Unclench your jaws, let your shoulders drop, relax your hands. Take a deep breath. Allow your body to release any tension. Sounds easy enough right? Well, I guess it all depends on how easy relaxation comes for you. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a problem relaxing. I love getting massages, but find myself never being relaxed enough to fully enjoy the experience. While getting pedicures in the vibrating chairs at the nail salon, I’m always having these inner conversations with myself, like relax, this is your time, enjoy it. Close your eyes. But as soon as my eyes close my thoughts kick into major overload, and suddenly the little Asian lady is coaxing me to, “Relax your leg hunnie.”
So I’m sitting on my sofa Thursday night strolling through upcoming events in Dallas featured on Facebook when I come across an event called Black Girls Breathing: The Expansion Tour, and I must say my curiosity was peaked. What was Black Girls Breathing and what did they mean by breathwork? Black girls breathing is the brainchild of Atlanta native Jasmine Marie and was created to provide black women a safe space to unfold and pour into themselves. According to their website, the goal of black girls breathing is to foster a community of like-minded and like-spirited black sisterhood committed to their healing and expansion as a necessary act of resistance in today’s world through meditational breathwork.
After doing a little research to educate myself on the company and the meaning of breathwork. I took a mini questionnaire to determine if I was breathing properly. The questions were along the lines of are you breathing deeply or shallow, or are your shoulders clenched and are you holding your breath? I tend to carry lots of tension in my shoulders, tension that I was experiencing as I read through the questionnaire and even worse, I was holding my breath. I consider myself to be a pretty hyper-aware person, so it wasn’t news to me that I clench my shoulders or hold my breath versus taking long deep breaths, after all, I’m always pretty “tight”, but to hear that there was this technique called breathwork that had the possibility to help me relax in ways that massages and other relaxations tactics had not, I was willing to give it a try.
I show up at The Refuge Meditation yoga studio Sunday afternoon promptly ten minutes before my 3pm scheduled session. Jasmine was there to greet each of the attendees with a warm welcoming smile. I had no idea what to expect or what was about to take place. I just knew that I had one goal in mind, and that was to relax. We were instructed to bring a notebook/journal, something to write with, and a bottle of water beforehand, so when we all clamored into the room we removed our shoes and took our places on the provided yoga mats and got to work.
In the first section of the workshop, Jasmine provided journal prompters that encouraged self-reflection, she encouraged attendees to be aware of the energy that we were intaking. After a series of four journal prompters were completed, we moved on to active breathwork mediation. Prior to beginning the breathwork, Jasmine did a demonstration on open mouth breathing which involves taking deep breaths first into the abdomen, followed by deep breaths through your diaphragm and lastly releasing these breaths through your mouth. It was a very hands-on experience where she worked the room to ensure that each participant was breathing properly.
I can honestly say that I have never experienced anything like what I experienced through the breathwork session today. I went from experiencing light-headedness to gaining control of my breathing and fear of not being able to breathe, to committing to letting go so that I could experience the full process of breathwork. At one point I felt a sense of energy being released in my abdomen area, which triggered an emotional response. At that point, Jasmine came over and lightly placed her hand on my abdomen and encouraged me to do the breathwork that would allow me to continue to push out the anxiety and negative energy that was being housed inside of me. As a group, we screamed together, cried together and just released a lot of anxiety and fear that we had pinned up inside. At some point during the session, I completely let go and my body succumbed to a complete state of relaxation to the point that I was no longer aware of what was taking place in the room. I was finally awakened by Jasmine’s voice telling us that our session was coming to an end.
By the end of the session, I had made new connections with women I never would have met before. And most importantly, I had finally reached that ever so elusive point of relaxation that I struggle to achieve daily. My shoulders weren’t clenched. My thoughts were no longer going a mile a minute, and I felt a sense of new found energy and peace. I felt as though I had released my inner self to my outer self and now we were both in alignment so that I could begin to make progress towards being the best and healthiest version of myself. Do I recommend my fellow black girls give Black Girls Breathing a try? ABSOLUTELY! But don’t just take my word for it….experience it for yourself!
To learn more about black girls breathing, and to keep up to date with more offerings from Jasmine Marie follow the link below:
https://www.adultingwithease.com/black-girls-breathing
Pretty Is A Lifestyle 