HOW THE PRESENCE PROCESS
AND TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATHWORK
COMPLIMENT EACH OTHER
A question asked recently is: How do we combine THE PRESENCE PROCESS and TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH?
The answer is - we don’t.
Instead of approaching this as two distinct modalities meant to be in some way combined, it is more useful to approach them as two distinct modalities that are complimentary. Both are completely self-contained modalities that stand alone and so either can be approached independently of each other. However, they are also complimentary.
TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH has breathwork as its primary emphasis – whereas consciously connected breathing is only one of the various tools offered by THE PRESENCE PROCESS. Also, the way in which breathing is used in each of these modalities differs – and so this is where confusion may arise. Their approaches to breathing are different because the intent steering each differs.
The intent steering the breathing procedure as shared in THE PRESENCE PROCESS is primarily for supporting the task of becoming aware of and then integrating emotional imprinting. Supporting the efficiency of the way the breath is used in THE PRESENCE PROCESS is a deliberately laid out mental focus throughout the text of the book, as well as many accompanying perceptual tools such as The Conscious Responses and The Emotional Integration Process. The benefit of THE PRESENCE PROCESS procedure is that throughout the text this intent is consistently focused and reinforced.
I cannot speak for the overall intent of Transformation Breath, as this is determined by its founder Dr. Judith Kravitz. You may wish to explore THE TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH website to gain fuller clarity of this. [ http://www.transformationalbreathing.com ]
Also, because TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH is facilitated by many different facilitators – the intent driving each individual session may vary according to the level of each facilitator’s training, each facilitator’s conscious approach to each session they facilitate, each facilitator’s unintegrated unconscious activity in each moment, as well as their clients conscious and unconscious intent for entering a facilitated session. Each facilitator is therefore likely to bring a slightly different frequency of intent to their session, and this intent is then combined with the frequency of the conscious and unconscious intent brought into the session by the individual being facilitated. The beauty of this is that TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH therefore opens itself to a wider scope of personal exploration than the very deliberate, focused, and consistent intent as provided by the text of THE PRESENCE PROCESS.
They are however beneficially complimentary.
For example, ones focus may be purely on moving through a course of TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH sessions with a trained facilitator. This may entail entering a series of ten facilitated sessions once a week – which is the way I used to facilitate breathwork when involved within similar aspects of this modality. This may therefore involve weekly appointments with a chosen facilitator in which a dedicated session is entered into and breathed to completion. Once completed, the individual then returns into their daily life experience without any facilitator accompaniment.
Or, one may attend a TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH weekend workshop/training in which a number of breathing sessions are entered into and completed, before returning into ones daily life experience - again without any accompanying facilitator.
Now it may not be this way for everyone – but from personal experience of facilitating others and having been facilitated myself in breathwork – what often occurs is that the energetic process initiated through a facilitated breathwork session continues for a period after the actual session is completed. In my experience, the first three to four days after a dedicated breathwork session brings to the surface of our life experience what was accomplished or initiated within us during the facilitated breathing session. This ‘bringing to the surface’ can range from physical to mental to emotional shifts – often perceived by us as uncomfortable or unfamiliar.
It is at this point in our journey that what is revealed to us through the text of THE PRESENCE PROCESS becomes valuable. This is because THE PRESENCE PROCESS automatically brings into our awareness what ‘shifting’ looks like as it impacts our daily experience, and also how to respond instead of react to these shifts. Accordingly, those who are familiar with THE PRESENCE PROCESS have the capacity to engage with the consequences of their initiated shifts more consciously. They are able to facilitate themselves after their breathwork sessions. In this way THE PRESENCE PROCESS compliments and supports the ongoing processing experiences initiated by a facilitated TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH session.
Coming from another angle, one may be involved in THE PRESENCE PROCESS procedure and feel stuck, or maybe feel confident that one would like to go deeper into the emotional realm than the pace that is initiated by the book. One may then, without interrupting one’s experiential journey through the book, attend a TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH session/workshop with a trained facilitator. This definitely enhances and compliments ones journey through THE PRESENCE PROCESS.
As stated at the beginning of this article, what I do not recommend is trying to combine these two modalities into one. In other words, do not do THE PRESENCE PROCESS using the breathing technique as taught by TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH. When attending to our twice-daily 15 minute breathing, as is required by THE PRESENCE PROCESS, we are to use the technique as described by the book. Also, when entering a dedicated session facilitated by a trained TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH facilitator – do not insist of using the breathing technique as described by THE PRESENCE PROCESS. Listen to and follow the instructions of the facilitator.
Let me end by sharing with you the limited insight I gained through being personally facilitated by Dr. Judith Kravitz:
One of the gems of the breathwork approach as taught by Judith is its diagnostic capacities. This aspect of the work is priceless because THE PRESENCE PROCESS does not deal in specific individual diagnosis. A trained TRANSFORMATIONAL breathworker is able to, simply through watching how one breathes in any moment, perceive, diagnose, and facilitate the release of energetic blockages obstructing full and healthy breathing. By bringing awareness to these blockages – by facilitating a shift in the way we are approaching our breathing – these blockages are then brought to the surface of our awareness and may in many cases be integrated during the session.
From my point of view – and staying in line with the body of work as presented by THE PRESENCE PROCESS – these blockages have as their roots an emotionally imprinted condition. Accordingly, through TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH one may be facilitated into a very specific emotional release in the moment of the facilitated breathwork session. It is my insight that as a consequence of this release, one is then setup to engage in the work of resolution. This process of resolution then unfolds as one enters ones daily life and is faced with the circumstances and events which have in the past served as outer triggers and reflections for this inner blockage. Our awareness of this triggering and reflecting, in my experience, is heightened within the first three to four days after a facilitated breathwork session.
This is when the alchemical approach of ‘being without condition with the felt aspect of these experiences’ is required to accomplish resolution. If this resolution is not engaged with consciously, and if instead we continue to engage in our addictive reactive behavior brought from the past around this issue – then we may go on experiencing emotional release forever – and make little progress in fully completing the shifts initiated by the facilitated breathwork session. This is where THE PRESENCE PROCESS becomes an invaluable counterpart to a facilitated TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATHWORK session. THE PRESENCE PROCESS instills within us the ability to discern between projection and containment, and therefore between release and resolution.
It is this precise diagnostic capacity of TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH that is also highly valuable for someone doing THE PRESENCE PROCESS who may have been through the procedure a few times – and yet feel they are stuck fast in some aspect of their emotional processing.
In this way THE PRESENCE PROCESS and TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH are like brother and sister. Each have their dedicated function, unique approaches, profound benefits, stand alone as modalities, and yet are complimentary in a way that makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
I would also like to make clear that these insights are based upon my experience and may not be fully shared by practitioners of TRANSFORMATIONAL BREATH.
Michael Brown ©
cv8vd