Copyright 2001, Colin C. Tipping

27: Satori Breathwork
A
s we have discussed previously, suppressed
or re-pressed emotions have toxic effects on
both our mental and physical health. Releasing
these emotions serves as the first step in the forgive-
ness process. We can release held emotions the most
quickly and the most effectively by using a process
called Satori Breath. (Satori is a Japanese word mean-
ing 
insight 
or 
awakening.
)
Satori breathwork is usually done lying on your back
and involves breathing with full awareness in a circular
pattern. In other words, you consciously breathe in a
manner that has no pause between the in-breath and
the out-breath. Carefully selected music is played rather
loudly throughout the process.
The person breathes for 40 to 60 minutes through an
open mouth, sometimes long and deep into the abdo-
men and at other times fast and shallow into the upper
chest. This oxygenates the body to such an extent that
the body releases from its cells suppressed emotion
that has crystallized into energy particles within the cells.
The feelings may be expressed as pure emotion, such
as sadness, anger, or despair, unattached to any
memory associated with them. Conversely, the memory
of an event, idea, association, or misperception that
caused the emotion to be felt and suppressed in the
first place may come sharply into focus. It may even
surface in a symbolic way or in the form of a metaphor.
On the other hand, there may be no conscious recall of
anything. For each person and in each breathing ses-
sion, the experience is different as well as impossible
to predict.
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As emotions come up, the person 
breathes through
them, which allows the person not only to feel them fully
but to release them. We often stop breathing to hold
emotions in check; therefore, breathing through them
allows us to feel them and release them. In some cases,
the person expresses them verbally and kinesthetically
while breathing. No matter how the emotions are re-
leased, almost invariably a sense of profound calm and
deep peace results from the process.
This simple technique provides dramatic and long-last-
ing healing effects. I have no hesitation in recommend-
ing this work to anyone who is serious about wanting to
clear out their emotional closet.
The effects of Satori Breathwork are profound precisely
because they happen totally within the person without
any interjection, guidance, steering, or manipulation
whatsoever by the facilitator. In fact, a facilitator only is
present to 
hold the space as safe 
and to support the
breather in moving through the feelings — which some-
times can be scary — rather than suppressing them
again. I would not recommend that you do this process
on your own for that reason.
Conscious connected breathing is also called
rebirthing
because researchers have found that
breathwork gives us access to memories and emotions
lodged in our cells as early as during our in-utero expe-
rience, during the actual birth process, and soon after
the birth. Birth represents our first major life trauma,
and we form profound ideas about struggle, abandon-
ment, safety, and acceptance as we go through this
experience. These ideas often become beliefs that lit-
erally run our lives. When someone re-experiences
their birth and releases the traumas and beliefs they
formed at that time, their lives change dramatically.
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Another great benefit of Satori Breathwork comes from
the fact that it integrates new energy patterns into our
existing energy fields and restructures our subtle bod-
ies accordingly. This means that when you shift your
perception, have an insight, or release old emotional
patterns, breathwork integrates this into your body’s
data banks. Using the computer analogy, it is as if
breathwork serves as a downloading process where
data currently stored in the short-term computer memory
is transferred to the hard drive for permanent storage.
This also explains why Satori Breathwork becomes so
important in the Radical Forgiveness process. It ac-
complishes these tasks, not just at the beginning of the
process for the purpose of emotional release, but af-
terwards too, when our belief systems change and all
the resulting changes in our energy fields need inte-
grating. The integration process anchors the changes
in our bodies and helps prevent us from going back to
our old ways.
I would suggest that you have between 10 and 20 su-
pervised breathing sessions over a period of time,
which may take up to a year. After that, you can prob-
ably do the breathing process on your own.