Stress. That vague constricting feeling, the weight that drags on you. It shows up as tight shoulders, low energy, clenched jaws. You have your ways to cope with stress, from talking with a friend, helping someone out, getting a big hug, exercising, or a hot bath. What would probably make a huge difference in your wellbeing is deep breathing.

Breathing is the key to regulating the nervous system, to relieve stress, promote relaxation, and more. Transformational Breathwork is a practice of guided, conscious breath that allows the body to reset from fight-flight-freeze mode, stimulating the vagus nerve, and starting a ripple effect to help every system in the body perform optimally.

These are the ONLY years a breathwork training of this magnitude has happened in St. Louis!

And it’s happening again beginning August 8, 2019 and we have revised and expanded the training to make it the best to date!

There are only a few spots remaining in the class and it will be maxed out soon.

     Over the past year, Lama Lobsang Palden has delivered a series of workshops that teach participants elements of various Tibetan breath yogas.  Included in his workshop series has been an introduction to "Tummo", the yoga of generating internal heat made famous by the Mahasiddha Naropa in the 10th Century.  Tsa Lung is the name for a variety of practices that teach practitioners how to develop vital energy (lung), or prana, in the energy channels (tsa) of the body.  

   For years, The Healing Arts Center has taught its massage therapy students basic transformational breathwork.  Two years ago, the school started teaching this breath practice to the public by offering its Introduction to Transformational Breathwork workshop three times a year.  HAC has been steadily building up a body of people who are trained to practice this intensive healing practice.  Some students have found that transformational breathwork has allowed them to completely recover from depression, panic attack disorder and other debilitating conditions often associated with past trauma.   It is not unusual for a breathwork client to say that a single session of transformational breathwork can do what years of talk therapy cannot.
     In the past century, several modern western traditions of breathwork have emerged:

• Dr. ​Stanislav Grof's Holotropic Breathwork
• Judith Kravitz's Transformational Breath
• Leonard Orr's Rebirthing Therapy

While the HAC basic breath training is inspired by all three of these schools of thought, its basic program is primarily based on the Kravitz and Transformational Breath model.

     By contrast, completely filling the lung when you are able to draw a full deep breath with the complete extension of your diaphragm, dramatically increases the amount of oxygen entering the blood stream.   Sitting and shallow breathing reduces the amount of available blood oxygen that we can use to cause healthy metabolism, cell repair and reproduction among a long list of other problems.  In short, prolonged shallow breathing can lead to a myriad of health chronic health problems.  ​

     Last year, HAC launched a revolution in wellness care by training twenty-four new certified breathworkers in its first-ever Master Track Program.  Breathwork has become a staple wellness modality at The Healing Arts Center in both its workshop programming and professional clinic offerings.  HAC considers transformational breathwork to be one of the most powerful and accessible healing modalities available anywhere.  This is because of the ability of breathwork to completely release the psychological effects of suppressed emotional obscurations such as trauma, sometimes in a single breath session.
HAC has been advocating that massage therapists should consider diversifying their therapeutic training to include modalities that can be delivered in a group setting.  Direct one-on-one therapies have a strictly limited earning potential whereas modalities that can be delivered in a one-to-many classroom distribution can greatly enhance the earning potential of a massage therapy, yoga or other holistic practice.

     For those interested in good health, fitness, meditation, or nutrition, they find that when they add breathwork to their practice, it transforms the results they are already getting in other areas. 
      Anyone can register for Releasing 2017 – Creating 2018, an introduction to transformational breathwork workshop, happening December 31st.  This is an opportunity for participants to discover breathwork and bid farewell to this year as they create their intention for life in 2018.