. . . the lights went out with Lee.

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a few words from David Parker

On Tuesday last week, on the very night we had a Breathwork Group, a power cut in the area affecting, shops, a pub and residences including three 20 storey tower blocks, went out. I wasn’t sure what to do, it was 4pm, we start at 7pm, how long would it last? . .  in fact it lasted 10 hours. Even though it was light outside, I still set about finding every moroccan tea light glass I had so we could have group, as the gloomy weather lent no light to proceedings. People arrived, including Lee, but universally known as ‘Peggy’. He used to run a pub, and being gay, he was bestowed this name, the same one as Babs Windsor playing Peggy Mitchell in Eastenders. His familiar bellow “Get Outa Ma Pub” was legendary, fierce and final.

Anyway he bounced in, a bit late, flustered, “what a bloody day!” arms waving, laughing, and took his place in a group he loved attending, “I come here for the social aspect, as much for the rebirthing breathwork, talking to people, getting into discussion with like-minds, he would often say, knowing there was no holding back on feelings or effing and blinding. We live in urban London, we speak as we find, no ‘hippie shit’, as some think, or ‘best behaviour’ going on.

Tell it like it is. And he did.

12814709_10154592242629128_467599028065657084_nI’d met Lee before, but he first attended our Monthly One Day Sunday Seminars in Victoria, eighteen months ago, and when we switched to Evening Groups ( now 3 a month ), he often forgot the dates, so he began to put up on Facebook the chalk board in his kitchen, to tell me he hadn’t forgotten.  

After the Breathe, we sat round in darkness, with just tea lights in glasses and Lee posted on Facebook the next morning : 

Lee Anderson : Peggy loved it by candlelight! 22 June at 08:54

12191970_10154304467959128_89677911108339713_nWe responded on Facebook everyday to each other especially over politics, last summer we both went to Camden Town Hall to hear Jeremy Corbyn, ( really to see Owen Jones in the flesh, we laughed ) and on Friday of last week we both FUMED over BREXIT as we both embrace a social conscience. He was with me when I took that photo of 3 teenagers looking into the window, after Corbyn’s rally, that went viral on global social media. Best memory to have of me and her.

Lee had worked at KIDS COMPANY for 5 years, with children and teenagers all living in harrowing difficult circumstances. His open hearted generosity healed unforgivable experiences, and the new job working with the charity recently set up by COLDPLAY & the John Frieda Company allowed him to continue in this role, using his creative talents ( holding a Degree in Printmaking for starters ), playing the fool, making kids laugh, and encouraging higher esteem in those kids unable to see the light of love. The authenticity he employed with kids he brought to our group, the quest for understanding with childhood enthusiasm, curiosity and a desire for deeper personal development. He loved me with a passion, always calling me Nana, and I adored and loved him back. My heart is smashed with his death.broken-heart_0

I know some of his dear friends referred to him as Edina Monsoon on Facebook with his ‘re-birthing classes’ (as he often posted about it on Facebook), but they were not far wrong – Peggy was truly, ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS.

Urban LIFECLASS will certainly miss his raucous laughter, old school camperama, diligence in finding himself and self sacrifice in unconditionally helping others. The lights have disappeared from our lives with Lee’s sad cardiac arrest last Sunday, but those tea glasses in every future Breathwork group will shine on, in each and every BREATHE we have.

Together we mourn, collectively we love. ❤️ #takeaBREATH

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Trending in 2016 : Breathing Education

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Trending Agencies have often been called ‘the backbone of marketing’. You may have wondered how when you shop for Home Furnishing, for example, there is a common thread built into current styles, colour, patterns and textures. In wearable fashion, the same thing occurs, this season has one colour mix everywhere, replaced by another 6 months later, how does that happen? This is the role of Trend & Fashion Forecasting.

Leading Agencies like New York based SPARKS & HONEY predict lifestyle trends, while companies in the fashion retail sector use fashion forecasters like WGSN, who predict over 2 years ahead what we will be wearing. This unites designers, factories, and analysts together to plan ahead cost effectively, thus creating global trends, they hope we will buy or buy into. But it can be risky, local weather, and climate change, can deeply upset fashion trends, and who can predict what clothes we will need in 2 years time while seasonal, crazy weather patterns, can deeply effect a corporate balance sheet.

imagesLIFESTYLE TRENDS, however are easier to predict, based on factual past evidence of what is rising, falling and coming into play. The speed of high technology has created a faster turnaround of ‘what’s in and what’s out’, creating equal havoc for the leisure industry, as for retail fashion. I recall, that in 1980 I was told by budding computer experts that ‘computers solve one problem while creating another’. How prophetic. 

The pace of information overload, constant mobile phone use, 24/7 contactability, and increasing low wage economies today, has created a more stressful society, with decreasing boundaries and relationship turmoil. No wonder we have barely time to BREATHE. No wonder we need to learn how to do it efficiently and URBAN LIFECLASS teaches you how.

So it comes as little surprise that leading forecaster SPARKS & HONEY has cited BREATHING EDUCATION as one of the essential trends of 2016.

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© SPARKS & HONEY 2015 
 Image: Kite_rin / SHUTTERSTOCK

I have been advocating the practice of Conscious Connected Breathwork for over 25 years – now science has caught up – from New Age to Internet Age.

SPARKS & HONEY say’s :

imagesMost humans take 20,000 to 30,000 breaths daily BUT MOST DON”T KNOW HOW TO DO IT PROPERLY. Now modern science is saying that breathing ( like drinking water and getting a good nights sleep ) can help lower blood pressure, boost immunity, reduce stress and fight obesity. BREATHING RETREATS and workshops featuring belly breathing, conscious breathing, and yogic breathing are on the rise. We will see more attention to breathing as a psychotherapeutic tool in 2016.

CULTURAL CHALLENGE : Try to find and attend a breathing class where you live. 

(We run 3 BREATHING Groups a month in London. Contact us.)  So now you know!

 

Depression SOLUTIONS : Rebirthing Breathwork & Urban LIFECLASS Groupwork works for me. YES BREATHE it out.

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by Ted Rogers : Dancer/Performer/Writer/Artist/ Blogger/Poet/Model/Stylist

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I’m Ted, 23 years old, and I first discovered Rebirthing breathwork through David Parker, ( here on the right ) a Breathworker with 25 years experience, after he suggested I try breath work and I trust his sound judgement so I decided to come to an individual 3 hour session and give it a go.

But from someone who has been diagnosed bi-polar (rapid-cycling) for 7 years and suffered many ins and outs of depression, medication, therapists and institutions, at first I was sceptical and I also find communicating with people and systems somewhat of a task due to my Aspergers (High-Functioning) syndrome, diagnosed in my teenage years. I was not convinced that breathing would really have that much of an impact on me. I had done meditation and Bikram yoga which both centre heavily around breathing and mostly the outcomes of these activities had been a headache or general exhaustion.

However, testimonials from friends of mine said something different and after having a conversation with fellow breather, Luca Marchetto the night before, outside the George and Dragon pub in Shoreditch, I was excited to experience Rebirthing breathwork. Luca had told me that it is different for every one, although he experiences weird hallucinations and usually “goes under” into a different world and then wakes up feeling amazing! This sounded extremely attractive to me. Especially considering I no longer use external substances to control my moods; the idea that I could experience these things purely with my own body was a bit of a revelation.

11150287_10153020261894597_9197737108586323769_nMy first experience of rebirthing breath work was almost exactly as Luca had described. About 10 minutes in I began to feel all tingly and weird and then I could physically feel my emotions coming out of me as if my soul was releasing it bowels. I was crying uninhibitedly like a child, then I was laughing hysterically, and then crying again. I woke up some time later. The room was at peace and I felt utterly blissful. The food that was given to us in bitesize chunks tasted better than anything I had tasted in years even though it was just some banana chunks and Jaffa cakes. This was enough for me to want to go back for more and I have regularly attended URBAN LIFECLASS SUNDAY MONTHLY SEMINARS, and each time the experience has been different but still enough to bring me back. Even when a breathe has been painful or upsetting it has still felt useful, something clearly needs to be released so I just *go with it*.

Most importantly I have found Rebirthing breath work to be the most effective form of therapy in helping me through tough patches of depression. And if we consider that I have been through many a psychiatric professional, various institutions and 13 different medications over 6 years I think you can agree that this is somewhat of a profound discovery.

