Woody Allen said in one of his movies that he suffered from anhedonia--the inability to enjoy anything in life. In fact, Anhedonia was the original title of his 1977 Oscar Winning movie Annie Hall. By the end of the movie Diane Keaton accuses Allen of not being able to enjoy life enough, and with tongue firmly placed in cheek, he answers that he can't...as long as someone, somewhere is suffering.

This was said in Allen's inimitable persona of the hapless shlemazel. However, Woody is undoubtedly familiar with this particular neurosis. When I heard him say this, I suddenly recognized something of that feeling in myself, although since he hadn't called his movie Anhedonia, I didn't know that there was a even a name for it until fairly recently.

Tor years, it seems, I was so focused on my own self-defined misery that, like Woody, I was never able to feel real joy in the life that was happening around me.

The saddest part of this revelation is that as I watched my two wonderful daughters grow up into womanhood, I rarely experienced the joy that this process can and should bring to a parent.

It is only since they left out home that I have felt the joy that should have been mine when they were here with us. And now that joy is experienced only during those all-too-brief moments when we visit them or when they visit us, because both now live very far from their mother and me.

Yet, my dis-ability to enjoy their presence wasn't because I was too busy. Instead, it was simply that I was so lost in my self-imposed exile from life that I could only give them the most minimal amount of myself before I would dive back into my computer or get lost in the mindless pablum of television.

I'm exposing this about myself now because for the past few days, I've felt something that is wholly unfamiliar to me. Even saying the following words about myself sounds strange and somehow out-of-place.

So here it is. Since my breathwork experience on Saturday morning, I have had the supreme pleasure of experiencing a sense of Peace and Joy in my life; maybe for the very first time.

Even when I type it here, it looks like a bad Christmas card to me. And like a Christmas card it could be taken as being merely trite.

But this is definitely not the case! I've been trying to find just the right way to define how I've felt since last weekend and peace and joy are really the only words that describe it.

This is really all I want to say about the aftereffects of my Holotropic Breathwork session. I don't want to analyze it any further, lest my left brain becomes so obsessed with figuring it out that it shoves aside this glorious feeling.

Instead, now that I've had a few days to "process" the experience, I'll describe a few of the highlights of my adventure.

My wife and children, as well as my six siblings and assorted friends and acquaintances have been curious about what I experienced, since I'd been talking up Dr. Grof and his Holotropic Breathwork technique for a couple of months now.

Therefore, since I returned from Houston, these are the words I've used to summarize my weekend for them: while it may not have been quite magical, this experience was one of the greatest and most joyous of my entire life.

I'm not sure what I mean by saying that it wasn't magical. I guess my idea of a mystical experience is one that would leave no room for doubt. As I mentioned in my previous post, even though my intention was to "go for broke", there were still those lifetime habits and insecurities that I had to overcome to really accomplish this, and I was never quite able to do this last weekend.

Yet instead of feeling bad or disappointed about it, I am encouraged by the feeling that I can go deeper, perhaps much deeper toward the transpersonal states described by Dr. Grof in his books and talks.

Even with those qualifications, however, it was truly a remarkable experience.

To recap a bit from my previous posts, the superb playlist of music was designed to merge with our hyper-oxygenated brains to force a fundamental shift from the normally dominant left brain to the un-rational, intuitive, emotional and egoless right brain.

I have already described how my hands felt; as if electricity was shooting through them and that the energy within them was incredibly intense. It wasn't at all painful, but it was certainly a sensation I've never felt before.

Gradually this feeling lessened in intensity, probably because by now I couldn't help but move different parts of my body to the beat of the music. It was like I was dancing, yet I was lying down. My hips were moving, my arms were pumping and my legs were dancing like Michael Jackson. Okay, I'm sure they weren't moving that well...but it sure felt like it!

The music then changed to a highly-charged tribal sound dominated by drumming. It was here that I first felt as if I had become part of a larger entity of individuals. While I had no visions as such, what seemed to be just out of my sight were hundreds, perhaps thousands of other beings dancing right along with me. I felt as if I could see many, many tiny pinpoints of light that represented these beings, but that was the extent of my visuals here. Still, it was a very powerful, primitive and primal experience that lasted until the next musical transition.

I recall that the next type of music that began playing was a psychedelic trance number with a hard-driving techno beat. This music quickly moved my psychic frame of reference from the primitive to the modern.

The beings dancing along with me had changed in my perception. Now, instead of a primitive tribal setting, we were all part of the modern day tribal event known as a rave concert. So even though I've never attended one, there seemed to be no doubt in my mind that this was what they were like--and I enjoyed every minute of it.

