spiritual-awakening – Beyond the Breath Online Magazine

Who the heck is this?

23/11/2024 No Comments

Hey! Sophie here. I’m an almost 30 year old red-headed Yorkshire lass just starting my journey with Breathing Space to become the best breathwork facilitator Yorkshire ever saw.

This belief in myself is not something I’m hugely familiar with – it has grown in the last few years and particularly since May this year when I experienced by first Conscious Connected Breathwork class whilst on a ‘wellness’ retreat in Greece (I use the term lightly as the trip was run by regular party goers who were aiming for chill vibes. They did alright to be fair).

But who is she REALLY?
Ya gal has been through some shit. The shit started when my ex died in 2020. This was bruuuutal I can tell you. Him dying changed my perspective on literally everything in my life. I was pissed at couples walking down the street holding hands. I was reluctant to pay off my credit card because what was the point? I might die tomorrow shrugs nonchalantly (Obvs I did pay my credit card because ya gal has anxieties that override everything else)!

BUT

Whilst navigating the classic stages of grief, I realised I was actually quite liking the person I was becoming. Pre-trauma Sophie was proper square. She was a rule follower to a T and her life was lacking fun because of this. I had been a people pleaser and would prioritise everyone else’s emotional well-being waheeeey before my own. Shortly into this grief journey, I started to become more selfish but in the best way. Being selfish isn’t a bad thing. Being selfish means introducing boundaries and honouring your own emotions and wellbeing before anyone else’s. I have feelings too dammit, and they’re absolutely valid.

Since 2020 I have also lost both my Dad and my Cousin. Again, this was horrific to go through. Sadly, feeling quite experienced in the realm of grief by this point, I was able to draw on the journey I’d already navigated and seemed to handle these things fairly well (in the grand scheme of things). Don’t get me wrong, I felt incredibly guilty for feeling OK again much sooner!

My dry sense of humour has always been a masking tool I’ve drawn upon. My ability to joke about ~dark~ stuff is one of my favourite qualities. However, in the last couple of years my spiritual side has ventured into sight and I am exploring all kinds of weird and wonderful woo woo worlds (top marks for alliteration here). Because of this, the dark humour no longer served me QUITE as well. I was being forced to confront and FEEL things.

I saw a post today about the term ‘lifequake’. “A significant and unexpected shift in the trajectory of your life that initially feels devastating but has the beneficial outcome of catalyzing personal growth, transformation and rebirth.” Not sure who to credit for this but all hail this being! Thank you to Martin, Jaygo and Dad for being my lifequakes (although, given the choice, would’ve preferred you not to have been)!

Why breathwork?
Having worked in the NHS for 7 years, I got myself into a bit of a mental pickle. I know it isn’t something I want to do forever but what the Dickens could I do instead?! Cue the aforementioned wholesome trip to Greece in May 2024. We had a list of add-ons to choose from beforehand with breathwork being one of them. I didn’t give it much thought, thinking it sounded a bit lame or me. Obviously I got FOMO from everyone talking about the AMAZING experiences they’d had.

Thankfully, more sessions were put on so I signed up. Boooooyyyy am I grateful for that! It was a conscious connected breathwork session. It was hard. It was uncomfortable. It was weird. I was feeling a bit on edge anyway so it wasn’t much of a surprise when I started crying. I wasn’t quite ready for the full on emotional release that followed, though. We breathed with open mouths into the belly, chest, head, on cycle for about 20 minutes. The facilitator touched my abdomen and it was like she was literally pushing tears out of my face. Incredible. Suddenly, I realised what I had to do. I NEEDED to become a breathwork facilitator. So here I am – one seminar into the Breathing Space Breathwork Facilitator Programme, going for gold.

What’s the plan?
So what’s next? Well, I’m going to put my absolute all into the course. I’m going to learn everything I can and experience everything I can to make me the absolute best facilitator I can be. I hope to help people through their lifequakes so that they too might go for gold.

