To: K-list
Recieved: 1999/09/15 16:00
Subject: Re: [K-list] Drugs vs. Breath?? Holotropic!
From: Broomstick Broomhilda
On 1999/09/15 16:00, Broomstick Broomhilda posted thus to the K-list:
Hello,
I found this while searching for info on the holotropic methods. Funny, a
number of pages at different sites where "mysertiously" taken down!! Read
on and you'll see why.
This method is described in detail in the book I mentioned earlier, Stoned
Free, and gives details on how to do it at home if you want. I can scan
the pages for anyone that wants to give this a try. I'm going to!
Below is part of a page on this holotropic work but I had to cut the rest
of it off as it was too long. Here is the page for it.
http://www.primalspirit.com/breathwork_section.htm
Broomhilda
Holotropic Breathwork
And the Politics of Consciousness Revolution
Mickel Adzema
PART 1: THE POLITICS OF PSYCHOLOGY
A Holotropic Experience
She begins to panic. The music has just begun and its driving intensity of
primitive-sounding drums brings a rush of anxiety. She wants to get up and
run out of the room and away from all these people . . . to just forget all
about this insane idea of a new-age growth technique. But then she
remembers what was said during the preparation period; the facilitator
remarking that all kinds of feelings can come up and can cause one to think
that one should be doing something in the present about them . . . but that
in fact one has merely to stay with the feelings . . . that the way out of
them is to let oneself go deeply into them.
So she stays. In a shorter time than she could ever have imagined, she has
been carried beyond the crisis and is feeling safe again. She renews her
focus on the breathing, trying to increase its rate and depth the way she
was instructed.
After a period of time, she finds herself looking at scenes from her recent
past. Without even realizing it, she finds herself weeping as she thinks
about her former situation with the husband she is in the process of
divorcing. She feels a sad and stifling heaviness about those thirty years
and her attachment to him. Alternately, it is scenes of her schizophrenic
son that fill up her mind's eye; tears stream down her cheeks as she feels
that same heaviness about her attachment to him.
Sorrow overwhelms her as she thinks about the way her existence seems to
have been diffused into all the others around her—even, the scene is played
before her, into her dear and now deceased daughter—leaving nothing for
her. She feels that the major theme in her entire life experience has been
heaviness . . . attachment, heaviness, and sadness.
This goes on for some time, with different scenes taking their turns in her
mind. Visions of her mother and scenes from her early childhood make their
way before her. Throughout them all, there is the thread of heaviness, the
theme of darkness and dissolution. There she is, standing and watching as
her mother leaves her to make a living in the big city, having arranged for
her to be left in the care of her grandmother. She feels a part of her left
with her mother that day. She remembers her father's sudden death; and
then, with sobs, remembers some of those good times with him on their
sailing adventures. She feels that part of her also had died and been taken
away.
And through it all there is the music—now driving, now carrying her along .
. . providing a peg-rack to hang every memory . . . seeming to fit exactly
every nuance of feeling.
At some point further along, however, she feels herself climbing up a dark
hill. She reaches its crest eventually, and, suddenly, it is all different.
She feels that a huge weight has been lifted from her. Before her mind's
eye there looms an enormous and fantastic sun, surrounded by rainbows. The
effect is simply exhilarating.
But this also changes after a while. Now she finds herself floating in
space, floating free in the universe. To her immense delight she flashes on
the realization that she is ONE, that she is no longer attached! She
realizes with joy that she is no longer diffused into those heavy
experiences; no longer lost in those heavy relationships. She feels free,
strong and singular, for the first time in her life.
The music seems to reflect these changes also. Now it is distinctively
uplifting; its pulsing and solitary tones seem to wash through her, then to
suspend and rock her in that vastness of empty and uncluttered space. The
knowledge that she is one and not many remains with her, deepening in her
consciousness. She feels radiant and blissful; a Buddha-like child-smile
models her face for a long time, even after the music has stopped and
people around her are beginning to get up and make their way into the other
room where drawing materials await.
Later, when she also draws her experience in a "mandala" circle outlined on
a large sheet of paper, she colors in a bright white dove-like figure with
wings outstretched rising up, as it seems, with the half below it in
darkness, the half above it all in light. And only later again, after
sharing her picture with the group and talking about its meaning for her,
does she recall that she was a Caesarian birth . . . and that the same
pattern of being lifted from the darkness and pain of the womb into the
light of the world had been re-enacted in several other significant
incidents in her life.
When it is all over she is truly in awe and reverence for the whole process
of life. And she feels deeply connected to these other wonderful dozen-odd
workshop participants who have, it seems, been magically put there to share
this aspect of life's mystery with her. *
The preceding account is from an actual experience of a woman in her
mid-50s who participated in a weekend holotropic breathwork workshop in the
Bay Area. Although this one experience by a self-described "recovering
co-dependant" cannot reflect the diversity of experiences that were had by
the dozen people in that workshop, it contains some elements that are
typical. Of significance is the pattern of encountering and feeling through
layers of unpleasant feelings and memories before coming to rest in
underlying positive feelings of a more benign and pleasant, indeed blissful
and uplifting, nature. It is usual for participants to report that they are
left with feelings of openness, warmth, and connectedness to the world of
humans and nature; with a sense of forgiveness for oneself and others; with
renewed motivation for service to others and for seeking peaceful solutions
to conflicts in one's life; with keen appreciation for life and for the
living; and very often with feelings of connection also with a positive
spiritual force or higher power that represents such qualities.
I will return to the political implications of this pattern later.
Presently, I wish to point out that this method is at one and the same time
a method of psychological growth, a means of spiritual and philosophical
quest, and a highly effective technique for healing neurotic, as well as to
some extent psychotic, psychopathology. And it is the latter mode
especially—its "psychiatric" use—that has potentially revolutionary
political implications.
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