At a point some time later, the frenetic pace of the trance music slowed into something else and I just enjoyed my own body movements as I now grooved to an entirely new sound and rhythm.

For some reason, I felt that perhaps this music signaled the end of the "liftoff" phase of my breathwork experience, and after a few minutes, I opened my eyes and asked T if it was okay to start intensifying my breathing again. She smiled and said that I could do whatever I wanted to do. This was my experience.

I don't know why I felt the need to ask this question. I guess it seemed to me that what I'd felt thus far been like a wonderful massage where, when the therapist is finished, that's it. I almost felt like it would be cheating if I were to enjoy yet another journey.

Oh well...just more of my neurotic inhibitions.

So with T's go-ahead, I started working even harder with my breath. By this time, I didn't have the need to vocalize, but I could feel how much more powerful my breath was. It was at this point that I said to myself that I've spent a lot of money for the airline ticket, for the workshop and for the hotel, SO DON'T FUCKING WASTE IT!

Well, I may or may not have actually said 'fucking', but that was how determined I was. I'm extremely happy that I decided to go even further, because this point marked the beginning of the most fascinating and ethereal phase of my journey.

The sounds coming from the speakers had plateaued in intensity, and were now transitioning to a much fuller, much richer musical tapestry. I believe that this was where the music being heard was from movie soundtracks, but I'm glad I didn't recognize any of it as this might have gotten me started wondering where I'd heard the music before.

Suddenly within the music I began to notice the rich full sounds of an organ, and as I listened to its magnificent range and power, the instrument sounded more and more like a giant pipe organ like those found in great cathedrals--and that my breathing was intimately connected to the volume of air going through the large array of pipes producing the powerful sounds.

Soon, I was compressing and squeezing my entire body as the organ "inhaled" and I relaxed as it "exhaled". It was a very powerful and oddly pleasant experience considering the strength of my muscle contractions. I remember briefly thinking that perhaps I could compress all my neuroses and fears into a tiny wad, then exhale it with my outbreath.

But almost immediately it became much more primal for me. I suddenly felt as if my bodily compressions were the contractions of a womb and I was fighting to get out. I don't think I would call this a true rebirth experience because there wasn't any real pain, panic or terror associated with it as I would expect from such an experience. As I consider this further, maybe this was just a place my expectations had prepared to visit because of all the books I'd read by Dr. Grof.

Besides, my journey was continued to be guided by the unseen hands of the musical choreographer, a holotropic DJ, if you will, and soon the organ's passion and powerful resonant tones eased and slowed into an incredibly peaceful rhythm.

Here, for the first time in my life, I felt that I was experiencing true bliss; the kind spoken of by mystics and ecstatics since time began.

In this ineffable state, I had no more body. Instead, I was floating in a warm, luxuriant pressureless void. My mind had finally quieted its incessant chatter and all I knew was a sublime peace.

With the lightest of breath now, I just basked in this place, I began to think of my mother; the woman who had given birth to me as well as my six brothers and sisters and who'd also had five miscarriages. This was a woman who wanted nothing more when she was young than to become a nun and dedicate her life to God. Her God certainly had different plans for my mother!

Then my father came into my consciousness. My father was a man whose lifelong problems with depression and ADD (even before anyone knew to call it that) kept him somewhat distant from his children, his wife and his life. Yet we loved him very much. He was gentle, very artistic and sang beautifully. When he was puttering around the house or working on something, the house would be full of his baritone crooning that sounded very much like Bing Crosby; his own musical idol.

I keep going off on these tangents, but this is only to illustrate that I thought about my parents and their inability to understand each other for the entire 37 years of their marriage because of their extremely disparate temperaments.

In the 70's, when it suddenly became okay for a woman to want more than the narrowly-defined world that had limited them for untold generations, my mother began to expand her horizons. This was happening at the same time my father's health was failing due complications from Type 1 Diabetes. First his eyesight failed then his foot became infected and later amputated and finally his kidneys failed. This would soon give way to his death.

My mother divorced my father near the beginning of his slide, which sounds callous and cruel; and I guess in a sense it was. But somehow, we who were their children never felt that way. We knew what mom had put off in her life for him...and for us. We didn't begrudge her need to discover a world she'd only been able to dream about.

Even more poignant and sad that these facts is that after my mother left him, my father only wanted to go home to live with his own aging mother so that she would once again be able to take care of him as he became more physically and emotionally disabled.

