Breathing, a powerful ‘medicine’
In my search for healing, I have encountered many different methods from the West, the East and the Amazon rainforest. Looking back on that 30-year search, I notice that the first long-term changes took place when consciously working with breathing became a regular part of my daily life.
First step: conscious breathing
I first learned about breathing work when Abuelo came into my life. He had lived in India for six years and, due to his own health problems, had been forced to learn a great deal about breathing.
He initially taught me to “simply” breathe consciously and breathe correctly. Conscious breathing means feeling how you breathe, where you feel the breathing movement, becoming aware of the rhythm and keeping your attention on your breathing instead of breathing on autopilot and getting lost in your thoughts.
Breathing correctly in this first phase means applying abdominal breathing. Many of us breathe ‘high’ in the chest. It has been shown that this type of breathing promotes anxiety. If you take the time to feel what is happening in your body, you may notice that high breathing causes tension in the throat, is often quite superficial, rapid and is therefore similar to our breathing when we are anxious. Our brain interprets the signals from our body. It can therefore regard shallow, high breathing as a signal of possible danger, and provoke a feeling of anxiety.
The reverse is also true. It is precisely by adjusting your breathing, on a mechanical level, that the brain calms down. So when we gradually start to use abdominal breathing again, which the brain associates with rest and safety, we relax.
Learning to practise abdominal breathing throughout the day can therefore be a really effective tool for anyone who is anxious or under stress.
Breathing has an impact on your parasympathetic nervous system.
When I started breathing work about 20 years ago, it was initially because Abuelo explained to me how it could help me with the flood of emotions that overwhelmed me and the constant feeling of anxiety. Gradually, I discovered how focusing on my breathing also brought peace to my mind and gave me more energy. In recent years, it has become abundantly clear how breathing helps my body to relax, despite the constant hypertonicity of my muscles due to my disability.
In other words, breathing helped me to restore a healthy balance between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. Between moments of action and moments of true rest. The scientific explanation for this personal observation is still fairly recent. In the past, it was assumed that we had no influence on the functions in our body that are controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. However, research that involved Wim Hof, among others, has since shown that breathing is conducted by the parasympathetic nervous system, but can nevertheless also influence ore activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
The same essence was expressed in the short course I took with Dr O’Hare on heart coherence: a very accessible breathing technique in which you reduce your breathing rate to 6 times per minute three times a day for 5 minutes. (In practice, this means breathing in for 5 seconds and breathing out for 5 seconds). They discovered how this breathing technic could influence the regularity of the heartbeat.
Within certain limits, breathing can really help with complaints related to an overactive sympathetic nervous system, e.g. in cases of stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, TMS. Breathing techniques are easy to learn and can be applied whenever you need them.
Working with breathing can be done in many different ways; you can adapt it to your specific situation in terms of time and according to your needs. And it can really make a world of difference, provided that it becomes part of your daily life.
Breathing versus meditation
During our years of work, Abuelo and I noticed time and again that most people are actually unable to breathe properly. This included yoga teachers and people who “meditated” for half an hour every day. Yet breathing is the basis of both yoga and meditation. Out of respect for the yoga masters and yogis Abuelo met in India, he always talked about “breathing work” and smiled patiently when Westerners told him about their morning or evening “meditation practices”.
Because as far as he was concerned, you can only learn to meditate step by step if you have a lot of experience with breathing work, manage to breathe consciously doing your daily activities and have a lifestyle that allows you to devote hours a day to meditation.
As was the case for him during the last two years of his life. This is what I observed: through breathing, he worked on the energy of his body, harmonising the energy flows to gain access to a higher consciousness. He did not use this higher consciousness for himself, but to serve those around him, to give insights to those who asked for his help and to bring more people to a higher consciousness.
Conscious breathing, learning to observe our feelings and thoughts, but also balancing energy through breathing, activating chakras, etc. is, in my humble opinion, part of breathwork and only a preparation for true meditation.
Sources
- Abuelo’s life experience and example
- Breathing course Leef Bewust Nederland
- Online course on heart coherence given by Dr. O Hare
- Personal life and practical breathing work experience
During the month of December 2025, every Monday and Tuesday at 21.00 we will repeat some specific breathing techniques that help us learn to focus and observe the waves of emotions/thoughts to gain insight into how we function. You can join us using this zoom link
