Coming Home to The Body...
Breema®: The Art of Being Present
From the September, 2007 issue of Dreamweaver magazine, By David Pratt
"Breema belongs to anybody who is applying it in his or her life.
It's not really bodywork, but a universal and practical approach to life."
– Dr. Jon Schreiber
It is easy to assume Breema is just bodywork when we see photographs of practitioner and recipient moving in perfect ease and balance. If you’ve already received a treatment, you probably know what a transformational effect it can have. However, Breema is more succinctly a practical teaching including bodywork, self-bodywork and nine universal principles, supporting recipients and students to have the experience of bringing mind, body and feelings into harmony. This self-verified taste of being present can be a bridge to help nurture balance in ever-increasing areas of life, and this is the aim of the work.
Dr. Jon Schreiber, director of The Breema Center in Oakland, CA., says one reason the bodywork is helpful is because it is so new to us. “There’s not an artificial way of doing Breema that has to be over- come,” he says of the floor-based art. “It provides a clean slate, an open field in which we can practice the Nine Principles without distraction. Eventually a person may be able to move with Body Comfortable in any activity.”
The unique quality inherent in this principle of Body Comfortable instinctively resonates with people, even those who may be watching a treatment. This is because a practitioner need not try to be comfortable. Instead she simply registers the body’s weight, the breath or accepts the support of a principle. With this direct connection to the body, the mind’s chatter can subside and allow a new and more natural energy to glow warmly from within. This is a gift to be grateful for, but for practicality, there is always something students can do to take a step in the direction of harmony. This is true during a treatment, a talk with a friend, or walk in the forest.
“We are so hypnotized by the contents of our minds,” says Katherine Correa, a Breema Instructor in Nashville, Tenn. She says Breema supports her to not get so caught up in the past and future. “In my experience, it’s just a matter of doing some things that Breema provides me with so that some of that drops away. Then, here I am. I was always there, being is always present, but I just wasn’t available to the experience of it.” When the sun is behind the clouds, it is still there. Similarly, our Being is never missing, but this is only a description and Correa encourages students to find out for themselves. “Don’t listen to me about it,” she says. “If you work with the teaching of Breema, you come into contact with something more essential, more fundamental than the contents of your mind.
When you come in contact with that, there’s recognition that it’s what you’ve been seeking.” Thankfully, there’s no need to try and figure any of this out. A part of you already knows what Body Comfortable is. Just lie down on a softly padded rug, take a nice relaxing breath and receive. Your practitioner will use a variety of nurturing and supportive holds, soothing brushes and playful taps.
The treatment is received fully clothed and may also include gradual leans into the muscles, freeing stretches and rhythmic rocking movements, which encourage your whole body to participate in this moment. It’s such a gift and a relief for practitioner and recipient to really know that in this moment there is No Judgment, No Force and No Hurry, more of the nine principles. It’s also comforting to know the practitioner will not “do” anything to your body, but gets to participate in this activity for her own benefit too. In fact, by supporting the aspect of you that is always in unity, always vital, the rest of your body, mind and feelings are invited to bloom. This simple taste of presence can help recipients know for themselves that Breema is not just bodywork, but a teaching that they can take into their lives.
Learn more about Breema at www.breema.com
