01 October 2008
Posted in BreathWork

Why Does Intense Breathing Cause Intense Feelings?

One explanation for the often dramatic results that can be achieved through intensive breathing can be found in the fear centre of our brain: the amygdala. This small organ, the size of an almond, situated deep down in our brain, is developed in the third month of pregnancy and works as an accurate storage of all events that caused fear and emotional overwhelm. It works totally unconsciously and has no reference to chronological time. This means, for instance, that the amygdala stores the memory of a barking dog I perceived as dangerous at the age of one, without taking a note about the time. So, the same fear, with the same intensity as I had experienced it in early childhood, is produced when meeting a barking dog in an adult age.

The task of the amygdala is to react within a very short time to sensory data from outside that indicate a dangerous situation. This is why the connection from the ears to the amygdala is extremely short. A signal that is coming in from the ears needs to jump over only three synapses to reach the alarm center in the brain, and these three jumps do not need more than eight milliseconds.

Consequently, the amygdala is able to set off the complex stress reaction immediately by activating other brain centers, mainly the hypothalamus. Thus, an overall change in the whole body, including intense breathing, is triggered. All the body's resources for "fight or flight" are mobilized so we can face challenges in an effective way.

Intense Breathing and Fear

In a breathwork session, we usually start with relaxing the body. It is important for the client to let go of obvious muscular tensions, so that the breath can start to flow easier and deeper than usual. Then, the breathing can be intensified by will and encouragement up to the point where the amygdala is reminded of a danger in which this form of breathing had appeared spontaneously in any former time in the history of the person. At that point, the amygdala starts the stress reaction in the body similar to the past traumatic experience. The client experiences strange body sensations, bizarre movements, and intense feelings of fear, anger, or sadness up to the point of cathartic release.

The amygdala also connects to the other memory storage in the upper regions of our brain, the cortex. The connection is mediated by the hippocampus, which is our unconscious organizer for conscious memories. In this way, sensual memories from the past are activated and can be experienced as images, sounds, or body sensations, which come along with the intense feelings created by the amygdala. Past situations of traumatizing power will arise and can be faced consciously until we are ready to integrate them.

The Amygdala, Memories & Time

We can understand the fact that memories come up often far beyond the range of our conscious memory storage, because the memory capacity of the amygdala reaches back to the earliest time of pregnancy. The visual impressions that come with it may not always be accurate, since they are formed by the associative cortex, under the governance of the hippocampus. Their production does not follow a strict rule and principle, yet it can provide a lot of relevant details. Our brain does not work like a historical scientist, who carefully separates facts from fiction, but more like a poet, who creates images with complex meanings. (This is the area where false memory syndromes can come in.)

The memories from the fear storage are provided in a different format that is simple and accurate. This information is far from being complete or objective. It is like a database with very few parameters and it focuses on detecting dangerous signals in the environment quickly and precisely. For example, if I got hit by a red car years ago, the same color in a tiny spot in my vision could trigger the original panic reaction.

Due to the early development of our anxiety memory, we can recall information about danger starting from the first stages of pregnancy, around birth, and up to the early phases of infancy. But this information is stored in simple detail, always connected with emotion, and with very limited knowledge about circumstances. Detailed knowledge is organized by the hippocampus, which starts to develop some time after birth and matures a few years later in childhood. The data is stored in our conscious memory (declarative memory) that is situated in large areas of the associative cortex.

The memory storage of our amygdala seems to be the source for early memories that can come up in breathwork sessions. They often arise as strange body sensations or bizarre movements and evolve into intense feelings and cathartic release.

Retraumatization

Just bringing up fearful information does not help to heal it. On the contrary, it would intensify and strengthen memories in the sense of retraumatization (c.f. Denis Ouellette: "Getting The War Out" in Breathe Magazine, #109, 2008). But if the client can maintain a relaxed state, in which the body reprocesses the traumatic memories along with a sense of safety provided by the therapist, then they can integrate the memory. Integration means that the fear, stored in the amygdala, is strongly linked to a timeframe from the higher regions of the brain, so that the client is able to allocated the fear far back in the past, while able to experience the present as safe and trustworthy.

Here, another important center of the brain comes into play-the prefrontal cortex (PFC). This is our agent for reality checking and responsibility. It matures during adolescence. The PFC is able to quiet our fearful amygdala when old memories are brought to consciousness. It assures us that old experience was very frightening for us, but now that we are grown up, we are no longer in danger. (This is called top-down-control.) But the PFC needs calm circumstances, because when anxiety prevails, its reasoning is set aside by the alarm centers.

One client of mine came to a breathwork session because she felt highly disturbed after a breathing session in a group, where the person who was assisting her became unsafe to her during the process and could not give her the support she needed to integrate the emotions that came up. So she needed careful attention to work through and integrate this disturbing experience.

When the right circumstances are provided, the client experiences the intensity of the emotion and feels safe enough to face it and to cope with it. She stays consciously focussed on the breathing, so she cannot be totally overwhelmed by the emotion as in the traumatic situation of the past. The therapist is present and aware of the needs of the client, encouraging the client to experience the feelings and to stay aware of their breathing. He serves as a grounding anchor and a connecting bridge to present reality.

When daily life provides another situation that could trigger a pattern of fear that came up in the session, it is much less likely that the fear will arise as intensely as before. After some time, the person will be able to stay calm and not even think of being afraid.

