As an artistic and highly-sensitive person I love to truly connect with other living beings: animals, plants, and humans.
I underwent two trainings: somatic body and breathwork at the Institute of Breath Teaching in Berlin and breathing behaviour analysis at the Professional School of Behavioural Health Sciences in Wyoming.
The aim of my breath facilitation is not to teach a breathing method but to learn about breathing together, with each other, with trees, with the nature within and without us: what it means to us and what it tells us about being alive.
In the mid 2000 years I began to do interdisciplinary poetry workshops with schoolchildren. (Creative Writing with movement, drawing, public performance). I noticed that the communication, as well as the creativity, were sometimes blocked, in myself and in the children and the teachers.
I felt helpless and I began to observe that whenever something went wrong I was tensing my body, especially around my pelvis, and holding my breath. It was the same with the children and the teachers, tense shoulders, jaws, legs, a rigid facial expression, a clipped tone of voice etc. This is when I decided to learn about breathing and discovered the rich and varied world of breath teachings. Through my somatic body and breathwork training at the Institute of Breath Teaching in Berlin https://www.atemlehre-berlin.de/ I learnt about breathing, to arrive in my body and to communicate better with myself and others. I was now hooked on breathing, so to speak, and established my Natural Breathing practice.
Natural Breathing for me is about experiencing the breath as it is, rather than having ideas about it or producing a certain type of breathing. In learning about the body and the breath through movement and touch and sharing our experiences, I started to take my place in my own life. As I was eager to gain more knowledge about breathing, I studied breathing behaviour analysis with biofeedback tools at the Professional School of Behavioural Health Sciences in Wyoming. https://www.thebsj.org/ I used the knowledge from my studies to fine-tune my Natural Breathing facilitation. Over the years, I found myself increasingly drawn to holding Natural Breathing sessions outside. This meant that Natural Breathing became not only about breathing naturally, but also about being in nature. After moving to a rural area outside Berlin and spending time in fields and forests regularly, I realised how distant my relationship with nature had been. Breathing wasn’t something to be observed, and trees weren’t just objects that provided a nature experience. They were there for themselves, both individually and collectively. Even though the core of my practice had focused on breathing as relating, I realised that I hadn’t really understood it at all — or rather, I couldn’t embody it. This is how I discovered Breathing with Trees: consciously breathing with the beings with whom we actually share the air, and letting myself be guided by the beings who make breathing possible.
The more I engaged with trees in a very real, physical way, I was able to reach myself. I realised what had been missing for me in my Natural Breathing Practice. I had learnt to arrive in my body, I had learnt to communicate, but I hadn’t learnt to recognise and process my feelings. I had built a relationship with myself and to relate to the space I share with others, but not to „the other“ him or herself. What was lacking was meaning. Breathing with trees, I realised that meaning is made in relationship. And that feelings always happen in relationship. I think the less we are able to trust in people, in the world, the more cut off from our feelings we become, and the lonelier we are. When I practiced Breathing with trees, it evoked a lot of feelings because I was in the presence of a being that inspired trust in me. This carried over into trusting myself. And to find again, in a much stronger way, my way of doing things, truly allowing myself to be inspired, to be moved. So this is where I am now, this is the point I’ve gotten to from where I invite you to go on a journey with me, called Breathing With Trees.
What can we learn about ourselves when we let ourselves be breathed rather than doing something with our breath?