#98 Colleen Quinn on the breath as a critical gateway to conscious living
“It’s interesting because as the unconscious becomes conscious, we realise that all of these egoic coping mechanisms come with a great cost. Our ego is a conglomeration of these young wounded children and they have our best interests at heart. I don’t want to give the ego a bad rap, but their coping is very immature and always comes at a cost - apathy. It’s taking the other person for granted because you’re not sacred anymore. It’s not love.”
Breathing is the only bodily process that can be practiced consciously and unconsciously, tapping into the physical, spiritual and mystical all at once with a simple intake and release of the breath. Yet, like many parts of the body and self, this process has been trivialised and mechanised by the head-centric dominant culture, blocking the foundational gateway to consciousness that makes us the relational, caregivers we innately are.
How can we bring the conscious back into the “unconscious” through breathwork as a crucial pathway to deprogramming the human being as separate to the rest of the world?
In this month’s episode, we bring onto the show Colleen Quinn, a transpersonal psychologist with a child specialty along with certification in breathwork. Colleen has taught psychology at The Ohio State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Columbus State Community College and has published research in many top-tier scientific journals, among them Emotion, Adolescent Psychology, and Residential Treatment for Children and Youth to name a few. In her private practice, spanning decades, Colleen used Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Internal Family Systems (IFS). Both techniques use breathwork to find and feel our body’s stored traumas, loving them to bring healing.
Through a guided breathwork practice to exploring the themes of her latest book Essence Merging, Colleen takes us on a journey to remembering the human being as embodied love through the foundational pathway to consciousness - the breath. The episode is an invitation for listeners to discover their own divine blueprint, and return home to the sacred self as deeply connected to life on Earth and beyond.
What will be covered:
Breath only body process that can be done voluntarily and involuntarily
Breath as gateway to consciousness and presence
Essence Merging: How to see ourselves as one with each other again through the energetic reunion framing as foundational to relational practice
Bringing the unconscious conscious to deprogram colonial understanding of the human being - meditation, breath work and psychedelics being strong modalities for consciousness
Breath work as ego confrontation e.g. pushing limits of taking and releasing breaths to redefine our limitless capacities, meeting each other at the breath
Becoming love by re-embodying values that help us experience love in its truest form - care that serves everyone and the self
Allowing everyone’s path to be sovereign to themselves
Working from a place of enjoyment to make our ways of living easier
Energetic healing through words and affirmations
Going beyond the stinginess of the gaze to better embody love -> scarcity to abundance through breath work
Gaze as first level of tantra/devotion and taking the risk to open the heart through holding eye contact
Slowness of communication through gaze that invites deeper vulnerability rooted in love
Touch deprivation exacerbating lack of vulnerability in our relationships
How to love with detachment for those no longer in our lives
• The sacredness of mantra and devotion to embodiment practice, with example of Sikh mantra Satnam (I am that which I gaze upon)
Episode resources:
Connect to Colleen’s work at http://www.essencemerging.com
Watch this YouTube video for breathwork guidance
Internal Family Systems book recommendation: Jay Early’s Self Therapy
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Mind Full of Everything is a podcast calling for the radical healing of the self and community to outgrow the broken dominant culture of radical individualism and disconnection from our place as interdependent beings, so that we can collectively re-envision a safer, healthier and equitable world. Each episode takes a healing-centric approach to explore the embodied ways in which we can collectively restore and transform our journeys as stewards of community and earth through conversations with writers, researchers, coaches and educators, as well as reflection episodes with the host Agrita Dandriyal on her journey navigating the world as a deeply conscious, culturally-rooted and relational being. Learn more here.
