Rebecca Dennis - Let It Go: Breathe yourself calm

Rebecca Dennis is the UKs leading breathwork coach with over 20 years experience practicing holistic and alternative therapies. She is the the founder of www.breathingtree.co.uk.

Specialising in using breathwork to treat specific issues and ailments, Rebecca beleives that conscious breathwork is the ultimate key to our health and well-being.

Rebecca has collaborated with Google, BBC, Stylist Magazine, Sweaty Betty, and more.

Would you like to reduce stress, dissolve anxiety, sleep better and boost your immune system? If youve been led to believe you need to spend weeks meditating on a mountain to feel calmer, thats just not true. You dont need to escape your everyday life to feel better, you just need to turn your attention inwards and master the art of letting go.

Being aware of how you breathe is one of the simplest ways to understand how you are feeling in the here and now and the most effective way to release emotional baggage and negative thoughts. Your breath is the most natural and sustainable healing tool you have. We often look to quick fixes to feel better a new diet, digital health trackers, step counters rather than looking inside to naturally boost our wellbeing. You have the solutions within you already and one really formidable force is your breath.

From your earliest childhood memories, you probably recall being told to take a deep breath when feeling upset, angry or anxious. Intuitively we all understand, even if weve never heard the science, that how we breathe and how we feel are intrinsically linked.

The practice of breathwork is, simply put, breathing exercises that allow you to change and manipulate the rhythm, depth and rate of your breath with intention and purpose to improve your physical, mental and emotional performance. Optimum breathing plays a pivotal role in your overall health and in the proper functioning of your immune and nervous systems. Using your breath to its full potential can help strengthen your lungs and pulmonary system while reducing anxiety and stress. By learning to breathe well you limit your risk of burning out and naturally defend your immune system.

Breathwork has become a buzzword, not only in the wellness world but in corporate life and education too. But, really understanding and learning the basics of better breathing means that instead of going somewhere to be fixed, you can use your bodys natural abilities to help yourself. Constant tension in the body can lead to anxious thought patterns, bad digestion, a weaker immune system, and increased acidity and inflammation its all connected. Science is now catching up with what the sages and yogis have been saying for thousands of years: our emotions and breathing are fundamentally linked.

Breathing exercises are proven to have lasting effects on both your physical and mental health, providing a method you can use every day to help navigate your way through life. The breath is a barometer to your inner state of being. I have seen first-hand the power that better breathing can have to help us face, recover and heal from trauma, pain and fear.

As I write this book, we are collectively going through a mass trauma. In these times we are reminded that the only certainty is that nothing is ever certain. While the world is spinning and we are all trying to adapt and find some sort of stability, there is one thing that is always constant and that is our breath.

Breathing is the only autonomic system in the body that you can learn to control to change your sense of wellbeing and anchor your mind. Most of us hold physical, mental and emotional tension in our bodies which can impact our health. Although we cannot change or control everything around us, we can control our response and how it affects our physiology. Breathing exercises help you release tension and unprocessed trauma, break unhealthy patterns and coping mechanisms and quieten the chatter in your mind. Indeed, this profound power we all possess can be used every day to change our breathing patterns, thereby altering our nervous system and state of mind.

We can change how we react, act and feel by simply changing the rhythms of our breath.

You may have heard how sages and experts are able to reach states of bliss and enlightenment by using their breath as a superpower after years of dedication and training but heres a newsflash: you dont have to be wealthy, spiritual or a guru to feel the benefit of breathing exercises. One breath at a time, you can move towards reaching goals that may have felt unattainable with a deeper understanding of your breath, bringing tangible results that do not require years of rigorous practice, right now.

Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we breathe through it.

Every day you have a choice to take your breath for granted or to fully embrace and feel everything that life gives you. All thoughts, experiences and feelings directly stimulate your physiology and influence how you breathe. Breathing exercises can create a pause between stimulus and response, helping you to remain grounded and process life events. The key is creating space between stressful moments to recalibrate and reset rather than staying wired. Breathing is free, and not particularly hard, yet many of us hold or limit our breath subconsciously to keep life at bay.

Youll know you have understood the art of breathwork when the way you respond to your circumstances changes, even if the circumstances themselves have not. One of the most courageous decisions you can ever make is to choose to live in the now, and that is an active process. Conscious breathing is a critical tool that can ground you in the present, allowing you to move through life in a healthy way. Rather than burying your feelings or trying to erase a memory, you can learn to fully feel and accept all your experiences and work with them rather than against them.

When you change the way you breathe, you change something fundamental in your whole physiology. You can change your state from feeling anxious to calm, scattered to focused, even from tired to more energised. In short, you can rewire your nervous system and supercharge your mind! Breathwork provides you with a life-long set of tools to use every day to help navigate your way through life, and even transform it if you want to.

This book is the culmination of over 20 years of my work in breath- and body-based therapy. Ive worked with thousands of people each with their own unique needs, including autoimmune disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), depression, cancer and addiction, and my clients include veterans, teachers, NHS staff, boxers, celebrities, opera singers, actors, entrepreneurs, high-flying city workers, musicians, yogis and elite athletes. Over the last decade, my mission has been to make breathwork accessible to as many people as possible and to all ages from workplaces to schools to care homes and hospitals. During the recent coronavirus pandemic, NHS workers, teachers and people working on the front line have used my techniques to help them manage daily stress and trauma.