About Leonard Orr

by Susan Alden

Leonard D. Orr is best known as the founder of Rebirthing Breathwork. He is one of the early pioneers of the use of the breath as a somatic therapy, perhaps the earliest. He discovered the healing power of the breath accidentally, while attempting to heal his own birth trauma. He used warm water bathing to simulate the experience of being in the womb, and to bring up birth memories. It was later, when he and his students further developed the process, that they recognized the profound healing qualities of the connected breathing that the warm water immersion stimulated.

Leonard was a creative free thinker, and a pioneer in many areas of life. He not only discovered the healing power of conscious connected breathing, which he first called Rebirthing, and later Rebirthing Breathwork, he also questioned many aspects of life, especially those that cause human suffering and misery. His central question seemed to be, “Why don’t we have heaven on Earth right now, and what can we do about it?” He questioned many things that most of us simply accept as “the way things are,” such as death, old age, taxes and poverty. 

Leonard questioned why we had to pay taxes, and why governments didn’t pay us instead. He also believed there was no valid reason why we had to accept the money system as it is, instead of setting up our own money systems that might serve us much better. 

He never accepted the inevitability of death, and sought out immortal yogis in India to learn from them how to master their simple practices of aliveness. He was also well known for his Prosperity Consciousness Seminars. He said that once he had healed his own death urge, he could work with other people to help them heal theirs, sometimes doubling their income in the process. He was profoundly interested in genuine democracy and ran for public office three times. He ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council in 1967, Mayor of Los Angeles in 1973, and was a candidate for President of the United States in 1988.

What attracted me to Leonard initially was Rebirthing Breathwork, with its promise of release from the bondage I was in from my traumas of birth, infancy and early childhood. But what kept my interest was his ability to question the seemingly unquestionable, and to help me see things in a new and different light. I didn’t always agree with his conclusions, or his methods, but I always liked how his discussions would open my mind to new ways of thinking that had been formerly closed off for me. 

Below is an article Leonard wrote about himself in 1990, where you can learn more about the details of his life, and the origins of Rebirthing Breathwork.