The more I have researched ways to recover from trauma, surgery, and anesthesia the more I have come to appreciate my long term training and practice of breathing. From the first moment that I began to wake up from surgery I began to breathe with conscious direction. For years I have used conscious breathing to wake up every morning with deep, constant breathing until I feel alert and ready to get up. I believe I have established an unconscious habit of doing this whenever I am trying to wake up or for that matter fall asleep. My favorite breathing form is also amazingly effective in reducing pain (headache, muscle stiffness, illness). That form is Conscious Connected Breathing, a system closely related to Rebirthing Breathing developed by Leonard Orr. My husband, Jerred, has taught it since 1984. When I was in ICU I asked him to help me breath in that pattern—I’m sure we did it for at least a half hour at a time, many sessions. It brought me calm and ease and lowered the pain level. Simply described, you breath in a circle, blending the beginning and end of each breath cycle. You also focus the breath in the sternum though the result is a “breath release” that triggers a spontaneous full torso inhalation and released exhalation. Over the weeks of my recovery I have spent lots of time improving the breathing patterns and releasing the trauma patterns of holding my breath. I’ll describe more ways that breathing has been important in my healing process in future blogs.
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