The Six Challenges to Change

Looking for improvement is an admirable and courageous intention.

But did you realize that improvement requires you to learn new things and refrain from old, ingrained habits. This re-working your old ways is a challenging process.

If you take a good look at the times, you have previously tried to change, but failed, you will find that you got stuck on one of the Six Challenges and aborted your attempt.

Looking closely, you’ll also notice that every time you get stuck, you resist the same problem and with the same re-action.

To have a better chance of real change and success, you can identify what your challenges are, ahead of time, and practice how to resolve them, instead of acting out old habitual re-actions. Then, when your challenges show up, on your Change Journey, you will be properly prepared for successful progress.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.

Looking for improvement is an admirable and courageous intention.

But did you realize that improvement requires you to learn new things and refrain from old, ingrained habits. This re-working your old ways is a challenging process.

If you take a good look at the times, you have previously tried to change, but failed, you will find that you got stuck on one of the Six Challenges and aborted your attempt.

Looking closely, you’ll also notice that every time you get stuck, you resist the same problem and with the same re-action.

To have a better chance of real change and success, you can identify what your challenges are, ahead of time, and practice how to resolve them, instead of acting out old habitual re-actions. Then, when your challenges show up, on your Change Journey, you will be properly prepared for successful progress.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.

Chest vs. Belly Breathing

Chest vs. Belly breathing shows you whether you engage personally or are a disengaged observer.

Chest breathing shows that you are interested in your life, engage in it, take charge, and take your life personally.

Belly breathing shows that you stuff your feelings, is a spectator and don’t face your circumstances. You engage mentally and physically, but no awareness of your actual personal Life-Journey.

Natural Breathing starts with your chest
Your inhale should be filled up from the top of your chest and then expand, down through your solar plexus, into your abdomen, and then to the rest of your body. If your breath jumps over and avoids your solar plexus area, you are missing your personal power to create the life that you want.

If a person intends to do Natural Breathing, but is educated in diaphragmatic breathing, which has a different purpose than Natural Breathing, the person needs to be re-educated on how to breathe into their chest.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.

Chest vs. Belly breathing shows you whether you engage personally or are a disengaged observer.

Chest breathing shows that you are interested in your life, engage in it, take charge, and take your life personally.

Belly breathing shows that you stuff your feelings, is a spectator and don’t face your circumstances. You engage mentally and physically, but no awareness of your actual personal Life-Journey.

Natural Breathing starts with your chest
Your inhale should be filled up from the top of your chest and then expand, down through your solar plexus, into your abdomen, and then to the rest of your body. If your breath jumps over and avoids your solar plexus area, you are missing your personal power to create the life that you want.

If a person intends to do Natural Breathing, but is educated in diaphragmatic breathing, which has a different purpose than Natural Breathing, the person needs to be re-educated on how to breathe into their chest.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.

The Breathing Threshold

Your Breathing Threshold is the point in your breathing where you have an opportunity to retain more energy than you use up.

Your Breathing Threshold is the point in your breathing, where your inhale tends to end, and your exhale starts. It is the depth you are inclined to inhale to.

When you do the 5 Breathing Basics, you breathe more than you are inclined to and thus retain more Life-force than sub-ventilating suggests. This is called “Breathing Beyond your Breathing Threshold”.

  • You ADD more Life-force and go beyond your Breathing Threshold by being Aware and Inhaling deeper than you are inclined to.
  • You USE UP Life-force and breathe below your Breathing Threshold by being Unaware, Moving and Thinking.

Locating the Breathing Threshold
Your Breathing Threshold is encountered in every breath.

The depth of your inhale, before you hit the Breathing Threshold varies, depending on how much Life-force you are using up.

For example, if you run, you can breathe deeply, without going beyond your Breathing Threshold. If you are very present and relaxed, you don’t need to breathe much to go beyond your Breathing Threshold.

How deep and fast you need to breathe to go beyond your Breathing Threshold, depends on how much energy you use up.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.

Your Breathing Threshold is the point in your breathing where you have an opportunity to retain more energy than you use up.