Sophie x

Sophie | @sanguine.soph

To find out more about Sophie, take a look at her profile in Practitioners Corner

In Breathwork Reflections

I am the moment you know you exist

16/11/2024 1 Comment

Watching the winds move through the valleys of me,
Wondering what it catches, what it carries, the rivering of breeze,
As my body rests as mountains without peaks,
I find myself gently, quickly caving in;
The dissolving of skin

Now then, in center sea,
A point of light, made just for me,
I watch it as the moment existence begins,
No breath, no motion,
Only stillness, as I move in,
Many layers fall at the wayside,
I barely realize what I’m leaving behind,
As I wander forward, as I feel more alive,
I remember the wind, I remember the skin,
There was a lingering message hidden within,
The quietness of sleep, the continuance of me,
Oh yes, the breath, is there something you wish to speak?

“I am the moment you know you exist.”
I let it rise in, then I let it sink a bit,
Like the fall of my breath is bringing me to the point nonexistence is in,
The inner wind, I’m travelling,
Calms and sets me down somewhere deep inside,
Here, I’ve never been,
“Here, is where we began,”
Says the breath, as I suddenly realize, I am

Tavisha, vis-à-vis

To find out more about Tavisha, take a look at her Profile in Practioner’s Corner

In Breathwork Reflections

The beginning

10/11/2024 No Comments

I attended my first conscious connected breathwork session early 2023 not really knowing what it was all about. Led by our very own weaver Shakti Tracy from Diamond Heart Network, I was blown away by the experience.

Having always been a seeker of ‘altered states of reality’ specifically in my younger years, I was fascinated by the concept of something as simple and accessible as our breath being able to support my journey of healing deep rooted wounding.

At first when I tried the continuous breath I struggled. I got a very dry mouth and was convinced I was ‘doing it wrong’. Imposter syndrome being a close companion of mine (we all know that one right?). We were journeying that day to meet our guides – divine masculine and divine feminine. I don’t remember who came through as my divine feminine in the first session (that I believed I was doing wrong!) as I was more concerned by ‘feeling silly’ and ‘getting it wrong’.

Before the second journey I sought out technique advice from my peers (whom I saw as much more knowledgeable!) I do remember thinking….’this wont work on me because my brain has been way too altered before by chemicals’ Self limiting beliefs were strong and I was resistant to allowing the natural flow.

We started the second session and I positioned myself more towards the corner of the room as I’d felt exposed in the first session being in the middle of room. I must add that the noises people were making during the session slightly baffled me. Screaming, crying, laughing, howling….what was going on that I just didn’t get? Nevertheless, I began breathing in earnest wiling myself to surrender and trust.

I can’t really describe what happened for the next hour. I was faced face to face with Thor and his mighty hammer along with a Minotaur. I came round a the end of the session wondering where the hell I was and what the heck had just happened. Pretty much like my first acid trip back in the 90’s. Just WOW! We all sat and shared and I was just so excited that I’d ‘got it right’ rather than focused on what the messages were for me. That processing came much later when in my own space.

My giddiness at my success overpowered the actual healing pathways it had provided for me. I knew then….I knew I needed more breathwork in my life.

My mum has raised me talking about how as humans we don’t breath properly and I’d often mused over her words but not really thought deeply about it. Having raised a son with chronic asthma, I knew he needed to breath deeper and I had often led mini ‘breathwork’ sessions with him when he was in hospital but suddenly all the pieces were coming together.

That summer I attended 5 wellbeing festivals leading Forest Bathing workshop sessions for folks in the conscious community and I made sure I attended as many breathwork sessions as I could. I paid for a 1:1 session with the amazing Julie Ann Horrox at LoveHerder “Getting High on Life” 2024 and she led me to shift some huge and painful blockages. She supported me with such love and nurture and the connection to her, her story and her presence filled me with joy. This consolidated my yearning to train as a breathwork facilitator. At Stone Cold Sober festival I was blessed to attended 6 sessions all with different facilitators and wow – this expanded my experience of how many ways there are to practice breathwork. I was hooked.

