Incarnation, A Breathwork Experience

On Saturday Pat and I journeyed to Lexington, Kentucky, for our third Holotropic Breathwork session with Andreas and Regina. There were eight of us participating. My only intention was to have no intention. Rather I would simply surrender to the process. I was not sure what this surrendering experience would be like, but I noticed that this day I was particularly open to this 3-hour-long breathwork experience. And I was aware that I was choosing to surrender more fully to the process of this modality of breathwork, to letting go and letting the breathwork take me where it would.

When the loud drumming music began, I breathed deeply and quickly, and it felt surprisingly effortless to do this continuously for I know not how long. A long time, though. Did I fall asleep? I do not think so, but the time went by very quickly. Breathing and breathing. Surrendering. Letting go.

Then suddenly it was as if I had been catapulted into outer space — darkness all around. I closed my eyes for a brief moment (we wear eyeshades so it is dark the entire time) and eyes closed was a different sensation of darkness. So I went with eyes open beneath the eyeshades. The darkness was punctured by dots of light, distant stars it seemed, but nothing up close. There in the space of darkness I was dismembered — arms and legs separated from eyes. One eye — that seemed to be mostly where my consciousness was.

Next it was as if I were coming into this incarnation — my dismembered body coming into membership. And when this happened the only place I could feel sensations at first was in my lips and surrounding tissue. I was very aware of this localization of feeling in my lips and concluded that this was appropriate — an infant preparing to attach to his mother’s breast upon being born. Gradually I came fully into my incarnation and began touching my legs, chest, arms, head — honoring my body. Very aware of my body.

Unlike the previous breathwork session when my experience ended after only an hour or so, this time this process lasted up to nearly the full three hours. Afterwards I drew a mandala — a face with huge red lips and much smaller nose and eyes. This was the picture that seemed to best capture my experience — all lips. I took the experience in without having to interpret it further. It felt to be an incarnation experience — coming fully into my body on this Earth.

Another observation was that I felt more connected to this group of breathers and to Andreas and Regina. This actually was the case coming into the breathwork this session, and so the breathwork seemed to build upon this sense of connection — connecting to my body and to the bodies of the others. I am teased about just now learning to hug. But I am encouraged by the mirroring back that I’m getting better at it.