What do you get when you combine a cacao ceremony, hypoxia-inducing breathwork, a bunch of influences from pretty disparate spiritual cultures, partner yoga with intrusive eye gazing, and really loud music?
All that culturally appropriated jazz.
All that culturally appropriated jazz.
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
- Macbeth in Macbeth by William Shakespeare, circa 1606
I'm lying in the middle of a nag champa-centred earthquake. There is music playing, first a Sanskrit mantra on repeat, then Tibetan throat singing overlaid by what sounds like a woman chanting in Buddhist mantras. The music is playing at such a high volume that the floor vibrates. An enormous Chinese gong suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the room is being hit intermittently by one of the two facilitators of this retreat. It is so deeply resonant that it sends shockwaves through my brain.
The second facilitator walks around the room shaking an Aboriginal rainmaker instrument over the tops of the 30-odd participants' heads. I'm lying on the floor and my eyes are closed. I can't imagine adding yet another sensory input to the auditory and physical overload I'm currently experiencing.
But there's more. The main instructor is repeating his initial verbiage over and over again. He's encouraging us to, "trust the process, push past the mind. You didn't come here just to lie down! Allow the healing cycle to complete. Find the truth!"
Around me are the sounds of people in multiple forms of distress. Some are openly weeping. Quite a few are breathing in and out, really hard, long after I have stopped following the breathwork instructions given to us at the beginning of the retreat. I open my eyes to get a peek of the room. The woman next to me is shaking her legs about frantically, which, to be honest, I also feel like doing, but free movement was not in included in the instructions and I'm trying to have as authentic an experience as I can by following these instructions.
The second facilitator walks around the room shaking an Aboriginal rainmaker instrument over the tops of the 30-odd participants' heads. I'm lying on the floor and my eyes are closed. I can't imagine adding yet another sensory input to the auditory and physical overload I'm currently experiencing.
But there's more. The main instructor is repeating his initial verbiage over and over again. He's encouraging us to, "trust the process, push past the mind. You didn't come here just to lie down! Allow the healing cycle to complete. Find the truth!"
Around me are the sounds of people in multiple forms of distress. Some are openly weeping. Quite a few are breathing in and out, really hard, long after I have stopped following the breathwork instructions given to us at the beginning of the retreat. I open my eyes to get a peek of the room. The woman next to me is shaking her legs about frantically, which, to be honest, I also feel like doing, but free movement was not in included in the instructions and I'm trying to have as authentic an experience as I can by following these instructions.
The Modern Spiritual Experience?
When Shakespeare wrote those words all those years ago, maybe he was prophetically describing the modern spiritual experience. A mishmash of intense breathwork marketed as healing, blatant cultural misappropriation, intrusive eye gazing, a shit tonne of feathers and crystals, and vegan cacao so strong that its stimulant effect is openly applauded, said the instructor I was talking about before. "You won't get high like mushrooms, but you'll feel a buzz!"
Feeling stuff. It's what we're going for here, right?
There's a desperate fury to this cacophony of sound and sensation. Such an effort to create the kind of experience where we feel enriched by something unique, such effort to feel "spiritual" or to feel anything at all. Forty minutes ago when this cacophony started, we were given instructions on a form of breathwork I had heard about but never practiced formally called transformational breathwork.
The pitch is this: Transformational breathwork has the power to heal deep-seated conditioning and trauma. It is a form of rebirth. Sounds good, if not a bit over-promising.
Ten minutes into following the instructions, my fingers and wrists were hyper-flexed. My legs were cramping up, I felt light-headed despite lying still on the floor. Despite the very active breathing, my chest was beginning to tighten in the same way it does when I'm getting close to having an asthma attack, and I'm not getting enough oxygen. I recognise all of these signs from one other incident in my life: the time that I had a severe panic attack.
I realised pretty quickly that this time, rather than involuntarily hyperventilating, I was purposely inducing hypoxia through this poorly supervised breath work. I did push on a little bit past my comfort zone as the facilitator vehemently recommended, but I strongly felt it wasn't in my best interest to continue. A panic attack or an asthma attack would probably ensue. So without fear or panic, I gently returned to a form of gentle, slow and deep pranayama that I learnt years before from my teachers and soon enough my hands unclenched and the symptoms of hypoxia subsided.
But apparently, by interrupting the cycle of healing, I was "running away" from doing my deep inner work.
I've taught yoga for 15 years and luckily I did have the tools I needed to bring my nervous system back to a more regulated and relaxed state, despite the ridiculous things that were being said about this kind of work. However, someone else with a history of panic attacks, anxiety disorders or any number of high-risk health issues may not have been so lucky.
