Prompted by a friend of a friend running a practice session, I finally gave breathwork a whirl. The idea of trying it had been hovering on my periphery for more than a year, but it really had just hovered there. I’d added my name to an email list, vaguely followed some people on Instagram, heard about how Bali is full of people teaching with little idea about what they are doing, heard some people found it life-changing…
So I went along to this session with three others without doing any reading about it. We followed the Wim Hof method, a seemingly gentle version, sans ice bath. (Wim Hof is a Dutch extreme athlete who has broken all kinds of records: climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts, running a half marathon above the Arctic Circle barefoot, and standing in a container while covered with ice cubes for nearly two hours, all attributed to the power of breathwork.) We did a few rounds, and for me, it was relaxing, clarifying and interesting.
It was enough to make me get back in touch with the breathwork teacher I had heard about, and to attend her similarly small session, set in a pretty open-air bale so we could breath while the sun set around us, a few days later. When I told her my experience a few days earlier, she nodded and said that yes, that was quite a strong approach, Wim Hof, ours would be mild in comparison. Then we did a few ice-breaking exercises, settled down onto our mats, and she said we would then breath through music for… one hour and seven minutes, inhaling in fully, exhaling about 70%. That was it. She turned the music on, and we were off, with her voice guiding us seemingly in and out of awareness.
I felt that it was going to be impossible, that I was going to faint, that I was going to vomit. I didn’t know how it was going to be possible to just keep breathing consciously for that long. But I just kept going (I’m not running, I thought, so this really can’t be that hard…). I broke out in a complete heavy all-over sweat. I felt like I was flying, then zipping from planet to planet (I knoooow), I felt like someone was pressing me to the earth by my hips and that was the only thing keeping me here. I saw bright (blue, sparkly) lights. I could barely stand up to put my bolster away afterwards. I had to lie in the grass for 10 minutes before leaving, and even then had no idea where the hell the exit to the compound was.
Then, later, I felt a sense of clarity, I felt connected to everything, I felt clear-headed, I felt purposeful. (I went and signed up for a yin yoga teacher training. I knooooow.)
What if monks are just sitting around all day getting high by breathing?
I finally picked up James Nestor’s Breath, which has been on my bedside table for several months, and read it (I highly recommend it to everyone.) Based on it, I thought what we had done must have been holotropic breathing. Nestor wasn’t so keen on it—he observed that the two people in his large group behaving very strangely were breathing normally, and hypothesised that they were just using it as an excuse to be weird. Could easily see how that could happen, let’s just say.
Nestor’s Breath reminded me of how much humans know or have known, and how easy it is for us to forget ancient practices, more recent practices and significant scientific research, both old and newish. It also reminded me of how much we don’t know. How our bodies, and consciousness, remain such mysteries. (In this sense, it echoed Kate Cole-Adam’s amazing Anaesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion, which you also must read—review here, use an incognito window if the page won’t open.)
One of the best things about practising Bikram (or Ashtanga) is it’s always the same, so it’s a great benchmark to measure any changes in your life. The next two classes I did were like practising again for the first time. My internal thermostat was completely different, lowered by degrees, I broke out into an all-over sweat immediately and was nauseous (like the breathwork session itself); this felt like some fundamental shift. I’ve had an injured knee for a while, and that had been the primary focus and frustration prior to the session, but afterwards, it was way down the list. The challenge manifested physically but was mental, and pushed the realm of the physical into the superfluous. It was a reminder that the real magic is always happening in the mind.
I went back a week later for a second session. I was tired and not really in the mood, but like yoga, I thought maybe being tired meant it would be better for me. When I asked what we were actually doing, the teacher said it wasn’t true holotropic breathing, which goes typically for two or three hours, reaching a peak a couple of times. She didn’t really like to give her style a name, but gave me her lineage of teachers. Bit like yoga, I guess. She asked my experience, and I said I had been there the week before, relieved she didn’t remember me, because who knows what had happened. “Oh!” she said. “Oh yes, you were the one who sweated a whole lot!”
The second session was the same functionally, but very different visually. I sweated again, just not quite as much. I had to lie on the grass afterward, but found my way out in one go this time. Again, I felt relaxed, connected, clarified.
We look around to various external things like exercise, shopping, food, sex, alcohol and other drugs, whatever, don’t we? But it seems, perhaps, that some of the best adventures, the most extreme frontiers, lie right here, within us.
Reading/watching
You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz. I really didn’t like this. I was half-way through when, coincidentally, I started watching The Undoing (Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant). Took me 10 minutes to realise it was based on the book! Some odd changes between the two versions, but enjoyed the TV version more, unusually.
Book group book, Patti Smith’s Year of the Monkey. Review here.
“The Social Life of Forests”. Suzanne Simard was the inspiration for a character in The Overstory (which I have just started).
“Trees perceive lots of things,” Simard said. “So why not us, too?”
Watch out, I might write more of these letters. You should probably do more of whatever you like to do, too.
Sign up for Austin’s newsletter because his links are always great. This one is good, too—nouns and verbs.
Listening
I haven’t listened yet because I struggle to listen to my own voice (you wouldn’t know it if you’ve been in one of my yoga classes), but I’m in this ABC Earshot podcast.