I became one of those people rolling around screaming, laughing, crying, chanting, howling and ultimately…releasing the stuff that wasnt even mine to begin with. Pure relief washed over me.

Early in Jan 2024, the universe served me another dose of health curveballs as my heart started to cry out with pressure. I listened but didn’t know what to do. Then I was released from a work situation that I hadn’t even realised had become very heavy on my shoulders (even though my neck was bad again needing surgery and I’d just had shoulder surgery – wakey wakey Lix!)

Once released from this time consuming role and with a long period of healing ahead – I had space open up in my life to again recreate and hone in on what I was being called to do. 1 week after my spinal surgery – I heard the call. I’d been growing closer with Shakti Tracy chatting about life, love and the universe and she mentioned that she was running a special April start course. She had felt the call to do an extra course this year and I took the sign. I signed up. Leapt hoping the net would appear. My finances being the worst they have been since I was young having had to surrender paid work because of my health.

I had been mediating hard on abundance, prosperity and more specifically doing a breathwork course for some time. My net appeared. Ok yes, it went more like ‘Dad? Please can you help me out?’

He has watched me since I had to leave my teaching career 3 years ago try to rebuild my life after my life changing injury at work and I know he chuckles at my ‘witchy’ ways but he had recently read about Breathwork in his daily paper and so he was ‘on board’ with this direction I wanted to take. He had only recently read this when I asked my favour….big ups universe.

So here I am now. A new neck, space in my life for a new venture, time and motivation to pour into the course and a really supportive network of wonderful authentic woman cheerleading me on.

2024 so far has been a wild ride of panic, fear, rejection, pain (mental and physical), confusion, challenges and heartache….but for each of those feelings it has brought authenticity, love, support, opportunities, huge joy, loyalty, progression, treasure and a vast wealth of excitement, growth and passion as all of it is a perfect sign of divine timing and absolute trust at the organic flow of our bloody beautiful universe!

Here I go with the truly transformational journey with my breath, your breath and the life with the universe breathes into us.

Lix from Elixir Breathwork – breathing is medicine for the soul.

To find out more about Lix take a look at her profile in Practitioners Corner

In Breath and the Spirit

Led by my Father’s Breath

30/10/2024 2 Comments

I swear my father, frail and relaxed in an ICU hospital bed, was practicing breathwork before he left his body in 2017. It was the same style of breathing I am focusing on now as I train with Breathing Space to become a certified breathworks facilitator – mouth wide open, inhales pulling in precious air and exhales released with a sigh, his whole body involved in the act of breathing – even if assisted. His breathing continued this way for the longest minutes I had ever experienced well after life-support was removed.

Have you ever witnessed a human being’s final breath? That moment of ultimate release – the letting go of a life? It moved me deeply. I sensed a delicate breeze – the quiet readiness to move on, a freedom from the confines of a weary body. The experience inspired me to write a poem I titled Perfectly Unfinished, later published in Third Lane Magazine, an Indian publication that resonated with my father’s heritage and the poignancy of his passing.

In 2021, while visiting Costa Rica, I embarked on a transformative breathwork journey that I believe was guided by my father‘s spirit. Through this experience, I grasped – not merely intellectually, but in the very core of my being – how he departed from his physical form. All that remained was breath and breath-taking light.

I’ve deleted and rewritten paragraphs of this article several times describing the pulling sensation between my eyebrows, the blinding brightness of that light and the innate awareness that it is not my time to enter this loving passage – that is more life in store for me to be breathed. But really all of these words don’t seem to do the experience justice. And sometimes describing something profound almost feels contracted – as if it’s being packaged up in a tiny box rather than given room to breathe, to move freely through and around me.

Each of us has a unique human experience that influences our breathwork journeys, should we choose to undertake them. It is my heartfelt prayer that we all have the opportunity to explore such journeys in our lifetimes. One thing is clear: These are not just isolated experiences; they hold transformative potential if we trust their wisdom and keep them close to our hearts.