Transformational breathwork or rebirth breathwork, as it was also pitched, are really, I think, just wellness guru takes on Holotropic Breathwork. The instructions were to breathe in actively and let the exhalation happen normally. The brief demonstration struck me as fast and hard breathing, similar to bastrika or bellows breathing in yogic pranayama. I've never done that kind of breathing for more than a minute or two. And here we were, being told to do it for well over an hour.
Feeling stuff. It's what we're going for here, right?
There's a desperate fury to this cacophony of sound and sensation. Such an effort to create the kind of experience where we feel enriched by something unique, such effort to feel "spiritual" or to feel anything at all. Forty minutes ago when this cacophony started, we were given instructions on a form of breathwork I had heard about but never practiced formally called transformational breathwork.
The pitch is this: Transformational breathwork has the power to heal deep-seated conditioning and trauma. It is a form of rebirth. Sounds good, if not a bit over-promising.
Ten minutes into following the instructions, my fingers and wrists were hyper-flexed. My legs were cramping up, I felt light-headed despite lying still on the floor. Despite the very active breathing, my chest was beginning to tighten in the same way it does when I'm getting close to having an asthma attack, and I'm not getting enough oxygen. I recognise all of these signs from one other incident in my life: the time that I had a severe panic attack.
I realised pretty quickly that this time, rather than involuntarily hyperventilating, I was purposely inducing hypoxia through this poorly supervised breath work. I did push on a little bit past my comfort zone as the facilitator vehemently recommended, but I strongly felt it wasn't in my best interest to continue. A panic attack or an asthma attack would probably ensue. So without fear or panic, I gently returned to a form of gentle, slow and deep pranayama that I learnt years before from my teachers and soon enough my hands unclenched and the symptoms of hypoxia subsided.
But apparently, by interrupting the cycle of healing, I was "running away" from doing my deep inner work.
I've taught yoga for 15 years and luckily I did have the tools I needed to bring my nervous system back to a more regulated and relaxed state, despite the ridiculous things that were being said about this kind of work. However, someone else with a history of panic attacks, anxiety disorders or any number of high-risk health issues may not have been so lucky.
Transformational breathwork or rebirth breathwork, as it was also pitched, are really, I think, just wellness guru takes on Holotropic Breathwork. The instructions were to breathe in actively and let the exhalation happen normally. The brief demonstration struck me as fast and hard breathing, similar to bastrika or bellows breathing in yogic pranayama. I've never done that kind of breathing for more than a minute or two. And here we were, being told to do it for well over an hour.
A Not-So-Rejuvenating Retreat
Let me backtrack and just add another layer of context to this story. It was I think maybe October of 2021 and it was my last day of work as a veterinarian. A few days earlier I had woken in the morning with crystal clear clarity that it was time to leave that field of work. Ten months earlier the official ending of my marriage and a need to figure out how to pay my ex out for the property had coincided with a serendipitous offer to go back to working as a vet and I said yes to the opportunity. I needed the money. Self-employment as a nutritionist, yoga teacher and occasional freelance writer is unpredictable at best.
Given the amplified chaos around me and suddenly finding myself as a single mum of two small children, for the first time in my life I really craved having a stable income, a security blanket. I worked as a vet for the next eight months or so in any spare time I had, which pretty much squeezed out my yoga classes that I was teaching and I also had to drop most of my nutrition counseling clients. By the end of it, I was exhausted and I knew it had to go. I knew I had to go back to doing the things that my heart called out for.
As a parting gift, one of the lovely vet nurses offered me her ticket to what was marketed as a rejuvenating retreat. Although her friends had booked for her and she didn't have many details beyond that, she couldn't attend because she was working on the day. I graciously accepted. I need this, I thought. Years of having taught classes and retreats for others and I was struggling to remember the last time I actually attended one. I was really looking forward to a day of rejuvenation, relaxation and being a student of yoga again instead of a teacher. I didn't know anyone else who was going and that anonymity felt like a cozy cloak. I could just be me.
Fast forward to the day of the retreat. I'm walking into the room and the first thing I notice when I do walk in to the retreat is the huge setup of instruments in the middle of the room. surrounded by crystals. I can smell palo santo and incense so strong that it's slightly aggravating to my newly asthmatic lungs. I developed asthma again early last year after nearly 30 years without it. A combination of dust mite allergy, mould sensitivity from the unusually wet weather we had had for the whole year and grief from the breakdown of my marriage.
Given the amplified chaos around me and suddenly finding myself as a single mum of two small children, for the first time in my life I really craved having a stable income, a security blanket. I worked as a vet for the next eight months or so in any spare time I had, which pretty much squeezed out my yoga classes that I was teaching and I also had to drop most of my nutrition counseling clients. By the end of it, I was exhausted and I knew it had to go. I knew I had to go back to doing the things that my heart called out for.
