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◄ GUIDED BREATHING
EXPLORATIONS ►
Learning about how breathing affects you, means changing
breathing and observing the outcomes.
Intentional overbreathing is an important discovery and learning tool for people
who already overbreathe. By taking
proper precautions, neither the practitioner nor the learner, need be afraid
of intentional overbreathing. After
all, overbreathing is the problem, and as a behaviour, it must be addressed. In fact, fear of overbreathing and its
effects may even contribute to the problem. Learning what hypocapnia “feels like” is a very important part
of evaluation and training. During
intentional overbreathing, look for triggered physical symptoms, emotions,
memories, and shifts in consciousness.
Does changing PCO2 remind you of earlier times, places, or
people?
It often
triggers experiences similar to ones previously experienced in real life
circumstances. This kind of experience
during an exploratory session may have a profound impact on you, and it may
be becomes enormously instructive as to how breathing can mediate previously
unexplained or misunderstood symptoms, deficits, and emotions. The rate of recovery from intentional hypocapnia is a very
important indicator of deregulation; recovery
should be complete in one to four minutes.
Failure to recover means that you may be prisoner to its effects,
where the effects themselves (e.g., breathlessness) motivate you to breathe
deeper and faster, thus worsening the effects; the cause unwittingly becomes
the self-defeating solution to the problem.
In real life, clients may begin overbreathing only to find themselves
trapped in vicious circle overbreathing behaviour for hours at a time. And, like any other behaviour,
it may not change until there is a contextual shift, e.g., doing physical
exercise, or leaving the scene. Learned responses to the effects of hypocapnia vary
considerably and depend upon previous learning experience. As a result of dissociation, for example,
some people have anxiety reactions, others feel safe and relieved, while others
yet feeling nothing significant. The
setting in which the effects are experienced, such as a social situation,
plays an important role in determining the emotions and thoughts that may be
triggered, e.g., low self-esteem. Sometimes guided breathing explorations are in the opposite
direction, increasing PCO2 levels rather than decreasing
them. In people who are chronic overbreathers, restoring
normal PCO2 may result in a sense of vulnerability, anxiety, and
unhappy memories. They quickly retreat
into overbreathing, despite its associated adverse side effects. The solution in this case may involve
psychotherapy or counselling, where breathing becomes a gateway for exploring
personal dynamics. Copyrighted by Behavioral
Physiology Institute, |