With Éiriú Eolas there is more information exchange between the two hemispheres of the brain (left-right integration), which means there is increased coherence and better problem-solving. It also improves balance between parts of the cortex and subcortex, which means that higher functions of your cortex can influence primitive messages from your subcortex. Selfless love, reasoning, logical deduction and emotional processing 'originate from' or 'take place' in these higher cortical areas.
Éiriu Eolas evokes deep insight, resolution of emotional conflict, and a subjective sense of newfound mental clarity. It also has a strong impact on stress-reduction and eases anxiety and depression. This is in part due to the fact that there is a complex interrelationship between breathing, cognition and emotion. Emotional states can affect the respiratory rate, depth, and pattern. On the other hand, voluntarily changing the pattern of breath can account for at least 40% of variance in feelings of anger, fear, joy, and sadness.
Psychotherapist Peter A. Levine has proposed the idea that trauma is not a "disorder" (as in 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder'), but an injury to the body-mind. Rather than a syndrome that may be a life-long burden, trauma can be healed. He explains in An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness:
Trauma occurs when we are intensely frightened and are either physically restrained or perceive that we are trapped. We freeze in paralysis and/or collapse in overwhelming helplessness. In freezing, your muscles stiffen against a mortal blow, and you feel "scared stiff." On the other hand, when you experience death as being unequivocally imminent, your muscles collapse as though they have lost all their energy. In this "default" reaction (when it has become chronic, as it does in trauma), you feel that you are in a state of helplessness resignation and lack the energy to fuel your life and move forward. This collapse, defeat and loss of the will to live are at the very core of deep trauma. Being "scared stiff" or "frozen in fear" - or, alternatively, collapsing and going numb - accurately describes the physical, visceral, bodily experience of intense fear and trauma.
While we might not actually remain physically paralyzed, we do get lost in a kind of anxious fog, chronic partial shutdown, dissociation, depression and numbness.
When one is overwhelmed, the frontal cortex of the brain, where things are put into perspective, shuts down and our abilities to stand back and observe one's sensations and emotions is lost; we then become those emotions and sensations. This makes us feel terribly overwhelmed, fearful and stiff, and we get stuck in an immobilized fearful response which translates into a lack of vitality and engagement towards life.
As breathing is controlled by a complex feedback of both voluntary and involuntary mechanisms - involving autonomic networks, the brain stem headquarters of the vagus nerve, the limbic system, cortex, and the neuroendocrine system - voluntary control of breath can help create a physiological state where we can finetune our automatic reactions and influence the reactivity of our central nervous system. For instance, long-standing overwhelming feelings of helplessness or fear can be released through the breathing exercises as physical trembling, changes in body temperature or spontaneous crying that is relieving and non-traumatizing. It is the release of long-term, 'bound' energy held in the body's primitive defense mechanism patterns.
This brings balance between the most evolved parts of the brain and our most primitive ones, allowing for complex, knotted and 'heavy' emotions to emerge in a safe setting, where they can be integrated and transformed. Through the breathing exercises, the prefrontal cortex is engaged in observing primitive fearful sensations generated in the limbic system, allowing us to process the information and let it go.
Peter Levine adds:
Beginning meditators are often painfully surprised at the tumultuous activity of their minds. Thoughts, sensations, feelings, fears and desires chaotically pursue each other like dogs obsessively chasing their tails. However, as they gain some steadiness in awareness, practiced meditators start taming their restless minds. They begin having extended periods when they are not sucked into the endless swirling vortex of their frenzied thoughts and emotions. In place of this turbulent state a sublime inquisitiveness about moment-to-moment experience begins to develop. They start to investigate the "how" of each arising moment, as well as their reactivity to various thoughts, sensations, feelings and situations.
Breathing as a therapeutic tool provides
a means for regulation of mental and emotional states, which cover a broad area ranging over psychology, physiology, and spirituality.
