This is my own personal experience I am sharing today.
Ever experienced a strong emotional trauma? Well if you’re a human being not AI reading this, then the answer is probably yes. In my life I’ve had what I would term as bigger traumas and smaller traumas. Today I’m going to share what I’ve found beneficial in breath work in healing through trauma.
First of all, what is trauma? I’m just going to share my personal definition and perspective as it can be a sensitive topic. For me trauma is a stored emotion in the body from an emotional event.
I believe there can be small and bigger traumas in life. For me again what a personal trauma is for someone is personal to them. Certain traumas for me have been smaller, like being shouted / sworn at by someone and some bigger like when I lost my brother or my grandma or a car crash I was in. Then something in the middle like a difficult dating / relationship situation.
For years though I would avoid feeling hard emotions and not even consciously. I discovered that often as humans we can repress or suppress feelings. Repression is when something is painful that unconsciously the memory is pushed away from our conscious mind, whereas suppression is when we are more conscious of it.
The challenge I’ve discovered is that these stored emotions manifest in different ways over time. For me it’s been things like anger outbursts, depressive spells or avoidance strategies such as a lot of partying in my twenties or too much video gaming as a kid.
I did a lot of mindset and personal growth work especially from 2019, which really helped. I was able to think in more positive ways from challenges in life. I was able to reframe something. It wasn’t until 2022 though where I stumbled across breath work and I discovered somatic breath work (of which now I am a practitioner).
The beauty of this was that it allowed several benefits:
- I am able to go deep into the body beyond the mind that only consciously can remember so many things at once and feel into what needs to be felt, allowing release of trapped negative emotions
- I am able to really hear myself on a deeper level to see what I need to do to look after myself
- I am also able to regulate my nervous system so that when challenges do come up in life I am able to regulate back into a calmer state more quickly
Breath work has allowed me to feel more human and as a result connect with myself a lot more. When I blocked away the negative feelings and traumas I blocked truly feeling the beautiful emotions. Breath work has for me been the best tool for true human connection to myself to express safely and release things like trauma and stress to get me more connected to the true me and therefore others in my life too.
These blogs are my own personal experience on mental health and personal development and should not be treated as professional advice. Please consult a professional where needed.
Jonny Pardoe,
Breath Work Practitioner,
Men’s Mental Health Advocate, Speaker, Writer and Top 1% Podcast Host
Founder of The Self Esteem and Confidence Mindset Ltd