Limitations of Catharsis

Cathartic breathing has some limitations we should be aware of when using it as a therapeutic method. One limit is that strong emotions from past trauma can arise too quickly for the organism to integrate them. This brings the danger of over-stretching and damaging a fragile ego structure. This could cause severe disintegration and decompensation, resulting in psychosis. People with a fragile personality structure and a weak social background should not be guided into intense breathing sessions. They have to become acquainted with their body and their breath in the first place. When they have learned to feel grounded in their bodies and to relax with their exhalation, they can slowly be led toward increasing the volume of their inhalation.

Another limitation can be found in the learning abilities of the amygdala. When exposed to frightening signals over a period of time without anything dangerous happening, the signal loses its frightening character-when we hear a car alarm going off every two minutes, we stop listening.

Similarly, after some experiences with intense breathing, the amygdala stops getting anxious when the breathing rhythm intensifies and the pauses of relaxation are omitted. It has learned, with the help of the prefrontal cortex, that there is no real danger in the situation. The client has learned to integrate her fears to a certain degree and has strengthened the top-down control to tame the lower emotional center to fire off unnecessarily all the time.

We observe that most clients who come to breathwork on a regular basis, reach a level where they can breathe strongly and intensely in a connected rhythm without producing intense emotional responses or outbreaks. This does not mean that all their traumas are healed, but that their body, including their brain, has managed to cope with the changed breathing pattern and is ready to move on from that level.

At this point, the method of cathartic breathing has reached its purpose and needs to be changed. Working with relaxing the breathing, especially the out-breath, combined with a full volume, can provide deeper levels of healing. Still, not all issues of suffering can be eliminated by conscious breathing. We need complementary approaches to access these ailments. This can be emotional-level breathing, systemic breathing, interactive breathing, or any other approach in breathwork or complementary therapies, which open the door to the different levels of the soul.

The Drama-Resolution Cycle

Some therapists and some clients become disappointed at the point when cathartic breathing fails to produce remarkable and sensational results. As we know from wave theories, even the strongest waves cool down and disappear after some time. When the client and the therapist associate therapeutic success with high waves, they think, after a smooth and quiet session, that something essential is missing. When dramatic breakthroughs are considered to be at the core of the therapy, with intensity as the marker for success, the lack of intensity can appear to be the sign of failure.
The therapist will transfer his concept to the client, whether it is shared verbally or not. Both, therapist and client become addicted to a drama-resolution cycle-a drama is needed to obtain freedom, so dramas have to be created to gain the benefit of a feeling of resolution. This would be like seeking the experience of how good we feel after recovering from a severe disease. But it would not be considered normal to acquire intense illnesses just for the sake of the nice feeling we have after recovery!

If the therapist feels stressed to deliver dramatic results, she will look for new means of producing such. Ways to provide a high level of excitement and dramatic tension can be with interventions on the physical level. Applying pressure on certain points of the body will inevitably produce strong emotional reactions.

Some breathworkers claim that more breathing is better breathing. They motivate their clients for intense breathing and assume automatically (and incorrectly) that less intense breathing indicates psychological resistance. More breathing is equated with more life energy-this is often stated as dogma.

But those therapists do not consider that the level of energy that the body can withstand from our breathing metabolism does not depend on the quantity of air taken in, but on the ability of the body to integrate the oxygen. Simple measurements can show that strong and rapid breathing takes more energy from the body than it adds to it.

The question is whether any further healing can happen under such manipulative and ideological circumstances. Healing cannot be measured by the quantity of dopamine in the brain, which is likely to be high at the end of a cathartic session. Becoming addicted to emotional arousal is bound to create more suffering and to deepen neurotic patterns. When therapy turns into a sportive exercise, it would be better to tell the client to do an hour of running instead of the session-probably giving the same or even healthier results.

Good Breathing Is Relaxed Breathing

In many cases in breathwork therapy, catharsis is useful used to open up the blocks that stand in the way of gaining more relaxation. This is, however, an episode along the way. Learning to intensify the breathing is needed and can be used up to a certain point, which is different for each person. When this point is missed, the deepening of relaxation is blocked and the craving for tension becomes an addictive pattern.

Therapy should result in weakening and dissolving patterns of dysfunctional behavior, in reducing underlying fears, and in enlarging the opportunities for relaxation in daily life. A healthy life can have its intense moments but they should not arise from stress, fear, or craving. They should be associated with joy and pleasure as in the playful side of relaxation.

A good breathing pattern is a sign of a healed body-mind system. In my view, a good breathing pattern can be measured by the amount of relaxation in the breathing muscles, and not by the quantity of air flowing in or out. A relaxed breathing rhythm is flexible and can adjust to different situations, calming down to slower breathing when the circumstances are pleasant and free of challenge, and speeding up when things need to be done. It provides the minimum of breathing activity that is needed to fulfill the actual demands of reality.

Wilfried Ehrmann, Austria
Reprinted from Breathe Magazine (UK)  Issue #110, May-August 2008.

Dr. Wilfried Ehrmann is Vice-Chairman of Atman Association. He is a Trainer for Integrative Breathwork in Austria, a psychotherapist, author of "The Manual of Breath Therapy" (in German) and advanced trainer in Hungary, Italy, and Greece. He is the author of several articles on breathwork in English and German, and has contributed to Breathe Magazine over the years. His contact email is info@atman.at.

Formed in 1991, the Atman Association is an Austrian association for integrative breathing and spiritual growth. It is a professional association of Austria's breathworkers and breath therapists. The aim of Atman is to "promote the harmony of mind, soul and body through techniques of breathing, meditation and breath therapy." See: http://members.aon.at/atman.at

The amygdalae (Latin: also corpus amygdaloideum, singular amygdala, from Greek, "almond, tonsil") are almond-shaped groups of neurons located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system. [Wikipedia]

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