accompanied by breathing interruptions, have an even more detrimental effect on breathing. Many people therefore carry deficit breathing patterns from their childhood with them, which have become chronic and sooner or later express themselves in various health problems.
The relaxation and flexibilization of the breathing musculature, especially of the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles, which can be achieved in breathing therapy, leads to more freedom in breathing and to open up for its various possibilities. This is the type of breathing that we can use to best strengthen our own health and ability to regenerate. Often, clients have difficulty breathing in slowly and evenly or breathing out in a relaxed manner. Both abilities are accessible when the respiratory muscles become more flexible. This allows the parasympathetic nervous system to become more effective, in turn helping to decelerate and relax one’s breathing. It is the same with yoga asanas: with continued practice, the corresponding muscles and tissues grow and become more supple, increasing flexibility and mobility. In addition, the fasciae of the respiratory muscles are activated and invigorated, making them softer and loosening adhesions.
Regularly practiced breathing exercises and longer breathing sessions help to activate and train the respiratory muscles and the fascia tissues involved, increasing blood flow and improving performance, both in terms of breathing depth and in regulating breathing speed from very slow to fast. Muscles and tissued that are used in their various ways become more powerful and flexible. In this way, we integrate the diversity and variability that is inherent in our breathing.
With well-stretchable respiratory muscles, a wide variety of breathing exercises can be practiced effortlessly. These exercises are available in large numbers and all have specific benefits. Some of them are described according to Indian or Chinese tradition, for example in terms of their effects on the chakras or the meridians. Many of them lead to scientifically measurable improvements, for example in blood circulation, stress relief or sleep quality.
Integration with the Self
Here we have described the integration of physiology and health. With breathing, which we can consciously influence, control and train, we have a regulatory process at hand, that we can use again and again to come into harmony with ourselves. This is an important prerequisite for the lasting health of our organism. If we act against our body, i.e. take actions that harm it, we come into conflict with ourselves. We are separated from ourselves, disintegrated, split off. Then we not only feel uncomfortable, but also exert a strain on our physical health.
With conscious breathing, we integrate ourselves, thus coming to inner unity and often to a deep connection with ourselves. The intact self-relationship is the basis for our mental well-being and our organic flourishing. Peace reigns within us, and in times of peace all our powers and abilities can develop at their best. On the physiological level, this state of integration manifests itself in a high degree of coherence, that is, in uniform rhythms or vibrations in various regulatory systems in the body – breathing, heartbeat, blood circulation, autonomic nervous system and cranio-sacral fluid.
The self-connection that is created through breathing exists independently of whether we are aware of it at the moment or not. This attunement even takes place during sleep. But when we consciously breathe, our consciousness is also included in this harmony and we live from the core of our wholeness.
Breathing and Integration of the Environment
With every inbreath we take in the outer air and with our exhalation we expel the inner air. We are in a constant exchange with the medium that permanently surrounds us and represents our elixir of life. Through breathing, we are in touch with our environment in every moment. In a continuous flow, we give and take in the form of inhaled and exhaled air. Air is our primary outside world, which we turn into our inside by inhaling and turn it back to the outside by exhaling. The air gives us our first and most important information about the outside: temperature, quality, odours and other atmospheric messages that have an immediate influence on our experience. With breathing, the inner and the outer world integrate into a vibrant unity.