Your Breathing Threshold is the point in your breathing, where your inhale tends to end, and your exhale starts. It is the depth you are inclined to inhale to.

When you do the 5 Breathing Basics, you breathe more than you are inclined to and thus retain more Life-force than sub-ventilating suggests. This is called “Breathing Beyond your Breathing Threshold”.

  • You ADD more Life-force and go beyond your Breathing Threshold by being Aware and Inhaling deeper than you are inclined to.
  • You USE UP Life-force and breathe below your Breathing Threshold by being Unaware, Moving and Thinking.

Locating the Breathing Threshold
Your Breathing Threshold is encountered in every breath.

The depth of your inhale, before you hit the Breathing Threshold varies, depending on how much Life-force you are using up.

For example, if you run, you can breathe deeply, without going beyond your Breathing Threshold. If you are very present and relaxed, you don’t need to breathe much to go beyond your Breathing Threshold.

How deep and fast you need to breathe to go beyond your Breathing Threshold, depends on how much energy you use up.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.

What Is Hyperventilation?

Hyperventilation means “Too Much Breathing”.

That is a confusing name. Do you worry about breathing Too Much when you make love, run, dance, have emotions? I don’t think so.

Hyperventilation is a topic that often comes up in Breathwork, so here is clarification what it really is and how to deal with it.

The concept of Hyperventilation was born from watching distressed people and noticing that they were breathing a lot. Once, the “heavy” breathing was stopped, these symptoms diminished.

The symptoms included emotions and Tetany, which were very difficult for onlookers to just stand by and do nothing about. They didn’t understand that a natural healing process was taking place. So, the idea followed that it was the breathing that caused the distress and that got labelled Hyperventilation and was considered dangerous and so-called solutions were developed, which basically meant techniques, like breathing into a paper bag, and medicine to stop breathing like that.

What was really happening was that the “hyperventilation” was releasing and healing a sub-conscious trauma.

Traumatic experiences are stored as sub-conscious memories, by holding one’s breath or “getting the air knocked out of you”.

Eventually, you’ll trust more aliveness and feel safe again. Then, the shield, that conceals your sub-conscious memory, loses its need to protect you and turns transparent, letting your guarded memory to be faced again. This is what you need, to release it, and to be free to live fully, now.

If you get interrupted in the middle of a “Hyperventilation” and don’t get to complete your release of your sub-conscious trauma, you get stuck with your trauma being half uncovered, but without releasing your memory, so you will have to spend more time to build up trust to fully uncover it again.

To successfully release a sub-conscious memory, you need to feel safer than normal and have a built-up energy momentum, which you get by Natural Breathing. This may look to an inexperienced eye as Hyperventilation. But it really is a fortunate opportunity to free oneself.

Too Much Exhaling
Sometimes Hyperventilation comes from a forced exhale – a pushing the exhale out more and longer than you inhale.

This can cause a lack of CO2. The body needs a certain amount of CO2, so if there is a lack of CO2, the body will self-correct and stop your intensified exhale.

You cannot inhale too much. 

If you encounter “Hyperventilation”, and you want to make it easy for yourself and others, make sure you switch the focus from pushing the EXHALE out, to pulling the INHALE in.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.

Hyperventilation means “Too Much Breathing”.

That is a confusing name. Do you worry about breathing Too Much when you make love, run, dance, have emotions? I don’t think so.

Hyperventilation is a topic that often comes up in Breathwork, so here is clarification what it really is and how to deal with it.

The concept of Hyperventilation was born from watching distressed people and noticing that they were breathing a lot. Once, the “heavy” breathing was stopped, these symptoms diminished.

The symptoms included emotions and Tetany, which were very difficult for onlookers to just stand by and do nothing about. They didn’t understand that a natural healing process was taking place. So, the idea followed that it was the breathing that caused the distress and that got labelled Hyperventilation and was considered dangerous and so-called solutions were developed, which basically meant techniques, like breathing into a paper bag, and medicine to stop breathing like that.

What was really happening was that the “hyperventilation” was releasing and healing a sub-conscious trauma.

Traumatic experiences are stored as sub-conscious memories, by holding one’s breath or “getting the air knocked out of you”.