This, my first incredible breathwork journey, reshaped my relationship to aging and ignited my quest to explore lucid dreaming. The connection between lucid dreaming and death is well-established; over a thousand years ago, Tibetan Buddhists developed an entire science around awakening in dreams to prepare for death. They believed that if lucid dreaming was practiced enough, one could remain conscious at the moment of death and navigate the transition with awareness, evolving into the next phase of the soul’s journey.

I will forever cherish that breathwork journey with my father and the renewed perspective it granted me on life and death. It illuminated the boundless light and love awaiting us, and the freedom that comes from releasing fears of impermanence. The breath truly does guide us to let go. And to experience this before our final breath is indeed a profound grace.

As I facilitate and observe the conscious connected breathwork journeys of others, I am increasingly aware of how this practice reveals what we need to release, helping us lighten our burdens. With each session, as old stories fade, we emerge more liberated.

Zila (pronounced Z-ee-la)

To find out more about Zila, take a look at her profile in Practitioners Corner

In Breath and the Mind

Breath is the Bridge, Breath is the River

22/10/2024 No Comments

‘Become aware of the breath, the sensation of the air passing in and out through your nostrils. As you focus in on this sensation, let everything else in your mind slowly fade away. Let all the things that have happened to you today and all the things that you have to do, all your cares, all your worries, all your troubles, slowly melt away. All you become aware of is the in and out of your breath. In…. and out…. in….. out….’

The journey from Meditation to Breath

I was sitting cross-legged in a Buddhist Gompa, listening to my teacher give instructions. It was very comforting; a still and quiet refuge from the craziness of the outside world. Whenever I stepped into the temple, the thick red carpet and scent of nag champa incense burning made me immediately relax.

While my teacher was speaking I found it very easy to concentrate. Her steady voice had a certain authority, and my mind naturally did as she asked. I focussed in on my breath, its slow steady rhythm and the in–and-out of air on my throat. My concentration narrowed, tightened, focussed. In…. and out…. in….. out….. .

I felt I could really train my mind in such a space, tame my monkey mind by improving my concentration. Make it like a smooth still lake, untroubled by ripples. Make it like the clear blue sky, untouched by clouds. Meditating on my breath was working on becoming enlightened – just as Buddha had – and that was definitely a goal worth striving for.

‘There is the outside world,’ my teacher said, ‘and the inside. Your breath is the bridge between them. You know what the outside is like; full of suffering and delusion, but do you know what the inside is like? What wonders lie inside? Remember, your breath is the bridge between them. In… and out…. In… out….’

And indeed there were wonders inside. Oceans of stillness, of peace, of strength, of love and compassion for all living beings. Big mind and big heart. Buddha mind, buddha heart. Enlightenment.

But when my teacher stopped speaking and let me meditate in silence, my meditation ended. My concentration wandered, my focus slipped. My monkey mind was back, jumping around all over the place, going anywhere but my breath. I was on the bridge and trying to get back inside, but it seemed a titanic wind was pushing against me, and the more I pushed on, the harder it pushed me back.

It was even worse when I left the refuge of the temple and tried to meditate at home. Not only was there that same wind beating me back – refusing me entrance to my inside world of wonders – but the craziness of the outside world, drenched in suffering and delusion, made the bridge feel like a dangerous place, an untethered, flapping rope bridge to cross a raging torrent. One slip and the waters would swallow and drown me.

After a while, I stopped meditating. I stopped going to the Gompa, I stopped following my teacher. Although my lack of progress in my meditation was not the primary reason in my decision, it definitely played a part. The glimpses that I had of my inside world became just memories. Enlightenment seemed again unattainable. I stepped back from the breath, from that bridge of terror, and became immersed again in the outside world.

