The Breathwork Companion: Unlock the Healing Power of Breathing

by Margaret Townsend

Overview

This practical, accessible breathwork guide delivers a complete program of exercises, inspiring true stories, prompts, and more to give readers the skills they need to build and maintain a healing breath practice.
 
Imagine having a powerful wellness tool at your fingertips. A tool to keep you calm, increase energy, clarify your thinking, release muscle tightness—even give you a youthful glow. A tool that enhances and improves physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health and well-being, always at the ready whenever you need it. It’s not some miracle app. It’s your breath. And all you need to do is learn how to harness its power—its innate wisdom—which is exactly what Margaret Townsend, who has been a practicing breathwork facilitator for 30 years, teaches readers in The Breathwork Companion.

We learn the best ways to wake the body up in the morning and tune it down at night. How to strengthen the mind-body connection to boost the immune system and decrease inflammation. How to help with specific emotions including anger, fear, anxiety, worry, sadness, grief, fatigue, and stress. How to increase self-compassion and find a calmer, more balanced, steady state. Even how to breathe better while wearing a face mask.

The breath is one of our greatest natural resources. Given that we inhale and exhale roughly 20,000 times a day, we have countless opportunities to make the most of it. Here’s how to start.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781648290787
Publisher:	Artisan
Publication date:	01/17/2023
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	425,764
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Margaret Townsend has been a practicing breathwork facilitator since 1993, teaching individual and group breathwork sessions. She is also a certified Hakomi mindful somatic psychotherapy practitioner, and is trained in mindful self-compassion, qigong, and nonviolent communication, with a background in dance, yoga, and fitness and a thirty-year meditation practice. Townsend is an affiliate member of the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance who received her breathwork certification from Judith Kravitz, founder of the Transformational Breath Foundation. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Table of Contents

Introduction 7

Part I Becoming Aware 17

1 Getting Familiar with the Breath

The Bridge from Unconscious to Conscious 19

2 Connecting Body, Brain, and Breath

An Integrated Intelligence 49

3 Recognizing the Patterns

Why We Breathe the Way We Do 97

Part II Opening Up 135

4 Being Kind to Yourself

Breathing as an Act of Self-Compassion 137

5 Moving with the Breath

Shaking, Swinging, Walking, Tapping 157

Part III Bringing the Breath to Life 189

6 Relying On the Breath

Lifelong Tools to Carry You 191

7 Breathing in Partnership

The Shared Experience of Breath 221

8 Building Your Breathwork Routine

Maintaining Your New Normal 237

Afterword 264

Resources 265

Acknowledgments 267

Index 269

Editorial Reviews

Conscious breathing is the ultimate chill pill—minus the pill. Margaret Townsend makes it available to all in this thoughtful, clear guide. I can’t think of anyone who would not benefit from this book.” —Frank Lipman, MD, Author of The New Rules of Aging Well

“This book will change your life. It is thorough and artistic and comprehensively covers the many facets of breathing, which is the most important thing we do. I am excited to share it with all my students.”—Judith Kravitz, Founder and Developer of Transformational Breath

“A veritable encyclopedia of breath experiences that will form the basis of daily practices that renew and revitalize, inviting you to pick and choose what best fits your body and lifestyle. Let this book accompany you on a journey of self-discovery and change the way you experience life, every breath along the way.”—Jim Morningstar, PHD, Director of The Therapeutic Breathwork Training Program

From the Publisher

A veritable encyclopedia of breath experiences that will form the basis of daily practices that renew and revitalize, inviting you to pick and choose what best fits your body and lifestyle. Let this book accompany you on a journey of self-discovery and change the way you experience life, every breath along the way.”

Jim Morningstar

This book will change your life. It is thorough and artistic and comprehensively covers the many facets of breathing, which is the most important thing we do. I am excited to share it with all my students.”

founder and developer of Transformational Breath Judith Kravitz

I can’t think of anyone who would not benefit from this book.”

Frank Lipman