Right about now you’re asking, “what?!” It sounds bizarre and counterintuitive, doesn't it, to breathe into your genitals to achieve a sensation of abundant well-being? It may even make you giggle or wiggle a bit. In this article, I will provide you with a conceptual framework – and actual steps! – that explains why deep breathing into your genitals is your path to feeling aligned and abundant. I am an intuitive, trauma-informed psychotherapist and my caseload consists mostly of trauma survivors – or trauma risers, as I call them! – and breathing into their genitals has been pivotal in their transformative journey. Whether you are a trauma riser or not, this is also for you in your path to abundant living and well-being. The ironic and best part is that this holistic hack is portable, practical, and free – the ROI is unheard of!
My approach on most topics is holistic and multidimensional, so of the following, pick and choose one or all. You’ll likely find something that fits you best.
Let's begin!
Why is deep breathing important in general?
Stop the daily cortisol showers
We are in a stressful pandemic. Humans are running around with chronic levels of stress and stress is like wildfire, it spreads quickly and is contagious to our children, our workplaces, and our common daily interactions. Remember how tense the whole house feels when a parent is in a bad mood? Or when someone is road-raging in the car next to you? Those energies can seep into your bloodstream and the next thing you know, you’re flooded with cortisol, the stress hormone. Deep breathing reduces levels of cortisol and is a shortcut to diminishing overall stress and tension. Anywhere you are – standing in line, waiting for test results, or when late to work – take your breaths. Good energy is contagious too.
Upgrade your FOC (focus and concentration)
Diagnoses of ADHD are on the rise, and whether it’s because we're jumping from 30-second reels on social media, barraged by torrents of information, or whiplashed by global events, it is hard to focus and concentrate. Deep breathing increases oxygen flow to the brain, and enhances cognitive functions, such as improving focus, concentration, and mental clarity. These are actual human superpowers because focus and concentration pave the way for discernment, creativity, and good decision-making. That’s why we see characters in movies, like Neo in The Matrix or Sherlock Holmes, move in slow motion as they are considering their next move. Breathing allows for an internal pacing, attention to detail, and sound resolution.
When breathing goes high, disease goes low
Stress erodes our insides. It throws us into sequential startle responses and we are persistently braced for danger, a highly strained state that wears down the body. Sometimes it’s just about not finding our keys! It’s only logical that our drained bodies, pounded by cortisol shots, are prone to sickness and disease. Our internal landscape is war-like. It’s exhausting but stress exhaustion has become the new normal. Deep breathing is the primary medicine in our medicine cabinet. An intentional and regular practice of deep breathing has been shown to improve immune function as it reduces the negative impact of stress on the body.
Help your aching heart
Our beautiful heart has one task: to be the pulsating engine that distributes blood throughout our body in a powerful rhythm. If these flowing rivers of blood inside us are pushing against too much because they are clogged or missing a beat, our heart has to compensate for the imbalances; as engines do, it will work harder and harder until it collapses. This is the definition of high blood pressure: a heart that is working way too hard. Slow, deep breathing helps to lower blood pressure by promoting relaxation. By relaxing, we give the heart ease, as if the blood corridors opened and had more space. We assist the heart in doing its job, unencumbered.
Breathing is like a lullaby so you can sleep
Have you seen a baby in deep sleep? Their breaths are long and slow, their bodies rising and lowering, coddled in safety. Deep breathing before bedtime is like a lullaby; it calms the mind, relaxes the body, and mostly, it tells the body that it is safe. We can sleep profoundly when we feel swaddled in safety. As adults, breathing is an easy and powerful lullaby.
The balm of gilead for physical pain
In Biblical times, the Balm of Gilead was an actual substance to heal and soothe. Deep breathing techniques can do the same for physical pain, which is why we ask women to breathe during one of the worst pains of their life, childbirth. Deep breathing – and in my approach, sending the breath to a specific location – can help reduce the perception of pain and discomfort by promoting relaxation and releasing tension in the body. In my approach, we visualize expanding the place of pain with the breath; it’s in our contractions that we feel the most pain, physically and metaphorically, so like those blood corridors, we breathe them open.
Rest and digest
Whether you stop eating when stressed or compulsively overeat, you are not helping your body digest, i.e., you cannot process or dissolve what you have taken in. You either go unnourished, or it gets clogged somewhere; again, this metaphor is intended with food and feelings. The spoiler alert is this: if you’ve had a history of trauma, it is very likely that you have one, if not several, digestive disorders. Those terrifying moments – and feelings thereof – were forced upon you and digesting the experience was spastic or non-existent. The same is true for food. The digestive organs shut down or overwork when stressed. Deep breathing sends the message that relaxing is safe now. The organs, like us, can work better when relaxed – they can concentrate and focus on the task at hand. It’s all connected. Digestive processes can function normally and digestive disorders are reduced. Heartburn? Diarrhea? Constipation? IBS? Notice when it’s happening, since when, what you’re feeling and thinking, and, yes, you got it, breathe deeply.
Why does deep breathing help for post-trauma symptoms?
