Freeing the Energy: A Breath Exercise
Ground and liberate your creative energy
Are you feeling stuck, disconnected, or just looking to release tension and invite more vitality into your life? If so, this powerful breath exercise by Lynn Paterson might be just what you need. This active meditation offers a way to ground yourself, liberate sexual and creative energy, and increase your overall capacity for pleasure and clarity. It’s not your typical quiet, still meditation—this exercise invites movement, sound, and release, helping you embrace chaos and uncover your inner power.
The Purpose of the Exercise
The Freeing the Energy breath exercise is designed to do the following:
- Occupy your body and ground your energy.
- Release tension and stuck energy.
- Connect more deeply with yourself and your body.
- Increase your capacity for intensity and liberate creative and sexual energy.
- Free up the throat and sacral chakras, promoting balance.
- Help you surrender into chaos, tapping into your primal energy.
The exercise is meant to break through barriers, helping you open up to more spontaneity, ease in your body, and confidence. It can reduce feelings of depression and increase self-knowledge, making it easier to trust your intuition and express your truth
The Benefits of Practicing
When you incorporate this active meditation into your daily routine, you’ll begin to notice profound changes in your energy and mindset. Some of the benefits include:
- Increased self-awareness and clarity.
- A more expanded capacity for pleasure and emotional experience.
- Greater comfort and ease in the body.
- A deepened trust in your intuition and ability to speak your truth.
- Enhanced spontaneity and an improved sense of self-confidence.
You’ll also experience more subtle shifts, like a heightened sense of your energetic boundaries and an increased ability to recognize and release blocked energy. The exercise, when practiced regularly, helps you tune into and honour your body’s natural rhythms
Setting the Stage
Before diving into the exercise, set aside 30 minutes at a time of day that works best for you. You may find the practice works well in the morning or just before dinner. The key is to commit to the same time each day to help build a rhythm and routine. The more consistently you practice, the quicker you’ll enter the release phase, and the easier it will be to tune into your energy.
As with any new practice, be patient with yourself. The process of self-care is incremental and subtle, and the benefits unfold gradually. But remember, simply showing up and doing the work is what truly makes a difference.
Overcoming Resistance
If you find yourself feeling uncomfortable—whether from embarrassment, resistance, or discomfort—know that it’s normal. Often, these uncomfortable feelings signal that you’re tapping into energy that has been stuck inside you for a long time. Embrace the discomfort, laugh through it, and remember that it’s safe to express yourself and let go.
If you feel a sense of heaviness, tiredness, or ungroundedness during the exercise, it’s important to move through it. Reconnect to the lower part of your body, like your pelvis and seat bones, and feel your vertical alignment from your spine’s base to the top. Keep breathing deeply and continue through the exercise—these sensations are part of the release process.
The Freeing the Energy Exercise
Now, let’s dive into the breathwork itself. This is where you’ll begin to free up your energy and surrender to the intensity of the experience. I find that kneeling on the floor is a good position but you can also do it on a settee, but please make sure that your are stable and have plenty of room.
Step-by-Step Guide:
- Observe Your Breath: Begin by simply noticing your breath. Don’t try to change it, judge it, or control it. Just observe any tightness or tension in your body and gently ask, “How would it feel to be a bit softer, a bit more relaxed?” Allow any tension you’re holding to let go naturally.
- Deepen Your Breath: Start to breathe more deeply, focusing on your lower abdominal area. Place your hands on your abdomen and breathe into them. Then begin a basic belly breath on an out-breath – pull in your abdominal muscles on the out-breath and release and let them expand on the in-breath.
- Lengthen the Out-Breath: Gradually deepen and lengthen the out-breath by 3–4 seconds. You can also introduce a small gap between your exhale and next inhale. Don’t force your breath to be even—allow it to flow naturally, and don’t worry about yawning, making sounds, or any other physical reactions. These are all good signs that energy is moving.
- Allow Movement: As you continue breathing deeply, you might start feeling an inner itch or disquietude that you can’t quite place. This is a sign that energy is shifting. Begin to move your body, circling your torso in one direction, then the other. This helps free up the pelvic and sacral energy centres.
- Deepen the Release: As the intensity builds, lengthen the out-breath even more and allow a sound (even some keening or wailing) to accompany the exhale. Stay open to changes in movement, breath, and sound. Stretch your limbs or make any other movements your body is calling for. Listen to your body’s needs.
Pro tip: It can be helpful to call in your guides, angels, Spirit, or Divine Mother to support you throughout the practice. This can deepen your connection to yourself and the energy you’re working to release.
Are there any judgments coming up, or do you feel silly or embarrassed? Or find yourself uncomfortable making sounds? GREAT – you’ve started to tap into your hidden energy store. Send Love to your heart, tell yourself it’s safe to express, safe to let go, make yourself laugh for a few moments- laugh at yourself!
Continue despite any discomforts that remain – when energy is trapped it can feel heavy and you might feel a lot of resistance comes up, like tiredness or ungroundedness, spacing out etc. If this happens, as per basic belly breathing, you must move through it in order to release the energy, so take your focus back to your pelvic area, the perineum, root chakra, and get back into the lower region feeling your seat bones on the chair or floor. Feel the vertical alignment in your body, feel your spine from bottom to top.
If you cannot make a sound due to others in the house etc. then find a time when you can make a sound, like when driving your car alone for instance. If your life is constructed without the freedom to make sound, then you might find this an interesting thing to contemplate at another time.
Sound is intimately connected with sexual energy, blocks at sacral usually correspond with blocks at the throat, so releasing from throat = releasing and freeing energy at the sacral.
This exercise helps you to be okay with chaos and to accommodate greater and greater intensity. It will help you manage stress and anxiety as it teaches you how to be okay with the feeling of being out of control, and it teaches you how to self-regulate because the goal here is not to control the process but to stay open and spontaneous, allowing your breath, body, and voice to guide you. The more you trust in your body’s ability to release energy, the more self-confidence and freedom you’ll experience in your life.