As a parting gift, one of the lovely vet nurses offered me her ticket to what was marketed as a rejuvenating retreat. Although her friends had booked for her and she didn't have many details beyond that, she couldn't attend because she was working on the day. I graciously accepted. I need this, I thought. Years of having taught classes and retreats for others and I was struggling to remember the last time I actually attended one. I was really looking forward to a day of rejuvenation, relaxation and being a student of yoga again instead of a teacher. I didn't know anyone else who was going and that anonymity felt like a cozy cloak. I could just be me.
Fast forward to the day of the retreat. I'm walking into the room and the first thing I notice when I do walk in to the retreat is the huge setup of instruments in the middle of the room. surrounded by crystals. I can smell palo santo and incense so strong that it's slightly aggravating to my newly asthmatic lungs. I developed asthma again early last year after nearly 30 years without it. A combination of dust mite allergy, mould sensitivity from the unusually wet weather we had had for the whole year and grief from the breakdown of my marriage.
Vegan Muffins + Intrusive Eye Gazing
We started the retreat with a long meditation on each chakra. Although I sit up for the first chakra, I soon lie down. The male teacher is really verbose and we're going to be at this for a while. There is a lot of talking for meditation, like the dude really likes the sound of his own voice.
After quite some time, we finally start to move with some yoga. This is my favourite part. It evolves into partner yoga and I invite the young woman behind me who seems slightly nervous to be my partner. It's her first time ever doing something like this, she says. I try to put her at ease with a few "I feel weird about this too" looks. The partner yoga ends with us pairing up, sitting face to face, hands together and gazing into each other's eyes as if we are lovers.
Intrusive eye gazing is stock standard hippie shit. I don't like prolonged eye gazing unless It is with my actual lover, with my real partner. And even then, it can be quite confronting. It makes me feel pretty uncomfortable. And the push to do it that occurs in all kinds of yoga retreats and classes and partner yoga activities, feels like feigned connection. I don't think I'm alone in feeling that way. But in the spirit of pushing past our "comfort zone", here we were.
It's the spiritual equivalent to bungee jumping, except with way less consent.
When it's finally over, I assure her that this was not an easy nor a natural thing to do for me, too. She seemed to relax then, but I still feel a little bit gross, like I've just violated a complete stranger's internal landscape with my gaze.
A vegan muffin later and we begin the transformational breath work. The spiel alone takes, again, what feels like fucking ages. This guy is selling it. He is talking it up. He is congratulating us for being here. He really believes in this, or at least he wants us to. I am intrigued, and I've set my intention to keep an open mind.
We are given brief instructions. There are no warnings about medical conditions, no assurance that we can stop at any time or move freely if we are so compelled. Just fervent encouragement to keep the deep breaths going and to push past any discomfort and fear that arises.
I may as well be in a CrossFit class.
The loud music then begins and soon I'm confined to a room of 30-something people breathing heavily. Of course, and this was kind of at the height of the COVID-19 outbreaks in Queensland, Australia, but of course at this this retreat, there are no COVID precautions taken. The day before the retreat, I'd found a video online proudly posted on the facilitator's Facebook page detailing the week that their vegan cafe was visited by the police five times because of reports that their staff were not wearing masks. The footage showed the owner explaining to the cops that masks put her staff at risks of not getting enough oxygen and of initiating anxiety and panic attacks.
Kind of like their breathwork is doing right now.
The music is a mishmash. Amplified music of Indian and Tibetan chanting, instruments from China, Indigenous Australia, Palo Santo smudge from South America and Nag Champa from India. Iconography from everywhere surrounds the room.
From their website, this is what they describe as contributing to the vibrational medicine aspect of the retreat: "Quartz crystal bowls didgeridoo Native American flute vocal toning in Sanskrit are all ancient forms of sacred vibrational medicine said to calm the mind and tune the chakras energy centres of the body."
So let's put them all together!!!
On top of this culturally misappropriated cacophony the facilitator are talking. One is walking the room, reminding us to keep breathing deeply. Deep breaths, deep breaths, she keeps repeating. The main facilitator of the breathwork, the dude, is talking into the microphone, continuing the stream of verbal diarrhoea that he's initiated from the start of this retreat. And it's all loosely centred around a few primary concepts. Namely, "this is transformational breathwork. Trust the process".
There's a lot of talk of programming and deconditioning. This stuff isn't entirely inaccurate and admittedly it appeals to the desire to want to shed this weighty stuff we're all carrying around. There's a lot of repetition of the catchphrases: cleanse, detox, purify, heal. Pretty stocked standard wellness lexicon.
