Conscious Breathwork for the Heart
Conscious, Relational, Life-changing
Welcome to Conscious Breathwork for the Heart
We provide intelligent, embodied breathwork and bodywork therapy for emotional, psychological and spiritual development.
This work is suitable for all adults who want to connect more with themselves, become more alive to themselves in their bodies or who want to work through traumatic experiences.
We offer workshops and training in Whitstable, Kent, as well as meditation groups and retreats.
This bodywork involves a range of techniques and practices. A simple way of understanding the work is to say that it helps people to bring the love from their hearts to heal their wounded places. It involves learning to be present to your body and how you relate to it, to sensations, breath, emotions, and touch, from yourself or another. It also develops the ability to witness the mind and the narratives it has created which either help or hinder us. Thirdly it is relational work which teaches us how to stay in our bodies whilst dialoguing with another.
Many people have not had the fortune to experience consistent loving care in early life, so being in the heart is not only a way of healing old wounds, but it also helps build inner resources so that people can take care of themselves in the here and now and encounter others in a more loving way. All pain and emotional states can be worked with and are welcome, whether it's physical pain, anxiety, panic, anger, grief, trauma, despair, relationship issues, love, joy, fear, hate, childhood issues, longing or chronic fatigue. Or indeed anything else.
We are practitioners who work together. We meditate together, supervise each other, and continually work on ourselves with each other. We share the same ethical framework and believe that individual psychotherapy can be a very helpful process alongside this body work. We value self-reflection, honesty and humility.
Practitioners
Ruth Hoskins
- Integrative Body Psychotherapist since 2005.
- Biodynamic Massage Therapist since 2002
- Certificate in Trauma Therapy with Babette Rothschild 2007
- Ruth has studied module 1 and 2 of Upledger CranioSacral Therapy
- Amanae Practitioner.
- Ruth practices in Whitstable, Kent
Click here to visit Ruth's website.
Susie Chassagne
- Somatic Breathwork Practitioner since 2020
- ITEC Massage Therapist since 2002
- Amanae Training 2017-2019
- Working with Trauma Masterclass 2023, The Gestalt Centre
- NCFE Level 2 cert: Awareness of Mental Health Problems, 2020
- NCFE Level 2 cert: Introduction to Counselling Skills, 2019
- Integrated Certificate in Holistic Wellness Coaching, 2024,
- ACCPH Senior Member
- Susie practices near Maidstone and Whitstable, Kent
Click here to visit Susie's website.
Why is Breathwork important?
How we breathe is essential to our wellbeing. Exploring our habitual breath and the deeper reasons behind how we have come to breathe this way can bring about more understanding and acknowledgment of how we have survived in our lives, whether we've limited or held our breath habitually or had to control or felt out of control of our breath. Often people are told, or tell themselves, that 'they should breathe more, better, bigger,' etc. In our work we challenge this mode of operating in favour of exploration because when we are in the fight/flight/freeze part of our nervous system we cannot relax, and therefore cannot breathe in a relaxed, full, freeing manner. What is important then is to honour how we have learned to survive; this honouring is powerful as it invites safety and relaxation into the body/mind and we are able to explore our inner world more, using a variety of breathwork techniques. This becomes deeply satisfying.
Why might you need it?
The body holds on to emotions from life experiences that have been too overwhelming or painful to deal with, and those emotions wait patiently to be met so that they can be processed and released. Even though in some cases these emotions might not be apparent in daily life, the chances are that they are having quite an impact, leaving people feeling stagnant, unhappy, or unable to experience life in its fullest sense.
What happens in a session?
Each session begins by checking in with the client what they believe their need or issue is, and how they are feeling in their body and mind right now. This work is collaborative and it is essential that the client participate by describing something of what they are feeling in the here and now. The heart is worked with in one of a number of ways - using mindful presence, whole hand touch or more specific touch, movement, and various types of breath work, taking into account levels of nervous system regulation or dysregulation. Working with the breath in the heart may take a whole session, or even a number of sessions, before any other areas of the body are worked with. The Practitioner accompanies the client with whatever arises, following the process that needs to emerge and interjecting where it seems support may be needed. They stay with the client's process until some release is emerging or equilibrium begins. This can be felt in a new way of breathing, an expansion, a change in mindset, in emotion being released or a sense of being more expanded and present in the body.
Breathwork for the Heart workshops are immersive and intense. They are an opportunity to meet yourself more immediately through sound circle meditation and body and breath work of various kinds. There are often big shifts in energy and a lot of change for individuals and the group.
This is individual work within a group setting where others are engaged in the same work as you in the same room. When we can allow ourselves to be affected by others and to stay with ourselves in the context of a group then growth can be accelerated and very powerful. We can learn more deeply about our relational patterns and wounds as they arise to be held and understood.
You will be supported and worked with by a number of practitioners who will bring their own energy, presence, abilities and gifts to the work, complementing each other.
We are running a winter retreat designed for self-enquiry and mindful contemplation. This is intended for people who feel a pull to go inwards during the darker months and shorter days.
Sound Circle Meditation
This meditation group is a good place to experience using breath, sound and vibration to explore your relationship to your body, its sounds and your spiritual self.
Give yourself the opportunity to delve deeply and connect in ways you might not usually do. Whether you are an experienced meditator or a beginner these circles invite an opportunity to grow in practicing alongside others and to open to oneself and the spiritual dimension within a space in which you are held.
We offer a Foundation Training and then Level 1 and Level 2 of Training in Conscious Breathwork for the Heart. See the Training Page for full details.
Foundation Training:
Learn to use breath work techniques and psychological interventions for working with your own Breath, Touch and Conscious Awareness to:
- Connect more deeply to your Self
- Manage Boundaries energetically
- Develop presence with others’ emotions
- Build Resilience for long-term practicing * Reverse burnout and compassion fatigue.
Intelligent
Awareness Building
Conscious
Life-changing Heart Connection
Relational
Trauma -Informed
Psychotherapeutic Principles
Exciting Self Discovery
Some frequently asked questions...
What techniques are used?
This work is informed by a number of techniques for deepening our emotional/psychological/spiritual connection with ourselves, our hearts and others. They include:
Breathwork techniques
Bioenergetic Body Work,
Biodynamic Massage
Amanae breath and body work
Body Psychotherapy
Trauma Therapy
Gestalt Therapy
Swedish Massage,
Emotional Release and Connecting with the heart.
Where should I start?
It is a good idea to start either with a few individual sessions or to come to a series of meditation groups. This is how you will begin to get to know how we work.
How could this benefit me?
When we start to connect with ourselves more deeply we find that the body leads us where we need to go. Part of the work is about learning to follow where the breath and body takes us as opposed to trying to control where we go, then learning to stay with ourselves on that journey, rather than abandoning ourselves.
Internal changes happen organically when we become deeply present. These changes can take time to digest and integrate into daily life. It is gratifying when a client notices that an old pattern is simply absent, or they are viscerally and/or emotionally feeling much freer. As a result of this growing freedom, deeper, more loving connections can be formed, with oneself and other people, with the earth and with spirit. These changes, which can transform lives, can continue to unfold over months and even years.
Our location
We are based in Kent, and see clients from the surrounding areas of East Sussex, Surrey, Greater London and Essex.
Fees & availability
Autumn 2023 – Spring 2024 prices:
Breathwork for the Heart Workshops - £185
Personal Development Day Retreats - £100
Conscious Breathwork For The Heart Training (3 modules) - £1050
Meditation group - per session - £12.50
Individual session with a practitioner – please visit their websites for more details.