Somato Respiratory Integration

Somato Respiratory Integration, usually shortened to SRI and also called Body Breath Integration, is a set of breathing and attention exercises developed alongside NetworkSpinal.

The distinguishing thing about it is that you take part. You are not lying there having something done to you. A practitioner guides you through each position and stays with you through it, and the work is in what you do with your breath and your attention while they do.

What you actually do

There are twelve exercises. Each combines three things: a particular way of breathing, where you rest your hands on your own body, and where you put your attention while you do it. Some include small movements. None of them require you to be fit, flexible, or any particular age.

They are taught one at a time. You are not handed a twelve-part programme on the first day. Most people work with one or two for a while before anything else is introduced.

A session is done lying down, in a quiet room, with a practitioner talking you through it. Early on the guidance is close and constant. As the position becomes familiar it loosens, and more of the session is you working with less prompting.

Where it comes from

SRI was developed alongside NetworkSpinal, by the same practitioner, Donald Epstein, DC. The exercises are organised around a model he set out in a book called The 12 Stages of Healing.

That model is a framework for thinking about how people move through difficulty. It is a way of making sense of experience rather than a clinical instrument, and it is worth knowing that is what it is.

How people use it

Patricia does most of this work. Some people book SRI with her on its own, others have it alongside chiropractic care, and it is sometimes run as a small group rather than one to one. Dr. Todd works with it too, less often.

There is nothing to buy. No app, no equipment, no subscription.

Being straight with you

Slow, deliberate breathing with attention on the body is an old idea that turns up in a great many traditions, and the general finding that it settles people in the short term is reasonably well supported.

What is not established is anything specific to this particular twelve-stage protocol over any other considered breathing practice. There is very little independent research on SRI by name. We would rather tell you that than imply a weight of evidence that is not there.

What we will say is what it involves, which is above, and that people generally find it worth the time. If it does not suit you, it does not suit you, and that is a perfectly ordinary outcome.

If you are dealing with something that needs medical or psychological care, breathing exercises are not a substitute for it, and we will tell you so.