There's a lot of repetition of, "if you start to feel uncomfortable tingling or fear or other uncomfortable emotions come up, keep pushing through it. It's just your mind or your ego wanting to stay in control". And my favourite, "you didn't come here just to lie down!". Well, actually, I did. I'm a tired single mum, y'all.
After quite some time, we finally start to move with some yoga. This is my favourite part. It evolves into partner yoga and I invite the young woman behind me who seems slightly nervous to be my partner. It's her first time ever doing something like this, she says. I try to put her at ease with a few "I feel weird about this too" looks. The partner yoga ends with us pairing up, sitting face to face, hands together and gazing into each other's eyes as if we are lovers.
Intrusive eye gazing is stock standard hippie shit. I don't like prolonged eye gazing unless It is with my actual lover, with my real partner. And even then, it can be quite confronting. It makes me feel pretty uncomfortable. And the push to do it that occurs in all kinds of yoga retreats and classes and partner yoga activities, feels like feigned connection. I don't think I'm alone in feeling that way. But in the spirit of pushing past our "comfort zone", here we were.
It's the spiritual equivalent to bungee jumping, except with way less consent.
When it's finally over, I assure her that this was not an easy nor a natural thing to do for me, too. She seemed to relax then, but I still feel a little bit gross, like I've just violated a complete stranger's internal landscape with my gaze.
A vegan muffin later and we begin the transformational breath work. The spiel alone takes, again, what feels like fucking ages. This guy is selling it. He is talking it up. He is congratulating us for being here. He really believes in this, or at least he wants us to. I am intrigued, and I've set my intention to keep an open mind.
We are given brief instructions. There are no warnings about medical conditions, no assurance that we can stop at any time or move freely if we are so compelled. Just fervent encouragement to keep the deep breaths going and to push past any discomfort and fear that arises.
I may as well be in a CrossFit class.
The loud music then begins and soon I'm confined to a room of 30-something people breathing heavily. Of course, and this was kind of at the height of the COVID-19 outbreaks in Queensland, Australia, but of course at this this retreat, there are no COVID precautions taken. The day before the retreat, I'd found a video online proudly posted on the facilitator's Facebook page detailing the week that their vegan cafe was visited by the police five times because of reports that their staff were not wearing masks. The footage showed the owner explaining to the cops that masks put her staff at risks of not getting enough oxygen and of initiating anxiety and panic attacks.
Kind of like their breathwork is doing right now.
The music is a mishmash. Amplified music of Indian and Tibetan chanting, instruments from China, Indigenous Australia, Palo Santo smudge from South America and Nag Champa from India. Iconography from everywhere surrounds the room.
From their website, this is what they describe as contributing to the vibrational medicine aspect of the retreat: "Quartz crystal bowls didgeridoo Native American flute vocal toning in Sanskrit are all ancient forms of sacred vibrational medicine said to calm the mind and tune the chakras energy centres of the body."
So let's put them all together!!!
On top of this culturally misappropriated cacophony the facilitator are talking. One is walking the room, reminding us to keep breathing deeply. Deep breaths, deep breaths, she keeps repeating. The main facilitator of the breathwork, the dude, is talking into the microphone, continuing the stream of verbal diarrhoea that he's initiated from the start of this retreat. And it's all loosely centred around a few primary concepts. Namely, "this is transformational breathwork. Trust the process".
There's a lot of talk of programming and deconditioning. This stuff isn't entirely inaccurate and admittedly it appeals to the desire to want to shed this weighty stuff we're all carrying around. There's a lot of repetition of the catchphrases: cleanse, detox, purify, heal. Pretty stocked standard wellness lexicon.
There's a lot of repetition of, "if you start to feel uncomfortable tingling or fear or other uncomfortable emotions come up, keep pushing through it. It's just your mind or your ego wanting to stay in control". And my favourite, "you didn't come here just to lie down!". Well, actually, I did. I'm a tired single mum, y'all.
The cacao Ceremony
And of course, it all ended with a cacao ceremony.
Some people believe that it's unethical for non-Indigenous people to serve cacao in a spiritual context. And that's what's meant when people who don't have or appear not to have cacao in their cultural heritage sometimes get called out for cultural appropriation for hosting cacao ceremonies.
However, many of these kinds of experiences are brought over and practiced by people not of the original culture which arguably allows more people to feel that they're safe in exploring something new and maybe this spreads awareness of many cultures we wouldn't be exposed to otherwise.
