The Benefits of Studying Breema in Daily Life

by Ashik Staud

Studying Breema, I have found that practicing both Breema bodywork and Self- Breema exercises can give me the knowledge that “I have a body,” a knowledge that doesn’t belong to the mind, the emotions or sensations, but to an inner authority that exists independently from them. When you go to Breema classes, you will hear, again and again, to “register that your body is breathing,” and that “your body has weight.” These reminders and the nine universal principles of Breema have helped me to have moments when the knowledge that “there is a body” is present, my center of gravity is within myself, and I am collected and not scattered in my thoughts. 

Breema bodywork and Self-Breema exercises are very simple activities. They can give you moments of peace and tranquility in your busy day. In fact, they can bring you into balance with yourself, others, and everything around you within a few breaths. In Breema classes it is most encouraging and uplifting that after only a few hours many participants actually “do Breema,” and start to get a sense of what it means to “have a body.”

One Breema principle that I found particularly helpful is Body Comfortable. It taught me to pay attention to my actual physical body, and not to the body that exists only in my imagination. I saw how often I have no idea of what my physical body is experiencing, how painful and restricting many crystallizations have become. This principle, as well as all the others, is useful on many different levels. What can I do to make my physical body more comfortable? There is always something I can do to make my body more comfortable, and what is comfortable now may not be so the next moment. On a different level, how can I be comfortable if my emotional balance is disturbed, and my mind is jumping from the past to the future and back? What is needed to make my body (which includes my mind and feelings) more comfortable?

Another principle is Single Moment/Single Activity. Whenever this principle comes alive for me, I feel a weight lifting from my shoulders. I can easily be with this moment—that’s no problem. It’s those other past and future moments that clamor for attention in my mind that are problems. When I do a move in a bodywork sequence, I can really experience this one move, instead of worrying about a future part of the treatment, or my bank balance, or yesterday’s news. How simple life suddenly becomes!

Each one of the nine universal principles can take you from the most mundane level right up to an understanding of who you really are, and show you a lot about yourself and the world on the way. They are generally not all alive for me at the same time, but sometimes I experience Mutual Support, then No Hurry/No Pause, then No Extra, then Full Participation during a Breema treatment or a Self- Breema exercise, each one following the other like pearls on a string. I have found these principles helpful not only when I do Breema, but have also profited from them in my everyday life.

Ashik Staud is a Staff Instructor at the Breema Center. Weekly online classes in Self-Breema can be found at breema.com/events.