Eventually, you’ll trust more aliveness and feel safe again. Then, the shield, that conceals your sub-conscious memory, loses its need to protect you and turns transparent, letting your guarded memory to be faced again. This is what you need, to release it, and to be free to live fully, now.

If you get interrupted in the middle of a “Hyperventilation” and don’t get to complete your release of your sub-conscious trauma, you get stuck with your trauma being half uncovered, but without releasing your memory, so you will have to spend more time to build up trust to fully uncover it again.

To successfully release a sub-conscious memory, you need to feel safer than normal and have a built-up energy momentum, which you get by Natural Breathing. This may look to an inexperienced eye as Hyperventilation. But it really is a fortunate opportunity to free oneself.

Too Much Exhaling
Sometimes Hyperventilation comes from a forced exhale – a pushing the exhale out more and longer than you inhale.

This can cause a lack of CO2. The body needs a certain amount of CO2, so if there is a lack of CO2, the body will self-correct and stop your intensified exhale.

You cannot inhale too much. 

If you encounter “Hyperventilation”, and you want to make it easy for yourself and others, make sure you switch the focus from pushing the EXHALE out, to pulling the INHALE in.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.

Life-issue – Life-lesson

The reason to learn what your Life-lesson is and be free of your Life-issue, is so that you can live a happy life, independent of what life serves up for you. You will learn to let go of your automatic unconscious reactive behavior and settle in to an accepting and centered sense of well-being.

Your Life-issue is something you don’t like, that continuously keeps bugging you.

It shows up as a repetitive unwanted feeling and it affects all areas of your life.

Until now, you have tried many ways to get rid of your Life-issue. You have tried to remove it, control it, oppose it, conform to it, avoid it, and ignore it, but it is still here.

You have thought that your Life-issue was caused by external causes, so you have tried to remove yourself from what you thought caused it, such as a disliked job, disliked behavior, disliked environment, or you keep complaining about certain people, your loser car, your lack of money, but the issue keeps coming back again and again.

Finally, you realize that your attempt to get rid of it is not working and that you have a lesson to learn, to be able to live happily ever after.

You embark on the search for what your Life-lesson is trying to teach, so you can complete your Life-lesson and be free from your Life-issue.

To have a Life-issue you must first have something that is an issue, that you are not leaving in the past, but holding on to and trying to correct.

Then you investigate why you have such a reaction to certain matters and find that you have a resistance to accept and make peace with a past traumatizing experience, and that you are still trying to set it straight.

Your Life-lesson is completed when you no longer need to get rid of your Life-issue and instead have accepted it as a valuable ally to Own Your Self.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.

The reason to learn what your Life-lesson is and be free of your Life-issue, is so that you can live a happy life, independent of what life serves up for you. You will learn to let go of your automatic unconscious reactive behavior and settle in to an accepting and centered sense of well-being.

Your Life-issue is something you don’t like, that continuously keeps bugging you.

It shows up as a repetitive unwanted feeling and it affects all areas of your life.

Until now, you have tried many ways to get rid of your Life-issue. You have tried to remove it, control it, oppose it, conform to it, avoid it, and ignore it, but it is still here.

You have thought that your Life-issue was caused by external causes, so you have tried to remove yourself from what you thought caused it, such as a disliked job, disliked behavior, disliked environment, or you keep complaining about certain people, your loser car, your lack of money, but the issue keeps coming back again and again.

Finally, you realize that your attempt to get rid of it is not working and that you have a lesson to learn, to be able to live happily ever after.

You embark on the search for what your Life-lesson is trying to teach, so you can complete your Life-lesson and be free from your Life-issue.

To have a Life-issue you must first have something that is an issue, that you are not leaving in the past, but holding on to and trying to correct.

Then you investigate why you have such a reaction to certain matters and find that you have a resistance to accept and make peace with a past traumatizing experience, and that you are still trying to set it straight.

Your Life-lesson is completed when you no longer need to get rid of your Life-issue and instead have accepted it as a valuable ally to Own Your Self.

Excerpt from the Natural Breathing Own Your Self Manual.