Is this a positive and constructive way to reconnect a broken world? I don't know. I don't think that it's okay to take and desecrate elements of a culture that has already suffered so much. In terms of cacao ceremonies, you can't deny the fact that cacao has been a sacred part of the cultures of what we now call Central and South America for at least 3000 years. There are hard records of it being consumed in a ritualistic manner and even treated as currency.
Another fact that needs to be considered is that many of those parts of the world have suffered multiple kinds of pillaging and oppression for the last 500 years, firstly at the hands of Spanish conquistadors and currently by developed nations and their corporate influences.
So is it okay that we take and incorporate into Western - dare I say - white culture, these kinds of ceremonies? I think we need to consider if it's okay to explore Indigenous problems practices and practices and cultural beliefs, as long as that exchange is happening on an even playing field. Really, we need the permission and consent from um the elders of that culture. But how we even that playing field I don't have the answer to that question.
All I know is that I don't usually go to cacao ceremonies because it feels disingenuous to me and it's not actually part of my culture, my cultural heritage. I have my own cultural heritage, I'm half Chinese and I really feel comfortable and good about celebrating that.
Some people believe that it's unethical for non-Indigenous people to serve cacao in a spiritual context. And that's what's meant when people who don't have or appear not to have cacao in their cultural heritage sometimes get called out for cultural appropriation for hosting cacao ceremonies.
However, many of these kinds of experiences are brought over and practiced by people not of the original culture which arguably allows more people to feel that they're safe in exploring something new and maybe this spreads awareness of many cultures we wouldn't be exposed to otherwise.
Is this a positive and constructive way to reconnect a broken world? I don't know. I don't think that it's okay to take and desecrate elements of a culture that has already suffered so much. In terms of cacao ceremonies, you can't deny the fact that cacao has been a sacred part of the cultures of what we now call Central and South America for at least 3000 years. There are hard records of it being consumed in a ritualistic manner and even treated as currency.
Another fact that needs to be considered is that many of those parts of the world have suffered multiple kinds of pillaging and oppression for the last 500 years, firstly at the hands of Spanish conquistadors and currently by developed nations and their corporate influences.
So is it okay that we take and incorporate into Western - dare I say - white culture, these kinds of ceremonies? I think we need to consider if it's okay to explore Indigenous problems practices and practices and cultural beliefs, as long as that exchange is happening on an even playing field. Really, we need the permission and consent from um the elders of that culture. But how we even that playing field I don't have the answer to that question.
All I know is that I don't usually go to cacao ceremonies because it feels disingenuous to me and it's not actually part of my culture, my cultural heritage. I have my own cultural heritage, I'm half Chinese and I really feel comfortable and good about celebrating that.
Holotropic Breathwork
Anyway, let's move on to another part of this retreat day that I experienced, the holotropic breathwork. Holotropic breathwork first came out in the 1970s as a more intense intense form of meditation. It's a therapeutic breathing practice that's intended to help with emotional healing and personal growth and it's said to produce an altered state of consciousness. It's thought that the practice allows you to move beyond your body and ego and to get in touch with your true self and true spirit. It involves a combination of deep and rapid breathing, evocative music and focused body work to access non-ordinary states of consciousness.
This work is done usually in a supportive environment with the assistance of highly trained facilitators. The process itself involves breathing at a fast rate for minutes to hours - which I can't even fathom because I felt so damn uncomfortable after doing it for 10 minutes. But I think that's maybe because it was so poorly facilitated. This kind of breathing apparently changes the balance between carbon dioxide and oxygen in your body you are guided through the exercise by, ideally, someone who's trained in this emotional release modality.
Holotropic breathwork may bring about intense emotions and painful memories that could worsen symptoms, and because of this many professionals recommend that it be used in conjunction with ongoing therapy. This gives you a chance to work through and overcome any issues that arise.
There is a bit of research that I found on holotropic breathwork (HB). A 1996 study combined the holotropic breathing technique with psychotherapy over six months and people who participated in the breathwork and the therapy significantly reduced death anxiety and increased self-esteem compared to those who only had therapy.
Another report from 2013 documents the results of 11000 people over 12 years who participated in HB sessions. And the results of this report suggest that it can be used to treat a wide range of psychological and existential life issues. Many people reported significant benefits related to emotional catharsis and internal spiritual exploration. No adverse reactions were reported, so this makes it sound like a low-risk therapy.
Finally, a 2015 study found that holotropic breathing can bring about high levels of self-awareness. It may help folks to make positive changes in temperament and character. People who were more experienced with the technique reported less tendency to be domineering and hostile.
So it seems like when it's well supervised and accompanied by professionals who are highly trained in facilitating HB, it seems like there are really good benefits to be gleaned from this practice if it's conducted in that safe and respectful manner.
But on that day that I attended in a room of 30 plus people, was that safe and responsible?
