Breathwork
Breathwork is an umbrella term for various New Age practices in which the conscious control of breathing is meant to influence mental, emotional and physical state – sometimes to claimed therapeutic effect.
Breathwork can cause distress and has no proven positive health impact other than perhaps promoting relaxation.
Description and sub-types
Breathwork is a method of breath control that is meant to give rise to altered states of consciousness and to have an effect on physical and mental well-being. Derived from various spiritual and pre-scientific traditions from around the world, it was pioneered in the West by Wilhelm Reich.
There are several sub-types of breathwork:
Rebirthing-Breathwork – was devised by Leonard Orr in the 1970s. It is claimed to be capable of releasing suppressed traumatic childhood memories.
Vivation – was created by Jim Leonard and Phil Laut. It claims to improve wellbeing through the use of circular breathing.
Holotropic Breathwork (a trademark) is a practice that uses breathing and other elements to putatively allow access to non-ordinary states of consciousness. It was developed by Stanislav Grof as a successor to his LSD-based psychedelic therapy, following the suppression of legal LSD use in the late 1960s. Following a 1993 report commissioned by the Scottish Charities Office, concerns about the risk that the hyperventilation technique could cause seizure or lead to psychosis in vulnerable people caused the Findhorn Foundation to suspend its breathwork programme.