I’ve recently been served a massive wake up call. You see, I’ve been diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, which is a long-term illness caused by inflammation of the colon. Left untreated, it can lead to surgery, a coloscopy bag and even cancer. The doctor ruled out dietary, which means they don’t know what the cause is but suspect that it’s ‘environmental’.

It’s worth noting that at the same time as receiving this diagnosis, I’m the healthiest and fittest (physically) that I’ve ever been.

I knew that I could choose to go one of two ways:

1. Resign myself to the illness, treat the symptoms and not the cause and keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t escalate
2. I could listen to what my body is telling me and go inward for the answers, healing the CAUSE and not the symptom.

Naturally I’ve taken up the second option!

When life throws you lemons, or you become unwell, or something doesn’t go your way it’s so easy to look outside of ourselves for the cause. When we do this, it instantly puts us into a Victim State. It often sounds like “I’m stuck here because of them” or “I can’t be/do/have because of an external circumstance”.

But here’s the truth – I manifested this disease in my body. I am unwell, because of my actions and because of my inner state. Reflecting back over the last few months I’ve been grinding, pushing, taking action, forcing, and then getting worried, frustrated and stressed out when things didn’t happen how I wanted them to.

A physical manifestation of illness in the body is always an energetic problem. We can plaster over it with medication, and we can even cut the diseased bits of our body away. But if we don’t get to the root cause of the problem, which is at the energy level, it will come back again and again.

I read an incredible book written by Dr Sue Morter called The Energy Codes, which inspired me to focus on breathing as a healing modality. Dr Sue teaches that breath is energy, it is the very thing that enables us to create worlds (mind blown!). To restrict our breathing is to cut us off from the very thing we need to survive and thrive.

It’s true that 90%+ of people on the planet do not breath properly. We often shallow breath into our chest, but rarely breath down into our belly’s which is a ‘full breath’. In fact, as I’m writing this blog I’m automatically breathing shallow. When I’m in a stressful work situation or I’m at the computer sometimes I don’t breath at all.

According to the Transformational Breath Foundation UK, we hold our breath to prevent ourselves being overwhelmed by our feelings and when this becomes habitual we lose the ability to breathe deeply and connect to our bodies and ourselves.

It’s so damaging to our health and wellbeing but growing up no-one ever teaches us the importance of breath. Shallow breathing is just another bad habit, and all habits can be changed.

If you’ve ever followed Dr Joe Dispenza, his work is rooted is healing people with serious life-threatening illnesses through breath and activation of the Pineal Gland.

Both he and Dr Sue Morter teach that our inner state determines our external environment, and our emotional state/stress levels are directly correlated to inflammation and disease in the body. And I can 100% attest to this.

I felt divinely guided and knew the key to my healing was down this path, so I turned to Transformational Breathwork. I have tried Breathwork twice before, and if I’m honest it felt like a euphoric, and deep meditation, where I received downloads of insight and inspiration. But I’d never used it for healing before.

I set up my first three sessions with a practitioner whom I know and trust. Our first was a two-hour session, and on the morning of it I just KNEW something had to be released. I was an emotional mess, it was almost as if a part of me was fearful of losing something, I couldn’t explain it.

After around 20 minutes, I didn’t think much was happening and then suddenly a voice as clear as day said the following “What you fear more than anything is being controlled” and I had a vision of my boyfriend (who triggers me a lot), and then I was shown a vision of my step-father and my mother (who were both over-bearing when I was growing up), and it continued to go back in time and show all of the people whom I had felt controlled by.

I started sobbing. A raw, spluttering, hot messy cry that was uncontrollable and just kept coming in waves. I felt all of the trauma of being controlled, not just in this life, but in lives past. It sounds dramatic and super ‘woo-woo’, but it’s the truth and I literally thought it was never going to end!

It was a massive release of emotion like I hadn’t felt in the longest time. In fact, I’m questioning whether I’ve ever had a release of emotion like it.

After the breathing session had ended, we spoke about what came up, and I had a massive realisation. Not only is my deepest fear being controlled, but I actually embody that which I fear the most. I am a ‘control freak’. Always poised, always got it together, always achieving, always striving for perfection. And it’s EXHAUSTING.

This need for control, is what I’m clinging onto. My mentor once said “Life is like swimming, you can’t swim whist holding onto the sides”. And that’s precisely what I’ve been doing – holding onto the sides, afraid to make mistakes, needing to control everything, and limiting my greatness as a result. I need to control in order to feel safe.

Not only is this a limiting pattern of behaviour, but it’s making me physically unwell. I’m blocking energy from flowing freely through my body and creating an energetic blockage in my lower Chakra system (mainly the Root, which is all about safety and security), which I believe is causing the inflammation in my lower body (the Colon).

Crazy? Perhaps, but it all makes complete sense to me. Now I know the root cause, I can begin to heal – and I’ve never felt so free and empowered.

How exactly does it work?

Transformational Breath actually works by encourages a full diaphragmatic breath. This massages all the organs that come into contact with, or are affected by, the movement of the diaphragm, thus aiding good circulation. The Facilitators are trained to observe the breath and see physically where the breath is being held.

They will then use simple techniques including adjusting the position of the body, gentle hands-on pressure, sound and positive affirmations to help the breath to open up and flow more freely. This, coupled to a specific breath pattern, can clear negativity in the sub-conscious mind and help us to feel lighter, happier and more peaceful.

With practice the breath will begin to flow more freely at all times and commonly people report better health, mental clarity, emotional freedom and resilience.

If you google it, it comes up on Wikipedia as ‘pseudo-science’ and ‘new age’ – which always gives me a good giggle.

There is an ever-growing body of evidence and personal accounts of transformational healing for those dealing with Depression and burn-out, bereavement, addiction, asthma, ME and even cancer.

If you’d like to explore this for yourself, I strongly recommend reading Becoming Supernatural by Dr Joe Dispenza and The Healing Codes by Dr Sue Morter.

What has been the result so far?

It’s been 4 days since my session, and I feel incredible. On the actual day, I was totally drained so I relaxed into it and spent the day in the park, in nature, switching off.

I’ve had significantly increased energy levels, clarity of thinking and a renewed confidence in my business. It’s early days, and there’s definitely more layers to go through and more inner work to do.

What I am 100% sure of, is that I’ve now found the exact holistic approach to address the root cause of my disease, and not just the symptoms which I’m also treating with pills.