A bad experience with breathwork
are we all just practicing dissociation?
This is a voice recording (by me) of this week’s newsletter in it’s entirety. It’s not perfect sound quality and isn’t edited, but I hope it makes my writing more accessible for those who don’t have the time to read or prefer listening. Enjoy!
Last week I went to a breathwork journey class. I was so excited to go. It had been foreverrrr since I’d been facilitated through a breathwork journey live, in person, with others. This was gunna be good. I walked with a little extra pep to the yoga studio it was being held at.
Within a few minutes I knew I had made a mistake. I listened to the guide introduce themself as a breathwork “expert” and list out all the Fortune 100 companies they’ve worked with (things I can’t help but eye-roll at but invited myself to meet this person with curiosity instead of engaging with my judgmental part). They briefly explained the breathing technique, told everyone to lie down, and within seconds the speakers were blasting intense New-Agey techno beats. It was then when something inside me immediately said this doesn’t feel right. I sat back up and spent the remainder of the class deep breathing in meditation while others around me were screaming, shaking, and crying.
After the breathwork was over, the guide invited people to share their experience. One guy’s share really stood out to me. He said that this was his first time experiencing breathwork and he loved it. He exclaimed, “I felt like I was floating and like I completely left my body!” Another women whispered in response, “isn’t it so amazing?!”
My heart dropped into my stomach. Nononono.
Breathwork can be activating. It can bring up trauma and memories and scary things that if people aren’t expecting it can lead them into overwhelm and cause the nervous system to shut down completely. However if we are expecting it, and if we ease ourselves gently into that activation, we can open up our capacities to actually feel, express, and let go of these memories and experiences that are held in the body. This requires us to stay in the body.
There’s this idea in the personal growth space, stemming particularly from the psychedelic world, called “chasing the tail of the dragon.” This refers to people who are constantly in an intense death-rebirth cycle. They have a big cathartic emotional release (the death), they feel blissed out and at peace afterwards (the rebirth), and want to maintain that feeling for as long as possible. The problem of course is that life isn’t always blissful, it’s also hard, and so people in this cycle will seek out another big death experience just so they can feel the transcendence of rebirth. In some ways it’s easier to stay in the death-rebirth cycle of catharsis because it doesn’t require us to learn how to truly navigate our emotional states; the ups and downs of day to day life. Chasing the tail of the dragon is actually a form of bypassing and it doesn’t create sustainable change.
Dr Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, touches on the dangers of catharsis in his book, In an Unspoken Voice. Emotional and physical pain are processed in the same part of the brain. That means that when someone takes morphine for physical pain, they are also simultaneously dulling their ability to feel and process their emotional pain. Dr Levine shares research that shows that when we have a big cathartic emotional experience, it creates an endorphin rush, a neurotransmitter that helps to alleviate pain and improve mood. In other words, it is our body’s natural pain killer. This can be helpful in some circumstances, but when we are constantly seeking that huge endorphin rush in order to keep our emotional pain at bay, we are not cultivating an environment for lasting healing.
We see the pitfalls of relying on endorphins with athletes who become injured and can no longer rely on their physical workouts to manage their emotions. I’m not suggesting we all stop exercising so that we can learn to feel our emotions, but I am suggesting that we live in a world that relies too heavily on things outside of ourselves for emotional regulation. As Dr Levine says, “while cathartic expressions of emotion in therapy sessions [like punching a pillow, for example] can be of value, reliance on emotional release stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about the very nature of feelings and emotions.”
Breathwork journeying is a prime example of a modality that can easily be misconstrued and tailored to those who are just looking for their next big cathartic fix, if we’re not careful. Because of its activating nature, it can make people leave their bodies if their bodies are not a place they feel safe to explore. Sure, afterwards they might feel blissed out, and the sensation of leaving their body (i.e. dissociation) might feel amazing and cool in the moment, but it’s actually not harnessing the true power of this somatic (“of the body”) practice.
Now is a good time to remind you that dissociation is not inherently bad.
In fact, it is an amazing survival mechanism. Many of us learned somewhere along the way that it wasn’t safe to be in the present moment, so we learned to numb out, zone out, and disconnect. Many of us cultivated a little world in our minds that did feel safe, and that is the very thing that allowed us to navigate the complexities of life in a way that didn’t feel overwhelming.
AND…
Many people begin their healing journey because they recognize that this way of being no longer serves them anymore. They want to feel present and connected and engaged. They want to be able to give and receive love. They want healthy relationships. They want to feel alive.