I nearly had a panic attack whilst following the teacher's instructions to a T. I was such a diligent student that I didn't even move my arms and legs around when they started getting tingly as he didn't say that we could do it in the instructions. But there came a point, as I said, about 10 minutes in where I definitely had to tap out. Ten minutes into it was maybe a quarter of the way into it, not that far.
That night I slept really terribly and the next day I was wiped out. I guess my nervous system didn't like being ramped up for no good reason. So much for a rejuvenating retreat!
There are significant medical risks of this kind of breath work, which is really akin to guided hyperventilation. At least it was in my experience that day. This kind of breathwork can cause reduced carbon dioxide and other alterations in blood chemistry that can lead to dizziness, fainting, weakness, spasms of the hands and feet and even seizures. And I mean, I experienced a lot of that.
A few studies have been done on either the efficacy of achieving mental health enlightenment and healing through holotropic breathwork or of the general safety of the practice, as mentioned before. But since the process of holotropic breathwork is aimed at a deep experience, it is possible that uncomfortable feelings will arise, also known as a healing crisis. And this technique is controversial because it involves the possible amplification of symptoms in potentially problematic ways.
This technique can evoke intense physical and emotional changes and that was really evident by what I saw and heard around me in the room that day. Therefore, there is a list of specific criteria that exists to advise against participation for some people. So for anyone considering trying holotropic breathwork, it is a good idea to discuss possible risks with your healthcare provider before embarking on this practice, especially if you have any of these conditions:
Cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, high blood pressure and angina, glaucoma or retinal detachment, any recent injury or surgery, any condition that requires you to take medication, panic attacks or psychosis, seizures, severe mental illness, aneurysms or a family history of them or you're pregnant or breastfeeding.
This practice can also cause distress in susceptible people. That's anyone with a history of psychosis or panic attacks, heart attacks, hypertension and so on. What pissed me off about my experience that day is that no medical history was taken by the facilitators. None of these warnings were given to us at the start of the breathwork or at any point in the day.
This work is done usually in a supportive environment with the assistance of highly trained facilitators. The process itself involves breathing at a fast rate for minutes to hours - which I can't even fathom because I felt so damn uncomfortable after doing it for 10 minutes. But I think that's maybe because it was so poorly facilitated. This kind of breathing apparently changes the balance between carbon dioxide and oxygen in your body you are guided through the exercise by, ideally, someone who's trained in this emotional release modality.
Holotropic breathwork may bring about intense emotions and painful memories that could worsen symptoms, and because of this many professionals recommend that it be used in conjunction with ongoing therapy. This gives you a chance to work through and overcome any issues that arise.
There is a bit of research that I found on holotropic breathwork (HB). A 1996 study combined the holotropic breathing technique with psychotherapy over six months and people who participated in the breathwork and the therapy significantly reduced death anxiety and increased self-esteem compared to those who only had therapy.
Another report from 2013 documents the results of 11000 people over 12 years who participated in HB sessions. And the results of this report suggest that it can be used to treat a wide range of psychological and existential life issues. Many people reported significant benefits related to emotional catharsis and internal spiritual exploration. No adverse reactions were reported, so this makes it sound like a low-risk therapy.
Finally, a 2015 study found that holotropic breathing can bring about high levels of self-awareness. It may help folks to make positive changes in temperament and character. People who were more experienced with the technique reported less tendency to be domineering and hostile.
So it seems like when it's well supervised and accompanied by professionals who are highly trained in facilitating HB, it seems like there are really good benefits to be gleaned from this practice if it's conducted in that safe and respectful manner.
But on that day that I attended in a room of 30 plus people, was that safe and responsible?
I nearly had a panic attack whilst following the teacher's instructions to a T. I was such a diligent student that I didn't even move my arms and legs around when they started getting tingly as he didn't say that we could do it in the instructions. But there came a point, as I said, about 10 minutes in where I definitely had to tap out. Ten minutes into it was maybe a quarter of the way into it, not that far.
That night I slept really terribly and the next day I was wiped out. I guess my nervous system didn't like being ramped up for no good reason. So much for a rejuvenating retreat!
There are significant medical risks of this kind of breath work, which is really akin to guided hyperventilation. At least it was in my experience that day. This kind of breathwork can cause reduced carbon dioxide and other alterations in blood chemistry that can lead to dizziness, fainting, weakness, spasms of the hands and feet and even seizures. And I mean, I experienced a lot of that.
A few studies have been done on either the efficacy of achieving mental health enlightenment and healing through holotropic breathwork or of the general safety of the practice, as mentioned before. But since the process of holotropic breathwork is aimed at a deep experience, it is possible that uncomfortable feelings will arise, also known as a healing crisis. And this technique is controversial because it involves the possible amplification of symptoms in potentially problematic ways.