Running as if my life depended on it
That’s what PTSD feels like…all…the…time. The constant sensation that something bad is going to happen, the other shoe is going to drop, and that life is imbued with racing danger, is every day, 24/7 normal for someone with PTSD. The body’s sympathetic system – the human operating mechanism that sends blood to your limbs, shuts down your stomach, makes you sweat, elevates your heart rate, makes you beady-eyed, and increases your breathing in preparation for war – can’t unstick the “on” switch, Until you deeply breathe. Deep breathing literally flips the switch and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes a state of calm and reduces the fight-or-flight response. This is what we call nervous system regulation. When we can regulate it feels like bathing our body in warm, soft water, and we feel in control. Deep breathing allows you to slow down enough to rest in your own body.
Feels like the moments before dying
High anxiety and panic attacks feel like being on the edge of an abyss with your toes hanging over the cliff, but no one can see it. What others see is you having an outrageous reaction to an everyday event. You feel like you’re in the exact moments before dying and that’s why panic attacks are often confused with heart attacks. Then comes the embarrassment and shame which only add to the panic; we embed another layer of fear until our next attack, heightening the explosion. Controlled breathing, specifically having a longer exhale to the inhale, immediately helps manage acute symptoms of anxiety and panic, common in PTSD sufferers. A common obstacle to deep breathing is that it “looks weird” – on a subway escalator or an airplane, for example. Although this may be true, compare the solution of deep breathing to a panic or anxiety attack, which already looks confusing to those around you. I say, Do the weird and help yourself heal by breathing.
What we truly fear is what we may feel
I have coined many phrases and one of them is “get a Ph.D on you” by knowing yourself through your emotions and learning how to emotionally regulate. Emotions – our feelings in motion – are energetic messages moving through our body. They are internal text messages, if you will, giving us our personal state of the union. Feelings have meaning and they are here to convey something. Let’s listen to them. The issue is we have feelings (energies) that have accumulated over time in our bodies and because we are dysregulated, they feel enormous and uncontrollable. Feelings generally insist on an audience even when we are in a completely inappropriate setting or moment; they are quite creative in the ways they show up. In the case of PTSD survivors, feelings are saturated with horror and terror, and it feels impossible to face them. They will, however, like compound interest, continue to multiply and get more intense as a demand for attention. They will ambush and hijack us. Breathing is a powerful lubricant and gentle defroster to this process. By focusing on the breath, we gain better control over our emotional responses, guiding and aiding in the management of PTSD-related triggers and emotional dysregulation. You can become the expert on you, via your breath.
What exactly does “be here, now” mean?
Picture deep breathing as a way of dropping yourself straight into the now moment, like the arrow on a GPS. When we breathe deeply, we stop the time travel into our traumatic past, and we are draped in today, in the now, to be precise. We are locally embodied. This is the definition of mindfulness, your ability to be here with attention. Deep breathing enhances mindfulness. You can stay grounded in the present moment rather than flashbacking into past traumatic events.
Related article: Mind-Body Practices for Post-Traumatic Stress Disord
But why deep breathe into the genitals?
The mind learns quickly with pictures
We can picture it. It provides a visual of our flooring, our foundation, of our primordial layer, before we became an identity lasagna of other layers: familial, cultural, religious, cultural, and racial identifications. Our original self got buried under these layers. When we picture our pelvic floor, where our genitals rest, we can imagine our understructure before it got soaked in our trauma and wounds.
Root chakra healing
From a chakra perspective, this area is where the root chakra is established. The root chakra is the energy center of safety, stability, and belonging. When the root chakra is misaligned with wounds, tearings, leakages,and missing pieces, it derails all the other chakras, like a psychological leaning Tower of Pisa, if you will. Because our mind learns quickly with visuals, imagining the root chakra nesting in our groin area, ready for cleansing and healing breaths, proves to work amazingly and swiftly.
Removes shame
Sending deep, loving breaths de-shames our beautiful genitals from cultural morės, from abuse, from ostracizing and separating them from any other part of our body, like our stomach, limbs, liver, and on. We send healing and accepting breaths to that area, and as we know, self-acceptance allows for self-love.
Secure attachment
We introduce the breaths as the portal to the lower body, the passageway to ground into the earth for belonging, comfort, safety, soothing, and stability, all root chakra components. These ingredients are the requirements for living life as a securely attached human being.
Self-esteem deposits
Once we know how to ground and stabilize with deep breaths, we acknowledge them as what I call “depositing breaths”. Making depositing breaths represents a physical, metaphorical, and intentional practice to heal trauma. They increase our escrow of holistic well-being because we are depositing, not withdrawing; trauma withdraws life from us and deep breaths create a savings account of better and better moments.
Safe homecoming
Because we are depositing breaths into our genitals, where we are most vulnerable and tender, it allows for two essential life-enhancing components: we allow our root chakra to unfurl because it is safe, much like in beautiful lovemaking; and, we ground into our bodies, from which we usually run and avoid because of trauma, anxiety, and terror. By breathing into our genitals, we acknowledge and accept ourselves, all of ourselves. We are promised a beautiful homecoming into ourselves.
