Fundamentals of Rebirthing Breathwork
— by Ambrose Gage, 2024

To begin: pull on the inhale, release on the exhale.
Seek the subtle circular released breath.
Relax the body. (A hint: relaxation feels like: breathing out!)
Let the breath reflect the condition of the body/mind: ‘every breath different’, without preconceived pattern.“Rebirthing: The Practice of Released Breath” (pamphlet, 1991)
- Garth MacDonald

Technique: Conscious Connected Breathing

The Rebirthing breathing technique is also called Conscious Connected Breathing. The technique itself is simple and natural:

1. Inhale actively. Expand and draw the breath in fully, lifting it with intention. Go for an inhale that embraces feeling with an open heart.

2. Exhale passively. Release the breath, as if you were simply dropping it, without a care for how it lands.

3. Merge the inhale and the exhale into one continuous, circular flow, with no gaps or pauses. See if you can find a way to make it feel as if the breaths are almost overlapping.

4. Breathe in and out through the same passage (nose, mouth, both at once), rather than alternating.

5. The only parts of you that need to be physically working are the muscles directly related to breathing. Relax your body, allow your throat to open, leave your chest and belly loose. This will make it easier to follow the process.

The Process: Cycles of Breath Release

Entering a breath cycle, release and relaxation will lead to progressive expansion of breath, increase of perfusion/speed/excitement, thus a body/mind simultaneously in a state of increasing relaxation and excitement, progressively feeling more of the Energy Body: finding, intuitively, the breath that allows relaxation and release, even feeling “this”, whatever “this” is. Then what has been held in denial by the suppression of breath arises into consciousness.

- Garth MacDonald (1991)

During the course of a full breathwork session, many people experience a sense of rising energy towards a peak, followed by release and resolution. A full breath cycle (typically about an hour of breathwork) may contain several smaller sub-cycles within it.With each successive cycle can come a deeper level of relaxation, release, andunderstanding.

This breath induces a non-ordinary state of consciousness, including heightened awareness of sensations and feelings in the body. Over the course of a cycle you may experience a range of things: dizziness, tremors, vibrations, temperature changes, spontaneous laughter, crying, primal sounds, emotional releases, memories, images, insights, etc.. By allowing these sensations to arise and be felt and pass away, they can be integrated through the breath.

Practice: Awareness and Feeling in Detail

This is a present-moment-feeling practice. Hold back for now from conceptual thinking and interpretation – allow understanding to come of its own through feeling and breathing. Keep tracking feelings and sensations across your whole body throughout the process. Whatever asks for the most attention should be given the most attention. Notice how feelings present to you in your body, and then explore them with as much curiosity and attention to detail as you can.

Become intimate with the felt-sense qualities of what you’re feeling: tingling, cooling, warming, clenching, zig-zagging energy, throbbing, humming, thrumming, vibrating, tension, release, etc.

Experiment with your breathing pattern – fine-tune your breathing rhythm until you find one that supports you to feel whatever it is you are feeling with more spaciousness, depth, and detail. You will know it when you feel it.

Throughout the process, it’s helpful to relate your feelings back to your breath –notice the qualities of your breath. For example: ask yourself, how does your breath relate to this feeling now? How open is your inhale to this feeling? How easily do you let go of the exhale?

Philosophy: Holistic Integration

Rebirthing Breathwork incorporates an integrative model of healing. We work with the principle that healing means embracing wider and deeper levels of wholeness, completeness, and connection with ourselves. Rather than viewing our issues and challenges as external problems to be removed, destroyed, or fixed, we want to treatthem as if they are a piece of ourselves that has been somehow isolated from the whole. Your breath is essential to this process of re-integration.

Staying With It

Keep your breath active: present, alive, spontaneous. It is easy to slide into an automatic breathing pattern, which might get the job done in terms of simply moving a lot of breath around, but is missing the key elements of awareness, consciousness, presence.

If you notice yourself going on auto-pilot and not feeling much, try altering your breathing pattern and seeing how that feels. Or, check if there is a bothersome feeling or truth lurking in there that perhaps you don’t want to address (eg. boredom can often hide some frustration or anger behind it ). Whatever you find, see if you can include it in your breath.

Completion: Rest and Integration Phase, After-Care

There is a feeling of peace and a knowing that the experience is over. The breath is open and relaxed and any tetanus is gone.
- Aaron Overstreet, “Rebirthing Basics” (2016)

After the big expansion of the Work Phase of the session, there is a gentle

contraction of coming back to more ordinary awareness during the Rest and Integration Phase. This is equally as important as any other part of the session.

Integration refers to a process of allowing a given experience to find its home in you, so that it may take root and grow in a way that is harmonious with your overall

system. It is most supportive for you to rest and just be at this time, not to jump to any hasty conclusions.

After a session, take care of yourself as you would after any deep emotional or physical release: drink plenty of water, try to be gentle with yourself, treat yourself as if you are more open than you may realize. Water is especially important, as your body has worked up its metabolism.

A Note on Tetany

One common experience is tetany: a tingling and involuntary tightening of muscles, occurring most commonly in the hands, in the facial muscles around the mouth, and sometimes elsewhere.

Tetany can simply be related to body chemical changes corresponding to changes in breathing; however, it is valuable to allow yourself to feel it, like anything else in the session, as a full spectrum event, including whatever it brings up for you emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, poetically, or otherwise.

While it can be uncomfortable, tetany is not at all harmful and will release on itsown. The most helpful things you can do are to invite more relaxation into your exhale,and practice awareness in detail. Staying with the body-sensation and leaving aside thethoughts (e.g. “this is painful, I want it to stop”, or “how can I get rid of this feeling?”),can be a faster and more efficient way to integrate it. You can also adjust your breath as to support you to move through the sensation.

A Note on Hyperventilation

Hyperventilation is a medical term describing the symptoms that accompany increased breathing– often involuntary and in a panic situation– that induces respiratory alkalosis, in which the blood pH rises beyond the normal range. This kind of experience can bring up a lot of fear, depending on how it feels in your body. It can be connected to a belief that something is wrong and there is reason to leave, or it can be a signal that intense emotion is moving through your body and processing its way out. It’s important for you to feel into it to figure out what you need.

Many hyperventilation symptoms also emerge during a breathwork session. The main thing that distinguishes Conscious Connected Breathing and hyperventilation, isthe presence of consciousness and intention. In this practice we believe that the bodyknows how to adapt, integrate, or release things through breathing. If the situation allows for it, we would prefer to support someone to breathe through their feelings to the end, to allow their breath to resolve itself, rather than use suppressive measures in an effort to calm down them down. This breathwork can remind your body and nervous system that it knows how to work through intense feelings with surprising and fluidity.