This technique can evoke intense physical and emotional changes and that was really evident by what I saw and heard around me in the room that day. Therefore, there is a list of specific criteria that exists to advise against participation for some people. So for anyone considering trying holotropic breathwork, it is a good idea to discuss possible risks with your healthcare provider before embarking on this practice, especially if you have any of these conditions:
Cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, high blood pressure and angina, glaucoma or retinal detachment, any recent injury or surgery, any condition that requires you to take medication, panic attacks or psychosis, seizures, severe mental illness, aneurysms or a family history of them or you're pregnant or breastfeeding.
This practice can also cause distress in susceptible people. That's anyone with a history of psychosis or panic attacks, heart attacks, hypertension and so on. What pissed me off about my experience that day is that no medical history was taken by the facilitators. None of these warnings were given to us at the start of the breathwork or at any point in the day.
A better way to do it
I really think that if you're going to do this kind of thing, you need a trained facilitator to help you determine if a group setting is appropriate or if an individual session would be safer and more effective. The facilitator should guide and support you through the process, not give you really hard and fast kind of brash instructions and then let a whole room of 30 plus people have at it.
I don't want to give up on holotropic breathwork just yet. I know of some people who derive enormous benefit out of it. It's not the form of breathwork I disagree with, it's the use of it as a fancy spiritual accelerator in combination with the fanfare of noise and other stimuli such as the cacao ceremony which were designed to create this overwhelming and overstimulating experience that hopefully leaves you feeling like something profound just happened.
I just felt like I wanted to get the hell out of there and go somewhere quiet.
I feel like although this was the only session of its type I had attended, I'm pretty sure this was a poorly conducted breathwork session. There were too many people, there was not enough personal supervision, no regard for medical history and the people who had increased risks, and a too much of a "this can only be a good thing!" attitude.
Basically it was just irresponsible. But obviously it's more profitable to charge a room of 30 people in one hit than charge 30 people for one-on-one breathwork sessions.
I still want to give holotropic breathwork a go but in a quiet calm setting and maybe with just one practitioner. If music is a part, surely it doesn't have to be 90 decibels. And can we scratch the cultural misappropriation, please?
If you'd like to try holotropic breathing, I think that you should seek out a trained facilitator who can guide you in the process. These facilitators are often psychologists, therapists or nurses, which means they also have really great knowledge of human physiology. Having a licensed and certified practitioner would probably be the best choice. Make sure you're aware of what you may experience during your session.
I don't want to give up on holotropic breathwork just yet. I know of some people who derive enormous benefit out of it. It's not the form of breathwork I disagree with, it's the use of it as a fancy spiritual accelerator in combination with the fanfare of noise and other stimuli such as the cacao ceremony which were designed to create this overwhelming and overstimulating experience that hopefully leaves you feeling like something profound just happened.
I just felt like I wanted to get the hell out of there and go somewhere quiet.
I feel like although this was the only session of its type I had attended, I'm pretty sure this was a poorly conducted breathwork session. There were too many people, there was not enough personal supervision, no regard for medical history and the people who had increased risks, and a too much of a "this can only be a good thing!" attitude.
Basically it was just irresponsible. But obviously it's more profitable to charge a room of 30 people in one hit than charge 30 people for one-on-one breathwork sessions.
I still want to give holotropic breathwork a go but in a quiet calm setting and maybe with just one practitioner. If music is a part, surely it doesn't have to be 90 decibels. And can we scratch the cultural misappropriation, please?
If you'd like to try holotropic breathing, I think that you should seek out a trained facilitator who can guide you in the process. These facilitators are often psychologists, therapists or nurses, which means they also have really great knowledge of human physiology. Having a licensed and certified practitioner would probably be the best choice. Make sure you're aware of what you may experience during your session.
Does stimulation equate to meaning?
"Something kind of sad about the way that things have come to be.
Desensitised to everything, what became of subtlety?"
- James Maynard Keenan, in Stinkfist by Tool
I'm referring here not to holotropic breathing on its own, but to the combination of poorly guided and up-marketed holotropic breathwork, the tirade of usual hippie verbiage, which by itself I can handle, the cultural misappropriation and the overstimulating factors that made up the experience that I had.
In many spiritual experiences that you can pay for, whether it's a cacao ceremony and women's share circle, a 50-person yoga and holotropic breathwork retreat, or a 60-minute one-on-one healing session, there's often an additional element of hyper-individualism despite the group nature of some of these ceremonies and retreats. Everything is embedded with the "deep meaning" attitude and "you're 100% responsible for everything that happens to you" kind of vibe.
