Breathwork as a psychedelic integration practice

Conscious connected breathwork is a specific breathing technique that can significantly support psychedelic preparation and integration. It's a practice that helps you stay present with your body and open to what may emerge before, during, and after your medicine journey.*

Breathwave founder, teacher, and ceremonialist Robin Clements shares his wisdom on this healing modality and the ancient practice of altered state exploration. Breathwave is a gentle ceremonial offering of conscious, connected breathing, a modality of direct source energy flowing as a natural wave through our respiratory system.

Join Robin each month on Nectara for a facilitated breathwork journey with a community of peers.

How we breathe is how we live

Our breath is a fundamental indication of how we're living. It is an often forgotten element of the psychedelic wellness journey—even when it lives right under our nose.

The breath pattern we develop comes in direct response to our life experiences. That’s why all of our breath patterns are so unique. When we bring attention to how we breathe, the benefits we experience are also unique to us. It's fascinating to look at the correlations in our breath patterns that relate to the symptoms in our body and how life continues to reflect what we're projecting out.

What a beautiful thing to be reminded of.

If we don't correct some of the ways we might resist, constrict, or control the ways that life moves and how we relate to life, we will continue creating the same relationships and the same symptoms.

When we learn to regulate our breathing patterns, we can regulate our nervous system and create heart-brain-earth coherence. I say *earth* coherence because the optimal frequency of the heart and brain synchronizes with the resonance of our mother's heartbeat and the earth, 7.5 Hz per minute. It is a rhythm that resonates with all of nature.

Breathwork for trauma resolution

As a healing modality, I've found this to be the most beneficial thing I can share with anyone, one-on-one or in a group. It's about looking at the subtle nuances of the breathing pattern and how that arises in each individual's experience of trauma release. The personal journey breathwork offers can take us through a clearing of the subconscious mind. These stories and past experiences sit in our consciousness and often hold us back from embodying our wisest and most authentic selves.

One of the gifts of opening up our consciousness with breathwork is to peel the layers of our being and ignite our true nature. This illumination can help heal old wounds and rewire our nervous system to resolve trauma that may have held us back.

As a facilitator, it's crucial to be trauma aware and ground into this component of connection and essential safety that we can create with medicine work. When someone can genuinely sit with you and see you for where you're at, it starts to feel safer and more comfortable to have them there holding space for you.

This sense of relational safety keeps us open to other quality human connections in our life.

Doing our own work before serving

My passion now is teaching teachers and one of the qualities I've seen in facilitators is a tendency to be slightly ungrounded due to a lack of integration.

Becoming an excellent space holder starts with our own practice and inner work as we step towards service to others. If you're not implementing the lessons from plant teachers into your daily life, those experiences you've invested in are just in vain. Breathwork is a way you can integrate and circulate those teachings.

Even as a breathwork facilitator in training, it can be powerful to have a space holder that can hold you accountable by showing you things you haven't been looking at. They can remind you of ways you may be unconsciously resisting or controlling how you're breathing.

Once we become a clear vessel through our own integration process, it shows up as integrity in our lives and how we can be there for others. Ultimately, what we can share with others is where we're at within ourselves.

Tapping into our higher intelligence

Respiratory intelligence is often overlooked because it seems like such a simple thing.

We had someone show up whose mother was laughing at him for coming to pay someone to get them to breathe for a week because it's just something we do every day. That's what makes Breathwave facilitators different. They watch out for the subtle nuances of breath patterns that can be easily missed if we’re not paying attention.

The breath is the only biological function that's both voluntary and involuntary. We don't have to focus on our breathing to function, but once we do place attention on our breath, the power of our awareness enhances how life moves and intelligence functions in our body.

This self-regulating intelligence has unique benefits based on the stories we've accumulated and how those stories show up as symptoms or relationships.

When we set an intention or pray, then have a *feeling experience* of that prayer, it manifests in our life. We're seeing science confirming this now, with many wonderful thought leaders bringing these studies home, proving the power of intention and emotion.

Breathwork for sociocultural change

We're living in a time when the things that aren't serving us individually and collectively are crumbling. We're being shown what's true, what's important, and what we must honour in order to evolve. We're shifting from a game of survival into thriving and living well.

As we experience this paradigm shift, breathwork can be one of the most fundamental things we can do to improve how we relate to this moment and shift out of this transformation to create a new world together.

What if world leaders used this readily available tool and technique to slow down, listen, and ground in? What if CEOs and decision-makers were more directly connected with their relationships, what they're doing, and how their choices impact others?

What if we could live our lives every day as a ceremony? More connected with the earth, more connected with the waters, these life-giving elements that allow us to be here, our fundamental and beautiful connection with each other.

The medicine we all carry within

I believe that as a collective, we're moving towards the technology that we already are and activating higher intelligence that we haven't fully tapped into yet. People that have been drawn to plant medicines now for many years have eventually come around full circle to realize that *we are the medicine*.

Breathwork is deeply self-healing. I haven't found anything as beneficial or direct, and one of my prayers is to make it more accessible and readily available to everyone, not just the spiritual community.

Let the breath be a fundamental anchor in your life - this is my prayer.