Bodywork and Breathwork

Prolonged addiction to drugs or alcohol, or even a prolonged struggle with mental health issues such as anhedonia, depression or PTSD levies a heavy tax on the body. This is why, as part of our holistic approach after your ibogaine treatment with us, we feel it is essential to address the emotional trauma which over time becomes stored in our body’s cells and tissue through focused bodywork and breathwork.

Rebalancing is a type of body-focused mindfulness practice that aims to restore individuals to a state of inner balance, allowing them to fully embody the unity of their physical, mental, and emotional selves. The approach involves a blend of gentle connective tissue manipulation, joint mobilization, breathwork, energy work, body awareness training, and emotional expression, all of which contribute to an overall sense of physical and emotional harmony. Through bodywork and breathwork, individuals can develop a deeper awareness of their bodies, emotions, and energetic states, facilitating greater self-understanding and personal growth.

Rebalancing Bodywork
Rebalancing bodywork merges a unique combination of individual body analysis, deep tissue work and self-inquiry. As the body softens and releases muscular rigidity, energy is released, and with it, old emotional trauma and blockages re-emerge. This freed-up energy is worked on by the therapist, and the nature of the energy released by the body’s tissue will help provide a client with valuable insight into patterns and limiting beliefs. Through this continued process, which we encourage our clients to commit to with any therapist of choice once they have left us and stepped back into their lives, boosts self-acceptance and promotes self-care.

A loving and skilful touch is the essence of this bodywork. At Tabula Rasa Retreat, we consider bodywork as one of the most subtle arts – it is not only a question of expertise, it is first of all, a question of love. Rebalancing bodywork treats the body as a gift of tremendous value, not as a mechanism to be put right.

A rebalancing treatment takes 60- 90 minutes and always starts with a consideration about what needs to be addressed in the present moment.

During the massage, the clients’ body awareness is heightened through inquiry and skilful touch, always in combination with conscious breathing and a meditative approach.

Though each session is complete in itself, a series of sessions has a powerful synergetic effect and allows the whole body to be systematically included.

Breathwork

Breathwork is a unique form of therapy that focuses on the techniques of circular connected breathing to promote physical, psychological and spiritual healing. Breathwork incorporates ancient Eastern healing practices as well as elements of modern-day Western science.

In recovery from addiction, bodywork and breathwork are imperative for physical and mental well-being and to help avoid relapse.

In breathwork, the emphasis on breathing may seem deceptively simplistic. However, the breath is central to life and well-being. The way we live is mirrored by the way we breathe.

Changing the breathing pattern through breathwork therapy has a profound impact on the way a person feels, thinks, acts and connects to others. It has great benefits in terms of healing as well as improving overall emotional , physical and mental health. After 5-10 guided sessions clients will be able to do a breathwork session at home, keeping the benefits of breathwork available to themselves at all times.

The underlying premise of breathwork is that negative emotions from trauma and other painful experiences are often suppressed. Left unsolved, they can cause a variety of problems in life including unwanted behaviours, illness or addiction. Breathwork is designed to naturally induce an altered state of consciousness that enables one to acces these suppressed emotions and memories. Once accessed they can finally integrate and released in a beneficial way.

One of the key principles of breathwork though is to get someone’s breathing pattern back to his/ her optimal, natural state. Most people’s breathing is far from optimal. We didn’t start of this way, as infants, we instinctively breathed deeply, slowly and fully most of the time.

Somewhere along the way – often in childhood – our breathing pattern changed. For some it may have changed slowly through ongoing distress in family situations, while for others it could have changed suddenly – usually in response to a traumatic experience.