A quick spiritual word, especially if you identify as an empath
Most folks live in the upper part of their body, especially Empaths. If we haven’t healed our foundation, if we haven’t detoxed our original programming (our childhood wounds and our limiting beliefs), our Spirit, our Soul, or our Energy — whatever you want to call our higher consciousness — can not find its home inside ourselves, it cannot safely dock, and it rather moves from our lower body into the top part of your body.
This is important because if we are not anchored or centered inside ourselves, we are susceptible to leaving our body in order to please and automatically respond to others almost all of the time. In clinical psychology we call this disassociation, and in trendy language, it’s called ghosting… our own self!
Being ungrounded and disconnected from our lower body is an experience of feeling “off”, misaligned, and overall hazy. Empaths, in particular, will abandon themselves and pay the price of deserting their centered well-being in order to harmonize their external environment and to make sure everyone is ok — children will, too, by the way. Children will pay the price of never discovering themselves and contorting their needs and wants to make sure the adults in the room are happy. And thus, the cycle of a misaligned internal foundation begins and we live in the world like a wobbly Jenga game.
When I ask people to literally breathe below their navel into their hips and genitals and to visualize each breath creating a heaviness in their lower body, it’s meant to simultaneously cleanse us of old, wounded programming in our foundation — or what I call root chakra healing — while grounding us into ourselves (or Momma Earth, whatever provides the most belonging).
10 steps for breathing into our genitals
Do this sitting or standing and with your eyes open or closed - The best way to do this is by sitting but because it’s essential that this tool be portable and practical, you can do this anywhere and everywhere. You can do this standing and that’s where the visualization step will come in handy. Depending where you are, you can close your eyes or leave them open. These adjustments and possibilities are what makes it portable and practical.
Lean into your back body - Wherever you are, whether sitting or standing, lean back to signal to your body that you are coming “in”, rather than leaning “towards” any one or anything.
Place a hand over your chest or stomach - Gently touching your body is a soothing signal and it begins the process of grounding.
Notice and slow down your breath - Begin, as in most traditional meditations, by slowing down your breath in order to flip the switch from sympathetic to the parasympathetic system.
Mindfully notice - Start by taking rhythmic, deep breaths with the intentional directive to calm the central nervous system and to non-judgmentally observe your internal state.
Visualize your throne - Picture yourself sitting in the throne of your body and feel as if you are sitting inside yourself.
Send deep, depositing breaths to your genitals or root chakra - Start to send deep breaths down below the navel into the hips, pelvic floor, and genitals. You can use air hand movements to symbolize pushing the breaths down gently.
Visualize cleansing, depositing, or anchoring - The following deep breaths into your genitals can be used as a combination or as one of these healing functions. Visualize the breaths gently cleansing or removing wounds from your root chakra. Follow by taking a deep, depositing breath of security, stability, and belonging, picturing the root chakra safely unfurling. Lastly, sit more deeply into your hips and see yourself grounding into your pelvic floor, buttocks, thighs, legs, feet, and docking into the earth (or Momma Earth as Ilike calling her for a comforting image), all along making depositing breaths.
(Optional) Say “home” out loud - In traditional Hindu meditation, practitioners say the word “OM” as a symbol of the primordial sound from which the universe was created. Using the same tone, energetic frequency, and emotion, replace “OM” with the word “Home”, symbolizing the sacred coming home to Self. Personally, I like to put both hands crossed over my chest, while I make my depositing breaths, vibrating the word “Home” out loud. Let the vibration move all the way down into your genitals.
Elongate the exhale, whether breathing or speaking - Absolutely key to calming and regulating the central nervous system, especially during a panic attack or high anxiety, is elongating the exhale of the vibration of the word. For example, if you inhale for 4 counts, elongate the exhale for 8 counts every time. If you inhale for 4 counts, elongate the exhale with the word “Home” for 8 counts.
Start your abundance journey today
Yes, we giggle. Yes, it’s odd. Yes, it may feel uncomfortable. Yes, it may even feel arousing. But breathing into our lower body, making deposits of cleansing, self-loving breaths, brings us back to a healed home: our throne-body. Acknowledging and accepting our genitals as a powerful site for healing, comfort, and belonging can be the start of amending our past and safeguarding a future replete with worthiness. Feeling holistically at home in our bodies – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually embodied – is the start of an abundant life. Ready?
Whether you're a trauma survivor, an Empath, navigating through the roller coaster of life, or at the start a brand new identity chapter, being at home in your body is the place to begin and it’s all possible through our primary, life-giving operating system: our breath. Curious? Intrigued? Well, let’s do it together. In addition to being a holistic psychotherapist, I call myself a “Heaven on Earth Coach”. I believe we can have heaven on earth and life, no matter our past. Book a coaching call today.
Read more from Claudia Cauterucci
Claudia Cauterucci is a multilingual, multicultural psychotherapist, international speaker, author, and creator of the Dynamic R-Evolution curriculum and community. She is passionate about training Empath Leaders for this emerging new world and identifies as a Colorful Person, a term she uses to express her unique identity. Claudia resides in Washington, D.C., a city she adores, with her son John and her beloved long-haired Akita.