A few years later, by chance I found myself at Conscious Breathwork in Bali, Indonesia. My experience of Buddhist breath meditation had left me cynical yet longing for something to happen. I wanted to try and cross the bridge again, but I had lost the faith that I – or even anyone else – really could.

For those of you who have experienced a Conscious Breathwork, you will know that it is nothing like a Buddhist breath meditation. There is no concentration, no focussing, no mental component at all. Just breathing, Conscious Breathing. Within a few breaths of my first session, amazingly, magically, without any effort, without even really listening to the teacher, I found myself back at the bridge, staring towards my interior world of wonders. The wind was as strong as before, perhaps stronger, the bridge more unstable, and the waters below more akin to a deluge than a river, but I was back, looking at something I thought lost to me forever.

This time though, standing at the start of the bridge, I felt strangely calm. With a flash of insight I knew what I had to do. Rather than force myself across, I took a different path. For a moment, I stood up tall and faced the wind, feeling it wrap and buffet my body. Then I let myself fall backwards into the river, letting the waters engulf and sweep me away.

You see I realised that my breath was not just the bridge, my breath was also the river. And if I just let myself go, if I abandoned my fear and followed my breath it could sweep me away not just to my inside world of wonders, but to places that I could not even imagine. A place where there was no difference between inside and out, where there was not any difference between suffering and enlightenment.

If you have the opportunity to try a Conscious Breathwork, and if you then find yourself standing in front of the wild elemental rivers of your own being, then you might find yourself letting go as well.

You could even go there right now, if you are brave enough. It’s easy. Just breathe. Consciously breathe.

In…. and out…. in….. out….

Benedict Beaumont – Founder of Breathing Space

To find out more about Benedict, take a look at his profile in Practitioners Corner

In Practitioner's Corner

Tavisha, vis-à-vis

26/07/2000 No Comments

What is your personal journey?

I am a mystic that has completed that journey and so now I am looking into being more myself which means living a life according to preference, all things considered and included. I realized a while ago that life is a series of experiences, though the past can change, that ultimately repeats the pattern of desire and fulfilment. Knowing this, I am quite excited to continue discovering what seeds exist within me and are ready to bloom into my lived-reality.

What do you enjoy about breathwork and how has it helped you?

What I enjoy the most is that it is a point of connection with others and with myself. It has helped me travel the inside of my body as though I am made of mountains and valleys. What I ultimately love about the breath is that it allows me to exist and what I love most about watching it is that it brings me to new places within me that I didn’t know existed.

Where did you complete your training (or where are you still in training)?

My name is Tavisha Shummoogum and I have not completed any training towards becoming a breathwork facilitator.

What do you stand for, and what do you stand against?

I stand for truth simply because I like what feels true. I stand against holding myself fixed where I am when the natural call to action is no longer to pause and enjoy but to move forward. I love and appreciate every view along the way, but there is more to discover, more to live, more to enjoy, therefore, every now and then, I am magnetically drawn into continuing forward with curiosity, into the next, into the new, into the mystery. Put more simply, I stand against not moving forward when that moment of tension from staying rises up. And I’d like to clarify that the action of moving forward for me is allowing the desire to come up and out from within rather than suppressing it by ignoring it. This allowance also tends to result in me being repositioned deeper within myself which is always interesting (because what else is there to know??).

What is your greatest wish for your clients

I no longer work in a field where I have clients, so I’ll casually switch the word to fans since that is the world I am walking into. My greatest wish for them is that they live a life they deserve which means a life that constantly puts them in state of awe and wonder. It means a life that renders them speechless before they can even begin to explain it. It means a life that holds them in such a way that they have no doubt they are the precious point of existence.

My Bio

What am I? I am someone who is curious enough to let life reflect me to me. More specifically, I am someone who has noticed that all of existence blooms inside my heart for me to then live a reality that can surprise me with discovery of what started within and exists without. It leads me to this awareness that all things are connected and a newfound desire to let life evidence this.

Contact Details

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tavisha.sh/
X: https://x.com/tavisha_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tavisha.sh