My Story, and the Story of Rebirthing Breathwork
By Leonard D. Orr
I was born in Walton, NY, a dairy farming town of 5,000 people. I have always thought of it as the perfect small town. It is nestled in the mountains with a river and creeks running through it. Everyone is friendly and there are lots of large maple trees and churches. It was "dry" during my whole childhood; no alcohol was sold in town until I was 19. My childhood was externally idyllic. But I was already damaged so much internally that I couldn't enjoy it much until after I developed and did plenty of Rebirthing practice. (Editor’s note: Early on, Leonard called the process “Rebirthing.” He changed the name to “Rebirthing Breathwork” after he discovered the healing power of the breath.)
My mother had her first three children – all girls – almost exactly 18 months apart. Then she decided she had enough children. In spite of this decision she had three more – each about four years apart. I was last. I was an unwanted child after my mother had already held the decision to have no more children for twelve years.
Through Rebirthing I have remembered a lot. I remembered coming into her womb and feeling excited about being back in the physical universe. But my joy soon turned into misery when I discovered I was an unwelcome guest. When my mother found out I was there during the second or third month of pregnancy, she was very upset. This is when my trouble began in this life. I concluded that the only way I could please my mother was to disappear – to kill myself. I tried to hang myself on my umbilical cord. It was an unsuccessful attempt.
I was a breach birth with the cord wrapped around my neck three times. At birth I came as close to dying as is possible without actually dying. The cord was around my neck so tight that the doctor decided to pull me out by my legs far enough to cut the umbilical cord, he then pushed me back in, turned me around and pulled me out with forceps. I have relived much of my womb life, birth and infancy during my Rebirthing healing process.
Rebirthing can be a series of physiological memories. These kinds of Rebirthing experiences started for me in 1962 and have been going on for 27 years. Now, in 1990, I feel close to experiencing a liberated white light body. I feel divine most of the time and I love life. I feel very alive today because of Rebirthing practice. I love to breathe energy every day. A Rebirthing session can lift us out of our misery sometimes in one hour. And new layers come to the surface of consciousness to be cleared away.
My birth was a long one. I remember the suffocation. I remember my mother’s shame at having her legs spread. At one point in 1977 I had a rash around my neck in three stripes, which was a physiological memory of the umbilical cord.
The Development of Rebirthing / Rebirthing Breathwork
My first Rebirthing experience was in 1962. One morning I couldn't get out of my bathtub. I stayed there for two hours before I had enough strength to get out. I was late for work that day. From 1965 to 1967 I was suicidal most of the time. My life was colored by inner misery. Physical immortality ideas, as well as what I had learned from Joel Teutsch about body, mind and spirit, saved my life.
During the summer of 1967 I had a living death experience. I was in bed for over a week and felt like dying. After that I took charge of my life, and I have been mostly healthy and happy since then. I've been able to heal many of my own diseases myself. For example, I haven't had any cavities in my teeth since 1968.
I didn't perfect the Rebirthing method until 1975. But between 1962 and 1975 I had numerous Rebirthing experiences. One of the most dramatic was in 1973, when I had head pain. One day when I had a terrible headache, I got the intuition that I should get down on the floor on my hands and knees with my head down so that it touched the floor. I had a birth memory and immediately the pain stopped.
About a year later I woke up one morning with the same kind of terrible pain. I hung myself over the arm of a chair with my head touching the floor. I experienced a flash of pain and white light and then the pain was gone.
About ten years later, after my daughter was born in 1985, for a few weeks I had a series of migraine headaches every few days that lasted an hour or less. They only lasted one hour because every time as they came I laid down and breathed away the pain with connected breathing. Each time the headaches got shorter and on the last day I had one about every two or three hours for about ten minutes. Then the pattern dissolved. I have had only one headache during the past four years.
My Rebirthing story is the story of discovering the whole process. I am known as the founder of the Rebirthing movement. The main part of this discovery took about ten to fifteen years. The giant leap occurred in 1974-1975. The discovery is still going on for me. Every year I learn more about breathing and spiritual liberation in very practical ways.