What Rebirthing breath work does is it gets you past your intellectual barriers and complicated head based reasoning and puts you into your body. It reaches deep into your soul and gives it a good massage and a shake. What this allows you to do is become unstuck. One of my biggest difficulties with depression is getting stuck. Either in a hole or a loop or a sticky pool of mud. Regardless of the work I have done the day before I wake up the next day in the same pool of shit I started in the day before. This winter I experienced this cycle for an excruciating 4 months and I am still not entirely free of it. However, when I have attend a breath work session it has always shifted something. I can’t always put my finger on what but I can feel that within me something has moved. This in turn has helped to remove me partially if not entirely out of my loop/whole/pool of mud in the space of a few hours.

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This is incredible!

Never before could anything get me out of these ruts. Only recreational drugs or extreme life situations ever had any effect; and these two options come with negative longterm consequences whereas breath work does not. Price wise it is even reasonable. Especially compared to other alternative therapies and private medical care. For me I have found accessing therapies through the NHS extremely traumatic and the end result was that I was left on drugs without monitoring or any sort of talking/holistic therapies. Rebirthing breath work has begun a process in me. And I will continue to use it as therapeutic tool for as long as it serves me. I have huge gratitude for David and the assistants who help him in URBAN LIFECLASS group sessions, for showing me breath work and allowing me some release and progress from depression. This is how Rebirthing Breathwork and Urban LIFECLASS make me feel : Refreshed, ALIVE, Energised and FREE . . . 

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Ted has written an informative personal piece on DEPRESSION on his own blog . . . .

tumblr_n613t57Skv1scvz99o1_1280DEPRESSION is a subject that seems to turn many people into positive thinking experts or is something others would rather deny the existence of as a genuine sufferable illness. But from someone who has been diagnosed bi-polar (rapid-cycling) for 7 years and suffered many ins and outs of depression, medication, therapists and institutions, I would like to offer some of my experience and point out that it is OK and you are allowed to be depressed; it does not make you a bad person to be depressed. . . . http://artpornblog.com/2015/03/28/thought-porn-depression/

 

Facebook Suicide

SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENT by David Parker

2899416335_d7c7b29712In the 1950’s when colour came back in vogue after the darkness of World War 2, women fashioned themselves on movie heroines including home perms and colouring. The image makeover had begun.

Radio Luxembourg, a European short wave radio station playing pop music, followed the American radio tradition of product sponsorship and jingles, which explains why Friday Night was always ‘AMARMI Night’. Amarmi was the L’Oreal of the day, a hair dye you could use at home rather than use the expertise of expensive hair salons. But you could always tell a home job and it was noted with glee by some women in particular, eager to pounce and point the finger that that woman was a ‘suicide blonde’. Dyed by her own hand.

In the Internet Age we can easily makeover our identity on dating and social networking sites like facebook and perform *facebook suicide* by simply deleting or deactivating our virtual reality. It’s a modern version of walking into the sea, pile of clothes on the beach and starting again somewhere else.
Various theories abound the net as to why people do this to themselves with the most popular one being *overwhelm*. Too many friends, messages, event invites, chat buddies, pokes and promotional spam being the cliff they jumped over. Very different indeed from the *suicide scarers* who share their emotional despairing plight online and ask for help or role play assistance.

facebook-death2With security scares, hackers fears and serious stalkers most people using facebook provide fake information somewhere to protect themselves, so lying about age, birthdate or even work details are commonplace. Most of us don’t really care if someone calls themselves Tumbleweed De Bior, is 96 and has a *complicated relationship*. We would be surprised if they hadn’t.

It’s all part of the performance, the alter-ego of amusement. But god help the fake who fails to amuse, who reports what petrol station they have just visited or has 5000 friends but only 5 ever reply to posts. Unforgivable. Then you get serial relationship addicts who perform a service to us all, reminding us that posting *IN A RELATIONSHIP* two weeks after that first date is also the first step toward Codependency Anonymous. Like bystanders at the Colosseum, we watch and stare as the lion of temporary love snarls at the brave illusion of longevity. Then the inevitable happens – it ends in tears and the facebook friends/rescuers rush in with kisses on a stretcher, identifying the pain of rejection, offering hearty soundbites to cover the wounds of failure and unfairness of it all. But two weeks later, they return with another trophy in hand on FB, another victim, another David to fight the Goliath of approval addiction. Now that’s what I call real facebook suicide.