And this my grandmother did; even thought she had always seemed short of true affection for anyone--except my father. She did her duty as a mother and took care of him as he struggled more and more with physical problems and slid deeper into depression.

These were the things I knew about my parents as I floated in this oceanic dreamland. As I was thinking about them, I felt tears fall from my eyes even though it didn't feel like I was making them.

T gently wiped each of my eyes and somehow this small act of what felt like love brought more tears. I thought about how wonderful this experience was and only wished that each of my parents could have had just a few moments of this kind of joy in their lives; such was the bliss I was feeling.

Soon this sadness extended outward towards all people in the world who are suffering due to circumstances they had never chosen or for which they didn't deserve. The tears continued to fall slowly on either side of my face. And each time, T would ever-so-softly wipe them away.

It's strange to say that even while I was feeling this bliss, I was also feeling sorrow, but it is true. It was as if the dualities of sorrow and joy, good and bad, body and spirit that are so much a part of our lives came together in my experience and I was feeling them all simultaneously.

Then just as quickly as it came, my sorrow faded and I was left without any thoughts at all in a wonderful oceanic bliss state.

I'm not sure how long this lasted, but at some point, I felt the slightest sensation of my shirt collar against my neck. I thought to myself that this probably did signal the end of a marvelous experience for me.

And that was the case, for ever so slowly, my body began to return to my consciousness--or perhaps my consciousness was simply returning to my body. It doesn't matter which. The experience just was.

Probably a half hour later, I felt that I had returned enough to my body that it was time for the next part of the experience; that was to create a mandala symbolizing my wordless interpretation of it.

While slowly getting to my feet, I experienced the lightheadedness and lack of stability that demonstrated the need for assistance at that point. So T took my arm and helped me as I walked a bit drunkenly to another room in the hotel that had been set aside for our smaller group of twelve.

Inside this room were a number of tables with pieces of paper in which big circles had been drawn. In the center of each table were crayons, water paints, colored pens and colored chalk. The purpose, again, was simply to create a symbolic representation of what the experience was for us "artists".

Sadly, this was one talent I did not inherit from my father and I felt some anxiety to think that I would have to do at least a halfway decent drawing of this experience using my very limited artistic skills. Still, I plodded along making clumsy images, but at least they very abstractly represented the highlights of my journey.

As I mentioned earlier, I had breathed first in the morning, so after lunch it was T's turn.

I also said that T is not a new to this by any means. She has had a number of Holotropic Breathwork sessions and many Rebirthing experiences; which is a similar breathing technique, but with little or no reliance on music to help guide the experience.

At this point, I want to make just a few comments about T's experience, and I hope that if she does read this, she will forgive me for this public description of her very personal experience.

First, let me say that being the sitter for the afternoon session was truly fascinating. For my own breathwork session, I had heard some occasional shouting, but thought that it might have come from the music itself. To witness the intensity of many breathers' sessions, however, was a true revelation.

As T began her own breathing, it was was very light. I thought to myself that she can't possibly get anywhere breathing like that. Yet, as the hours progressed, her breathing never seemed to get to a level even of a person walking fast!

Then at one point she had to go to the restroom, and when she stood up, it became obvious that she had already scaled some awesome heights on her own journey.

Imagine, if you will, the woman who has had way to much too drink at a bar, and who then decides to walk to the restroom on her own, but needs help to get there. T and I looked something like that as we walked with my arm around her making sure she didn't fall. When she finally said something to me as I let her walk on her own into the restroom , it was soft and far away sounding--which I realized was from where she was speaking.

It was quite a wonderful gift for me as the sitter to watch T as she went through this experience. While others all around me were flailing away and making all sorts of sounds and vocalizations, T continued her quiet journey with a look of such beatific beauty that I couldn't help but tear up a bit. My witnessing of her journey was an amazing privilege as well as a gift I had never anticipated.

Before long, this remarkable and strenuous day of breathwork was over. T and I went into the small group room where she then created her own mandala.

There was a break for supper after which we would all to meet with our respective smaller groups where we would share our experiences with the others.

That evening, our group got together to do just this. One person declined to talk about hers because it was apparently still too powerful and she wanted to process it further on her own. This was perfectly okay within the group as it had been defined for us. The facilitators would speak to her privately just so they could assess whether some further assistance was needed from them to help her through her ongoing process.

All the others discussed as much as they cared to with the group. The idea was that we would relate our experience and that there would be no critiques or confrontations. This wasn't to be an encounter session. When we had all shared our stories, we all felt very close to each other. It had been an eventful day filled with tremendous group energy and a wonderful sense of community and purpose.