In 1974 I gave a spiritual psychology seminar, I talked about my birth memories and most of the people attending wanted to have birth memories too. I told them to get into their bathtubs and sit there until they felt it was time to get out. Then, to stay in the tub thirty minutes to an hour longer. The feeling that we must get out is an urgency barrier. Every time we sit through an urgency barrier we get a fantastic realization about ourselves, and we learn about another program that is controlling us. This was the beginning of the Rebirthing movement. This was the first technique of Rebirthing: to just sit and meditate in the bathtub through an urgency barrier.
Most of the people in the seminar group tried this experiment and had such powerful emotional releases that they wished someone had been there to talk with them about what was happening to them. I volunteered. I experimented with Rebirthing people this way. It was very powerful.
Later I got the idea of using a snorkel and nose clips in a hot tub. When I put people into the water, they were in a womb-like environment and they instantly regressed to birth and prenatal states of consciousness. They did not just have memories, they regressed to a psycho-physical state. It was a complete spiritual, mental and physical experience. People had a completed energy cycle that was an integrated healing experience. I stayed with each person until they felt peace. They experienced the peace that surpasses all understanding.
It was this group of people that inspired me to purchase the Victorian mansion in San Francisco that came to be known as Theta House.
We created a One Year Seminar group. This is the same group of people that meets for one year, one day per month, from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. When I decided to become a spiritual teacher I wasn't interested in superficial relationships. I wanted to create spiritual family. I wondered how much progress could be made in one year by a group when all members had the intention of supporting each other in unraveling the birth-death cycle. Our very first OYS group was interested in mastering physical immortality and transfiguration. Transfiguration means the ability to dematerialize and rematerialize the body and conquer physical death. We were after total spiritual liberation and enlightenment.
Rebirthing was developed in the context of One Year Seminar groups in which people learned how to master their own mind and feelings. One Year Seminars began spontaneously all over the world. Hundreds of groups completed their year’s work together. Some go on year after year. It was common for me to meet with a group somewhere in the world Saturday or Sunday every weekend of the month. I traveled continuously for six years. The OYS groups provided the heart for the most stable Rebirthing communities. There still are One Year Seminar groups. [For more information about One Year Seminars contact the Leonard Orr Foundation or Rebirthing Breathwork International.]
Conscious Energy Breathing
In 1975, after giving hundreds of hot tub Rebirths, I noticed people having a "healing of the breath" experience. I realized their breathing mechanism was totally transformed, and their mind-body-spirit relationship was forever transformed as well. This healing took place after several sessions – when they felt safe enough to relive the moment of their first breath. Most people feel fear during this moment, so they have to feel safe to reach it.
They all breathed in a certain rhythm. It was a connected rhythm in which the inhale was merged with the exhale in one breath. It was the unity of Being experienced physiologically. It was the merging of the inner breath – life energy – with the outer breath – air and the breathing mechanism.
From the very beginning it was my goal to make people spiritually self-sufficient with Energy Breathing. That is, to give them enough sessions until they could Rebirth themselves.
Next I experimented with this connected breathing rhythm without the water and found that it was much better to do about ten one-to-two-hour connected breathing sessions out of the water before giving people a session in a hot tub with nose clips and a snorkel. Dry Rebirthing was born. This made it possible for Rebirthing to become a mass movement. Getting in a hot tub, nude except for a snorkel and nose clips, and reliving your birth, was a little esoteric for most people. But now all people had to do was lie down and breathe and they could have the most marvelous experience of their life.
I found that most people can learn the connected breathing rhythm and how to breath energy as well as air within ten two-hour sessions with a Rebirthing Breathworker. I gave sessions to infants, to people in their nineties, and all ages in between. Rebirthing Breathwork is good for anyone who is breathing or who has a body. It teaches people to relax and breathe better. Breathing is totally harmless, but the human mind is not.
The world wide demand for Rebirthing Breathwork was instantaneous. I learned how to train Rebirthing Breathworkers. Then trainers of Rebirthing Breathworkers. In twelve years Rebirthing Breathwork, or conscious connected energy breathing, spread all around the earth to many, many people. Since 1974 I led seminars and trainings in every state of the U.S. and in almost half the countries of the world.
I created a whole new healing profession. There are now many professional Rebirthing Breathworkers in the world. I am training more and better healers every year. Every day, 365 days a year, somewhere on the planet someone is learning how to breathe.
Immortal Yogis
I liberated myself from much of my death urge, birth trauma and family patterns before I learned to breathe. Most people today however, learn to breathe first and get liberated later. This is the easier way. But, Rebirthing couldn't have happened if I hadn't unraveled my death urge.
In 1962 I began reading books about physical immortality. I was fascinated with the idea. After liberating myself from my death urge in 1967, I noticed that the authors of most of the books I had read on physical immortality had died. I decided not to trust anyone who taught physical immortality unless they were at least 300 years old.
In 1977 I went to India for the first time to look for immortal yogis. Since then I've gone back almost once a year for about a month. So far I have met eight people who each are over 300 years in the same body, and I know of over fifty others that I haven't met yet. I prefer to say 300 years young, because most of them have totally mastered the aging process and are not old. Shiva Yogi, the Creator of the universe, is an eternal youth who forever dances in the drama of human history. Shiva Yogi, also called Babaji, is the eternal ideal of personal liberation.
My immortal yogi friends are like parent substitutes for me. They each are a powerful liberating force in my life. They add many new dimensions to my personal reality. They are like innocent children with infinite wisdom and abilities.
Babaji, the greatest immortal yogi I ever met, called Rebirthing Breathwork a Western form of prana yoga. It is not Kriya yoga but it is the substance of Kriya. Breathing energy is a direct intuitive experience of God. Kriya yoga is a more elaborate discipline and all breathers should learn it.
Babaji also called Rebirthing Breathwork in its larger sense the "new yoga," because it enables us to use the resources of our sophisticated civilization to achieve total liberation. For example, a home with indoor plumbing, warm water, and a fireplace is the most effective immortal yogi cave in human history. Breathing energy while soaking in a warm bath is a direct route to heaven on earth. However, unless they are used consciously, the gifts of civilization can kill us faster by sapping our energy. Conscious breathers are sometimes islands in a sea of mortal mentality.
I believe Babaji is the Angel of the Lord of the Bible - the Eternal God in human form. Jesus called him Abba in the Lords prayer – Greek New Testament. I believe Jesus is still alive and that he was the yogi king of the Jews sent by Babaji to teach the yoga of eternal life. Yoga still produces immortals.
I became a born again Christian when I was a teenager and there is no question that Jesus helped me develop Rebirthing Breathwork, as did Babaji – the Father, and the Holy Spirit. Babaji, the Angel of the Lord, appeared to me physically in November 1977 in Houston, Texas and helped me find the immortal yogis.
It may take a person 50 to 100 years to achieve practical spiritual liberation from conditioning. If we do a good job with our first 100 years, we get another 100 years to play with, etc. You can become immortal in one second. It is easy to become immortal, but the trick is to stay immortal. It takes forever to stay immortal.
My experience is that psycho-physical patterns of disease come and go until the healing is complete. This is also true with emotional patterns. Last year I took a year off. During one month I had chronic depression every week for two to five days. I feel that I was somehow healing very deep currents of my soul. This seemed to be a healing of infancy-senility consciousness. I spontaneously regressed to infancy behavior, which is called senility in senior citizens.
My approach to both physical and mental symptoms is to not fight them, but to surrender to them totally and to allow the Eternal Spirit to wash them out of my body and soul forever. Meditating, fasting, soaking and breathing in my hot bath, sitting with fire, and long walks facilitate relaxation. Disease and relaxation cannot both exist in the same space and time. We have to choose between tension and pain, or relaxation. Relaxation is a universal cure for all disease – mental and physical.
Mind, earth, air, water, fire and human love are the ultimate healers for the individual human being, and for the planet. Each one alone can heal all diseases known to man. Sometimes water and breathing are faster than fire, and sometimes mind and fire are faster than fasting and exercise, but together these simple techniques can keep us in perpetual bliss, health, energy, success, and ecstasy. They are the secrets to heaven on earth.
My lifestyle is a paradox. I love practicing advanced spiritual austerities in the forest. I also love participating in the world. I am a monk and a prosperous business man. I love serving and teaching people. And I love taking a few days off to bliss out on God through the simple arts of spiritual purification with earth, air, water, and fire.
