Sunday Morning~It is truly fascinating to consider that our breath, the very basis of all our biological processes, can sustain the consensus reality we learn to accept as tiny infants right through to the very last moment of our lives. But this weekend I'm discovering that the breath can also be the gateway to an even greater reality from which our consciousness emerged and into which it will once again be subsumed.
The workshop began at 8:45 Saturday morning and involved some 70 to 80 participants and a dozen or so facilitators. Each of us brought a sleeping bag or mat, a blanket, a pillow and water. It was to be a long strenuous day.
The room this would take place in had the look of an indoor sleepover like my kids used to have at our local YMCA. Some people were already lying on their mats with their blankets covering them, but most were just sitting with their partners and quietly discussing the day's main work. A number of the participants were new to Holotropic Breathwork, so there was an almost palpable feeling of excited tension in the room.
Shortly after everyone had arrived, Dr. Stanislav Grof, the grand old man of Transpersonal Psychology and Holotropic Breathwork began preparing us for our experience. A slight Slavic accent could be heard in his deep, gentle voice as he began the session with a guided relaxation.
After ten minutes or so and with a final, "Have a good journey", he put the microphone down and music began to rise through four large speakers spaced evenly around the large hotel meeting room.
For the next three hours, the carefully selected playlist of music led us on journeys of incredible depth, power and mystique. The first part of the musical journey included Psychedelic and Goa Trance music, Indian kirtans and primitive tribal drumming. The music was designed to be the carrier wave for our spirit to begin its ascent--and this it did very effectively. The music then gradually transitioned to slightly slower, more evocative and powerfully moving movie soundtracks. After the second hour, the mood changed significantly as ancient Hindu and Tibetan chants and wonderfully lyrical songs allowed us to explore the worlds we had discovered so far on our inner journey .
Most people are deeply affected by music. It is one the most ancient forms of expression and sacred communication. When they first developed Holotropic Breathwork, Stan and Christina Grof made a brilliant move by adding to the breathwork music's inherent energy and ability to facilitate the experiencing of transpersonal dimensions. From my limited point of view, I can't imagine being able to travel towards these fabulous destinations without it, although I know that there are many other methods and disciplines that don't involve music. Still, it was a wonderful adventure to be guided by the music.
T and I decided that I would be the first to breathe. When the music began, then, I began to breathe deeply and quickly as one of our facilitators had shown us. I started out breathing through my nose because I didn't want my throat to dry out quickly and I didn't want to disturb the process by stopping for sips of water. That plan didn't last long, however, as I realized that for me to "pump up the energy", I would have to breath through my mouth.
We had been told that we should breathe like this until the breath began to "breathe us". I didn't understand what this meant until I suddenly realized that my breath was naturally following the pace of the music. When the music increased, my breathing increased and when the music slowed down, so did my breathing.
One thing I was determined to do, however, was to breathe just as hard as I could for as long as I could. I mentioned in my previous post that Dr. Grof had spoken with me about my hypertension right before we began. He did this with about a half dozen others he was concerned with as well. He simply wanted me to know that if I felt like the energy was starting to feel too powerful inside my head, to let the facilitator know and that there were methods to release some of that energy safely. When I got back to my group, I told this to my facilitator, who is in fact an emergency room physician. He looked at me confidently and assured me that he wasn't a bit worried about it. I really appreciated this because this allowed me to feel that I didn't have to artificially throttle down my experience.
So with the assurance that I could go for liftoff, I breathed as hard and as powerfully as I could for at least an hour. Almost immediately, I felt the most intense energy in my hands, which then gradually spread throughout my body. But my hands were the epicenter of the energy. It felt as if they had inflated to about twice their size as they vibrated intensely. They didn't shake. They simply vibrated with energy.
I knew going in that I would have a problem with my ego--the I inside--that always wants to comment on whatever is going on in my life. So as my ego was going through its checklist of things to determine if my experience was reaching the transpersonal (are we there yet? Huh? Are we there yet?) I was literally telling my ego to just shut up for once and let things just happen.
But nevertheless it stayed on alert and would remind myself to be a good boy and not make a scene by being too expressive or by making too many outrageous movements or noises. After all, there were people watching. Not only was T watching me as she was of course supposed to do, but there were the other sitters and facilitators also.
This is another one of those lifelong and somewhat irrational aspects of my existence: the feeling that I'm always being observed. I don't mean this in a paranoid sense, but in the sense that people are just observant beings and if I am visible I am probably being observed by someone. As a shy person, this has always kept me alert as to how I appear to others. So even though I was trying to get beyond those kinds of ego boundaries and fears, they were still there with me and I felt somewhat inhibited to move around much or to make any vocalizations.
With the music blasting away however--it was purposely quite loud--it was almost impossible not to move my body to the rhythm and the beat. So after a short time, I began making a kind of "hooo" shout on each exhalation. And that felt really, really good.
Occasionally, I could hear other shouts in the room, but I wasn't sure if it was a part of the music or from one or more of the other breathers. I would find out later in the afternoon when T was breathing and I was the sitter that there was significant shouting and even some screaming from around the room; none of which came from the music.
As far as the substance of my own internal journey yesterday morning, I will get into this in the third part of my Holotropic Breathwork experience after I've had a few days to let it all sink in.
In about an hour, we will have our final group get-together, after which we will all join Dr. Grof for a final question and answer session before returning to our regular lives and the real world.
(Go to Part 3)