Breathe yourself free! - expatsHaarlem

Release. Let go. Easier said than done. We all have things we would like to get rid of, feelings, emotions, beliefs keeping us stuck. But how? How do we get them out of our system so we can simply feel good?

Sophie van Aanholt

Sophie van Aanholt, a certified yoga and meditation teacher and breathwork facilitator, is explaining how and where we can do it.

Have you ever seen a kid having a tantrum? Something happens and bam! The emotion outburst happens. The kid gets angry, maybe they start screaming, crying, sometimes stamping, kicking, rolling on the ground. If you are a parent, you might remember these embarrassing moments, when everyone is staring at you wondering what is the problem? This is the way emotions are expressed at this early stage of life.

As adults, for the most of us, tantrums don’t happen anymore. Does that mean we don’t feel the emotions? Of course not. Growing up we learn how to keep our emotions to ourselves, not express them. That’s what we do. But the emotions remain the same, they are still there, and they need to be felt. But most of the time we can’t or don’t want to feel or express them.

So where do the emotions go? Do they simply disappear?

Simply see the body as a hard drive, where all the unexpressed emotions are stocked in the form of piled-up energy, like blocks. This piled-up energy can generate all kinds of physical, emotional, or mental problems in all aspects of our lives.

Photo by Keenan Constance on Unsplash

We all have one or more places in the body where tension is usually held, where the energy gets stuck. And there are some moments that we feel stuck. Recognise this? What do you think one and a half year of Covid-19 stress and restrictions generated for our emotions? Did you let them go? Were you able to?

Tension, frustration, anger, sadness… stress. Whatever they are, if you did not get the opportunity to let them go, they are still there.

A very simple way to allow these blockades to get unstuck and to free ourselves from them is Breathwork.

Our breath is a powerful tool we can use to let go of all that makes us heavy and feel free and empowered.

Breathwork comes in many forms but in essence it is an exercise in which we manipulate our breathing rate and depth, allowing our awareness to stay with us through our breathing. The benefits are like the ones of a meditative practice and allow a greater awareness of our emotional state.

The Breathwork that I teach at Destress Lab is a circular breathing technique through the mouth. This active breathing process combines an ancient two-stage breathing technique (two-stage pranayama) with upbeat positive music strengthening the body, calming, steadying the mind, and creating an incredibly special experience. It’s a simple, safe and extremely effective process to experience life on a whole new level.

Experience the power of conscious breathing.

Photo by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash

We breathe approximately 20 thousand times a day, mostly wrongly. Drawing shallow, not deep enough breaths that cause anxiety. Our breath is a tool we can use to change ourselves on a physiological level, balancing the sympathetic (fight / flight) and the parasympathetic (relax / heal) nervous systems. Belly breathing gets energy blocks unstuck, making space for fresh new energy, solutions, hope and inspiration.

The benefits of Breathwork are impressive: strengthening the lungs, physical and emotional detox, stress relief, energy increase, improving self-awareness and many more.

In October and November 2021 we are having a Breathwork Special at Destress lab. Every Thursday at 19:30 at Yogastudio Kleverpark in Haarlem, I teach a class where you get to experience the power of your breath.

The class is 1 hour long in English and is made of: