A meditation I do for you.
Just as the child needs an adult to soothe it
(as children are not yet able to self-regulate),
the adults sometimes need that as well:
another person able to help us regulate our
nervous system.
'A mother' who will take care of you and provide what is needed for you to rest and recuperate.
This is what 'TOUCH via BREATH' therapy is about.
'TOUCH via BREATH' therapy
This therapy resets your nervous system through the activation of the parasympathic neural pathway.
It is an exercise in your ability to let go of the control, to allow yourself to be taken care of and to receive.
By using specific breathing techiniques and a gentle touch I am helping you to improve your capacity for self-regualtion and thus your neuro-physical state.
I assist you to relax and reconnect with yourself . This strengthens the immune system, makes you more likely to engage in healthy relationships and to use your own creative potential. It is a healing technique similar to shiatsu massage, accupressure, traditional thai massage, reiki, bioenergy and craniosacral therapy.
While receiving the treatment you are laying on your back, fully dressed and/or covered.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Bioenergetic aspects of the therapy are rooted in the healing method described by Barbara Ann Brennan.
Psychological aspects are based in the attachment theory established by John Bowlby, in the meantime accepted as the main pillar of most psychotherapeutical schools.
Both touch and breathing techniques have been adjusted according to the contemporary neuroscience and its insights into the role of neuromodulators, amigdala and other brain centres regulating fear and stress, and newest research on the role that touch plays in the psycho-physical development of human beings, our health and wellbeing, and in establishing our felt sense of safety, trust, as well as our ability to relax and to surrender to joy.
The techiniques I use were adopted from the traditional practices coming from the Far East, all of which explore the flow of the energy (ki / qi / prana) through the body : yoga, Thai massage and old martial arts.
THE BODY
Pleasant, safe, rhythmic and warm human touch is something we need just as we need food, water, air and sex.
Physical contact is a newborn's first social need. When we are born, touch is the first and most basic sensory stimulus that provides us with information about the world: is the place we found ourselves in safe and pleasant - or not? Touch that is pleasant and adequate signals to us that we have been accepted and that the cnoditions are safe enough for us to relax.
Non-sexual but attentive and present touch is one of the main ways to satisfy that same need for relaxation and safety in the adult age as well.
Unfortunately, most people chronically lack that kind of touch. Many of us are rarely being touched, or are being touched in sexual context only.
But humans are social animals and that is not enough for our nervous systems.
'Touch via breath' therapy provides exactly that kind of touch: gentle and precise at the same time, dedicated to you and directed at your own specific needs.
It provides you with the experience of being seen and understood, and your needs having been met without you having to even talk about it.
It is an opportunity for you to allow another human being to take care of you even just for a short while. To help you get rid of what is choking you, what is making you tense and tight.
Beside breathing and gentle touch I sometimes also use medical and Thai massage elements during the therapy if I find it beneficial for your condition. I have received education and official certification in all of these techniques. The most useful thing I have ever learnt, though, is that:
There is no pleasure or joy outside of the body.
Or as Alexander Lowen would put it: Body is the real self.
THE PSYCHE
Does your body often do exactly the opposite of what you would like it to?
Trying to sound resolute but your voice lets you down?
Trying to calmly solve a problem but you end up exploding instead?
Trying to enjoy yourself but feel like a robot or a performer?
These indicate a divide within you, that there are parts of you that you are trying to ignore, which in return act as small children, asking for attention in the least appropriate situations.
In order to dimish the amout and intensity of such situations it is necessary to befriend them.
Psychotherapy and meditation are two efficient methods that can help with that.
'Touch via breath' therapy is a combination of these two methods.
From psychotherapy it took over the concept of 'transference' and the importance of safe attachment for one's psychophysical health.
From meditation it adopted special breathing techniques which help regulate the overloaded nervous system, open doors to clarity and enable you gain new experiences and reinterpret the old painful ones in a constructive manner.
We humans are social animals.
Most of our problems are a result of unsatisfactory relationships with other individuals, groups or conditions that depend on the society we live in.
The problems that emerge do to relationships are to be healed through a relationship.
Through a healthy and - a non-virtual relationship.
THE ENERGY
Prana in India, qi in China, ki in Japan.
In the West: energy, elan vitale, orgon.
Contemporary neuroscience finally provides more and more information on the physiology and biochemistry that lay at the root of our perception of the so called engery flows in the body. However, we are still far from having grasped it all.
But everybody knows how it feels to be 'full of energy' or to 'lack energy'.
The difference in the quality of uncomfortable and pleasant silence.
When one is all tight and closed as opposed to when one is soft and open to life.
Using one's own energy potential to consciously help another person get better is what people often call a healing session, cleaning of the aura or bioenergy therapy.
By applying breathing techniques, meditation or a state of trans we activate the energy field of our own body and increase its flow. We then use our own energy flow to influence the energy flow of the other person. We choose the frequency that we can sense the other needs and then we either spread it in a general way bathing one in it or we work by directing it to a particular area on the person's body.
Just as the mother and the baby form one common energy field where the mother helps her child regulate its neurological states, so do I during the 'touch via breath' therapy merge my field with yours in order to assist you where you need it.
As this type of therapy does not use verbal communication, it skips the rationally thinking part of the brain and affects the evolutionary older, more basic levels of regulation. It helps create the feeling of basic safety and the capacity to relax and receive -something that the vast majority of people lack. In this way it induces the processes of self-regualtion, stimmulates the immune system, makes the body more efficient in healing its acute wounds and chronic illnesses. As it results in raising one ability to trust, it also helps people to reconcile with their suppressed emotions, and sometimes even to remember memories long forgotten.
Photo Kan Darko Pauković
Carlo Kovačec
Marina Kelava
Video Carlo Kovačec