Hey there Reader!

Tears.

Dancing.

Convulsions.

Uncontrollable laughter.

I witnessed all of these this past Saturday at the holotropic breathwork workshop.

I started writing this trip report and quickly realized that an email wouldn't be sufficient to cover everything I experienced.

So I'll just give you some of the highlights from my experience now.

In the next issue you'll get a link to a longer article that I'm in the process of writing.

First, some context.

Holotropic breathwork is done in pairs.

You get partnered up with someone and one person 'sits' (similar to the concept of 'trip sitting' when psychedelics are involved) while the other breathes.

In the morning session, I sat for my partner (who was a guy I had just met by the way).

He had quite the emotional experience during the 3 hour session.

Although he was wearing an eye mask, I could see the emotion on his face and at times tears trickling down his cheeks.

What's interesting is the effect that this had on me.

I don't consider myself a very emotional person.

So I can't say for sure what it was.

Perhaps the evocative music that plays during holotropic breathing sessions.

Or perhaps it was the energy in the room.

But I almost felt myself overcome with emotion and on the verge of tears.

I wasn't the only sitter during the morning session effected by their partner's breathing either.

I looked around the room (which was an open hall with the 12 participants laid out on mats while their sitters watched over them) and saw many instances of sitters having emotional experiences.

One noteworthy one was a guy that broke down in tears then suddenly started doing Tai-Chi-esque movements.

There's a lot more I can say about my experience sitting, but I'll leave that for the longer article...

So now I'll quickly recount my experience.

After witnessing the experience of my partner and the others breathing in the morning, I was feeling slightly nervous.

I came in that day without any real intentions or expectations.

Just openness and curiosity.

Ready to accept whatever came up.

When I began breathing, I started to think to myself, "Can I really breathe like this for 3 hours".

For additional context, you're not really given that much instruction on how you should breathe.

Only that it should be deeper, slightly faster than normal, and ideally without much pause between inhalation and exhalation.

My thoughts questioning my ability to breathe for the duration of the session quickly dissipated.

I started to feel my body becoming numb.

The tingling feeling started at the extremities.

Throughout my fingers and toes.

But it quickly spread throughout my body.

I was soon overcome by a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

It was definitely an altered state of consciousness unlike anything I had experienced before.

And what's interesting is that I felt that through my breathing...

I could control the intensity of the experience.

I attempted to go deeper after the laughing stage and was conscious that I was making some loud grunting noises.

But I somehow felt some resistance or inability to go deeper.

I've been pondering why that is and have a theory as to why.

But this email is getting a bit long so I'll leave that for the article as well.

After this stage of laughing and struggling to penetrate deeper into the experience, I felt like I entered some sort of sleep/dreamlike state.

The facilitators had mentioned something about a type of 'yogic sleep' between the waking and sleeping state that breathers often experience.

So I'm thinking that may be what happened to me.

In any case, I was surprised at how quickly the 3 hours had passed when the music stopped.

I'll leave it there for this email.

But the last thing I'll mention is that before leaving in the afternoon (the workshop started at around 9 and was done at around 7) the group gathered around and everyone shared some highlights from their experience.

Interestingly, a lot of what others said really resonated with me.

I'll get into that too in the article.

This has probably been one of my longest emails, yet I only scratched the surface of what the experience entailed.

So look out for the next issue where I'll share the longer article with you.

That's all for now.

Until next time!

Riaz

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