I felt so sad and angry leaving that breathwork class. The guy who shared his experience was so excited that he had found a practice (did I mention that the class was called Somatic Breathwork?) that made him feel good and free from the pain he undoubtedly carries with him (we all carry pain). But what I wanted so desperately to tell him is that while I know leaving his body felt freeing and light, it was just a temporary fix. Sure, a huge cathartic release in a breathwork class is objectively better for your physical body than numbing your pain with a bottle of wine or an 8-hour netflix binge, but when it comes to processing emotions, leaving your body is leaving your body no matter what the mechanism to get you there is. The emotions will stay stuck and eventually wreak havoc on our well-being in some way, shape, or form.
We don’t have to look very far to see what a society looks like when people are afraid to feel. We see the product of that within our political system every day. What I’m most fearful of, however, is a world where we think we’re feeling, when we’re actually not. I fear that in our capitalistic patriarchal society where more is better, and where wellness has become commodified into a multi-trillion dollar industry, people will seek out these cathartic experiences and believe they are helping themselves. I fear those who promote spiritual bypassing as an answer to our times more so than I fear the politicians in Washington.
So how do we make sure we’re not chasing our own dragon’s tail?
We must be aware of emotions. We must be aware of emotions in our bodies. Being conscious of emotions as they arise requires a level of restraint or containment that is not possible in big cathartic releases. Dr Levine says,
“When we are ‘mindlessly’ expressing emotion, that is precisely what we are, in fact, doing. Emotional reactivity almost always precludes conscious awareness. On the other hand, restraint and containment of the expressive impulse allows us to become aware of our underlying postural attitude [i.e. how the feeling feels in the body]. Therefore, it is the restraint that brings a feeling into conscious awareness. Change only occurs where there is mindfulness, and mindfulness only occurs where there is bodily feeling.”
We can’t just express our emotions willy-nilly like I saw in that breathwork class. People were screaming, shaking, crying aggressively within minutes of beginning. It felt Pavlovian; like the class regulars were conditioned to emote right when the music started. We must slow things down so that we can become aware of emotions as they arise and notice what the bodily impulse is (kick, scream, cry, hide in a corner). From slowing down the impulse and containing it in a safe way, we can stay present to the energy moving through our body without becoming attached or swept away by it.
Another quote from Dr Levine,
“A person who is deeply feeling is not a person who is habitually venting anger, fear or sorrow. Wise and fortunate individuals feel their emotions in the quiet of their interiors, learn from their feelings and are guided by them. They act intuitively and intelligently on those feelings. In addition, they share their feelings when appropriate and are responsive to the feelings and needs of others. And, of course, because they are human, they blow up from time to time; but also they look for the root of these eruptions, not primarily as being caused by another, but as an imbalance or disquiet within themselves.”
I felt intuitively and immediately that this breathwork class was not a safe space for me to engage with myself in any potentially activating type of way. Yet as I sat there in meditation, I felt angry, upset, sad, and confused. Let me tell you, the emotions were flowing. So I chose to sit with my emotions, to meet them with curiosity, and to feel my emotions. And it was through that process that intuitively led me to write this letter to you.
I could say so much more, and I will in future letters, but this letter is getting a little long. What I will say is that we are all capable of this emotional and bodily wisdom that Dr Levine speaks of. We are all capable of learning from these emotional impulses, sitting with them with curiosity, and getting to the root cause of them. We are all capable of finding true freedom and healing from the pain we carry. Not by bypassing it, but by bringing awareness to it, little by little.
Xo,
The Feeling Part
Snippets of Inspo Lately
I love everything about going to the movies. I’m so happy that movie theaters are making a comeback, and that there are more than just Marvel movies available for viewing. In the last two weeks I’ve seen Priscilla and The Holdovers (both I recommend…The Holdovers more so if you’re wanting a movie with a little bit of everything and a great starter to the holiday season). Next week I’m going to go see Saltburn. There’s something just so nostalgic and heartwarming about the movie theater. I always feel so creative after going.
This is a bit esoteric for folks interested in Psychedelics, but I’ve been getting more into Jamie Wheal’s work and think it’s incredibly important in today’s world. This is a decent interview and a good intro to his work. He touches on some of the themes mentioned in this week’s newsletter.
It’s not always depression, by Hilary Jacob Hendel. Great resource on feeling your feelings. It gets a little into the practitioner side of things, but I think it has things in there for everyone.
Loved this Armchair Expert with Dr Becky Kennedy. She talks a lot about parenting, but there’s some excellent tidbits on ruptures, repairs and relationships in general.
Boreout vs Burnout from Mind the Gap. An interesting article about whether or not people are just bored at work, or actually burnt out.
Important to know that just because someone says they are an expert doesn't mean that what they are doing is right for you.
Hey, I appreciated this so much! Great job on the audio, by the way…