And if something goes wrong, like you have a panic attack halfway through the breath work or some past trauma is triggered in your healing session that the therapist is not trained to deal with, there's this sense that it's your fault, that you have some baggage you need to work on. Some emotional barrier you need to break through. Not that the facilitation was shoddy and unprofessional, or that your therapist had no idea how to deal with trauma coming up in session.
In many spiritual experiences that you can pay for, whether it's a cacao ceremony and women's share circle, a 50-person yoga and holotropic breathwork retreat, or a 60-minute one-on-one healing session, there's often an additional element of hyper-individualism despite the group nature of some of these ceremonies and retreats. Everything is embedded with the "deep meaning" attitude and "you're 100% responsible for everything that happens to you" kind of vibe.
And if something goes wrong, like you have a panic attack halfway through the breath work or some past trauma is triggered in your healing session that the therapist is not trained to deal with, there's this sense that it's your fault, that you have some baggage you need to work on. Some emotional barrier you need to break through. Not that the facilitation was shoddy and unprofessional, or that your therapist had no idea how to deal with trauma coming up in session.
Do we really need all this shit?
Do we need this much input, this much intensity to be convinced that we're having some kind of spiritual, transformational, meaningful, or healing experience? Is our loss of spiritual connection so fucking urgent, our feelings of boredom and need for more over stimulation so great that this kind of experience is met with wide-eyed wonder and a feeling of, "Wow, that was intense - it must have been good!", instead of "Wow, this is bullshit."
Is watching a sunrise, doing some gentle yoga, or traditional pranayama just too boring nowadays? Too subtle? Too slow to take any kind of perceivable or transformational effect? The male facilitator who ran that retreat I attended appealed to the impatient, results-orientated Westerner in everyone when he praised us for being clever enough to be there that day.
"You aren't here to muck around," he said. "'This is the direct route, the shortcut. You didn't come here just to lie down." Oh, but I did.
Do we really need to deprive ourselves of oxygen for extended periods of time and face dangerous health risks just to feel something? Do we need spiritual sounding things, spiritual sounding smells, culturally appropriated phrasing like aho, stolen gods and goddesses referred to as if they were long lost family members, stolen rituals borrowed from a bunch of different cultures to supplement the already intense breathwork... all in order to feel like we're doing something unique and special?
Are we in the colonised West so damn deplete of our own meaningful rituals that we've had to steal others, taking them out of their traditional context and mish-mashing them as we please, until the desired effect is reached? The desired effect of feeling far away enough from our boring mainstream culture to feel spiritual or like we're doing something radical.
It seems so adolescent.
In desperately trying to cram meaning taken from many different cultures - presumably to fill up the void of meaning we feel in the vacuum of organised religion, more traditional forms of spirituality, or maybe a personal carefully developed system - the typical kind of manufactured paid-for spiritual experience that we can access these days often becomes "a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing" to quote Shakespeare. At the end of the day, I can only speak to my personal experience - and to me this particular cacao-yoga-transformational-breathwork retreat was one of the most meaningless things I have ever witnessed.
Is watching a sunrise, doing some gentle yoga, or traditional pranayama just too boring nowadays? Too subtle? Too slow to take any kind of perceivable or transformational effect? The male facilitator who ran that retreat I attended appealed to the impatient, results-orientated Westerner in everyone when he praised us for being clever enough to be there that day.
"You aren't here to muck around," he said. "'This is the direct route, the shortcut. You didn't come here just to lie down." Oh, but I did.
Do we really need to deprive ourselves of oxygen for extended periods of time and face dangerous health risks just to feel something? Do we need spiritual sounding things, spiritual sounding smells, culturally appropriated phrasing like aho, stolen gods and goddesses referred to as if they were long lost family members, stolen rituals borrowed from a bunch of different cultures to supplement the already intense breathwork... all in order to feel like we're doing something unique and special?
Are we in the colonised West so damn deplete of our own meaningful rituals that we've had to steal others, taking them out of their traditional context and mish-mashing them as we please, until the desired effect is reached? The desired effect of feeling far away enough from our boring mainstream culture to feel spiritual or like we're doing something radical.
It seems so adolescent.
In desperately trying to cram meaning taken from many different cultures - presumably to fill up the void of meaning we feel in the vacuum of organised religion, more traditional forms of spirituality, or maybe a personal carefully developed system - the typical kind of manufactured paid-for spiritual experience that we can access these days often becomes "a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing" to quote Shakespeare. At the end of the day, I can only speak to my personal experience - and to me this particular cacao-yoga-transformational-breathwork retreat was one of the most meaningless things I have ever witnessed.
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