No boundaries, limited emotional intelligence, no time to waste. It’s called ‘love’. The addiction to be approved of. Codependents are inclined to be a bit all or nothing, hard on the outside, soft centred toward the rim, waiting, searching for solution but often living in the world of the *unavailable*. They can have high goals, even higher ideals and an extreme sense of perfectionism wrapped around a core of procrastination. Like Lord ‘Mandy’ Mandleson they are “Fighters not Quitters*, often *coping* with life instead of living it for higher purpose. Many people with long term illness fit this type, I certainly did, but like others, with help and experienced functional support learn to live again, despite circumstance, without blame or inner revenge of the world around them. We discovered a level of acceptance leading to spiritual growth, gratitude and self respect.

Facebook-suicide.jpgWithin the urban dictionary *facebook suicide* refers to deleting and disappearing identity from cyberspace, via overwhelm, information overload, a serious stalking presence or an act of attention like a teenager sulking in his room. Until we learn to face the world on it’s terms, we will always attract rejection.
I focus on three words in my seminars : REJECTION, RIVALRY & REBIRTH. By playing with and accepting rejection as normal and healthy, we grow into adults. By releasing the need to be number one all the time, and solving sibling rivalry, the requirement for competition and winning withers. You have already WON, why the need to WIN again? . . and again?

images-3When someone wins around you – bathe in their glory, honour the aliveness not the death of losing. Jealousy can be the kiss of death. Never compare and despair. Don’t be tempted to destroy your creative outputs and your ideas – put them away – for the drawer can be pulled out another day for review and refreshment. When you take this approach to life, the law of attraction delivers peace.

Facebook suicide, or the un-intentional duvet day, procrastination and separation from human contact are all elements to watch in order to heartily belong to the world of living, not existing, coping or suicidal thinking. Deleting yourself from life, risk, rejection and experimentation is simply a slow death of spiritual energy. So take a deep breath – and savour your life adventure –

or join us for our MONTHLY BREATHE and come back into your body.

http://rebirthyourlife.me/urban-lifeclass-monthly-breathwork/

BAG LADIES

LUCA MARCHETTO : “AT THE URBANLIFE CLASS *ALL ALONE AM I* SEMINAR I HAD ONE OF THE MOST STRONGEST EXPERIENCE I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE “. 

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” WRITING ON A WHITE PAPER BAG THE THINGS INSIDE YOU THAT MAKE YOU FEEL ASHAMED OF YOURSELF AND WEAR IT AS A MASK AND ONE BY ONE INTRODUCING YOURSELF AND YOUR SHAME TO ALL THE OTHER PEOPLE YOU NEVER MET WHILE THEY ARE WEARING THEIR SHAMES TOO.

AMAZING DETOX, AMAZING RELIEF. 

On the other side of the bag we were enticed to write the MOST POSITIVE THOUGHT about ourselves. Taking the bag home we could choose to focus on either side each day. It’s AMAZING how just changing a bag round can CHANGE YOUR DAY!

Then we had a GROUP BREATHWORK SESSION that pushed us into altered states of consciousness, like getting off your FACE but WITHOUT DRUGS!  AMAZING!

NEXT ONE IS NEXT MONTH, SUNDAY AUGUST 31 12noon-8pm in LONDON’S Victoria

( BUT WE MAY NOT DO THE BAG THING )

https://urbanlifeclass.me/the-creative-collective/luca-marchetto8dix/

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After that exercise we Danced OFF with SHAKIRA, it look pretty mental but no more crazy than walking around with all that GUILT of course. It was explained that we subconsciously project all this stuff onto others without knowing it. Often when we communicate, we only tell half the story, hoping others won’t detect our most negative thoughts about ourselves. Rebirthing is not just about the value of detoxing breath work, it’s also about detoxing negative thinking that no one sees, BUT we know is there, and these thoughts take hostage every day. This exercise was the funniest and most healing we have attempted thanks to Catherine Hoffmann one of our CREATIVE COLLECTIVE TEAM.

Catherine Hoffmann : https://urbanlifeclass.me/2014/07/11/breathe-it-in/