One of the things that was emphasized at this meeting and also the next morning was that the immediate psychological effects of the Holotropic Breathwork session could last for days or even longer. The long-term effects, of course, are desirable and would hopefully last much longer. But many of us were operating in the relatively unfamiliar world of right-brain dominance. As such we were told that certain activities should be avoided for a couple of days; things like driving, if possible, and if not possible, to at least keep the radio off.

We were also warned about not making any significant purchases or decisions for a time, because the left brain logic that is so important in this modern world might not be available and that we could do things or make purchases that we might later greatly regret.

Here's my example of this effect.

Sunday evening, I was about to land at Chicago's O'Hare Airport after being delayed for a couple hours in Houston because of bad weather that had gone through Chicago earlier. It was after dark when we finally descended into Chicago. During the descent, just to the west of the jetliner was a wall of massive thunderclouds and within those clouds a magnificent light show was taking place. Yet below us it was perfectly clear.

I became literally transfixed by the beauty of the display and realized then that this natural phenomenon was most likely enhanced by the lingering state of bliss I was still experiencing.

Later--and literally moments--after I got into my car for the one hour drive home , the clouds opened up with an intensity that I hadn't seen for a very long time. So now I was experiencing not only the normally dreaded task of driving home on the Illinois Tollway at night, a highway which was under massive construction limiting the number of available driving lanes, but my visibility with the torrential downpour was very limited.

Oddly enough with these conditions, the drive itself was not a problem. In fact it was a sheer pleasure. It is only when I look back at this episode now that I realize how much my right brain was still coloring my perceptions.

I am very glad that I didn't even feel like putting on the radio. This story might have had a much different ending if I'd connected to some especially evocative piece of music and drifted off into a state of bliss again.

[Addendum: While I was enjoying the comfort of a Houston hotel for the workshop weekend, the weather outside was in the upper 90's: not an unusual temperature for late spring in Texas. However, the Midwest that weekend experienced some of the most intense rains and widespread flooding in history. As I was enjoying the light show during landing, I had no idea that this was just the latest thunderstorm to hit the Midwest in what would become known as The Great Flood of '08. Like other Wisconsin cities and towns, my hometown experienced extensive flooding that saw one city park under four feet of water for days. In the resort town of Wisconsin Dells, Lake Delton actually emptied when the dam that held back that part of the Wisconsin River collapsed completely.]

* * * * * * * * * * *

I've waited a few days to finish this narrative because of the power of this remarkable experience. It isn't one that can or should be analyzed quickly. Perhaps it shouldn't be analyzed at all.

Dr. Grof went over a few of the physiological effects that science can measure about Holotropic Breathwork, but it is the subtler effects that are of most interest here. They are defined by the additional psychic matrices that Dr. Grof discovered and gave to psychology and to mankind.

Going far beyond Freud's Victorian-era interpretation of psychological trauma arising from the psychosexual realms of our postnatal lives, he expanded even Carl Jung's revolutionary ideas of psychological archetypes and the concept of collective unconscious.

When he and others were discovering the strange unrecognized vistas of the human psyche with the administration of LSD in the 50's and 60's, the old map of the human mind simply didn't fit the new landscape.

For the first time in human history, states of consciousness formerly allowed to the very few could now be experienced by those who wanted to spend some time "going out of their minds to come to their senses".

It was Stan along with his partner Christina Grof who after LSD and other psychedelics were outlawed around the world, made the then-necessary leap from using these substances for accessing non-ordinary states to using breathwork to accomplish the same thing. This method, while not revolutionary since they have been used for hundreds perhaps thousands of years in Asia, was new to the West and especially to Western science and psychology.

Fast forward nearly forty years and well over 35,000 people around the world have experienced altered states of consciousness using Holotropic Breathwork. In addition, over 1000 facilitators have been trained by the Grof's and their Holotropic Breathwork organization.

While there are numerous methods and disciplines for enhancing consciousness and discovering the amazing realities just behind the shadows of our "normal" reality, I feel fortunate to have discovered this one so early in my journey. I plan to have other Holotropic Breathwork experiences as I strive to go deeper into my subconscious and hope to truly break through to the transpersonal.

There are so many important questions I want and need the answers to about the adventure of my life, and as I learn more about the possible discoveries that can be made using this amazingly simple technique, I want to see if I can find these answers and thereby devote greater concentration and focus on becoming the kind of person who will add to the positive energies of compassion and love so despererately needed in our world today.