Breath by James Nestor

Breath by James Nestor

Author:James Nestor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241289099
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2020-05-20T16:00:00+00:00


By afternoon, the group switched positions and it was my turn to walk through the dark night of the soul. I’ll admit, I was pretty dubious at this point, but I gave it my all, breathing as hard as I could for as long as I could. I felt really hot and sweated, then felt very cold and sweated. My legs went numb, and my fingers uncontrollably coiled into claws, a common muscle-contraction side effect of hyperventilation called tetany. My mind wandered, and I was convinced I’d entered into some waking dream state, where the sounds, music, and sensations of my surroundings mingled freely with subconscious thoughts and images.

Sometime later, the hollow electric drums, fake cymbal crashes, and keyboard lutes faded back into my consciousness, and it was over. The group was invited to sit around a table and draw mandalas with crayons on what they’d just experienced. I walked outside into the perfumed evening air and drank a warm beer alone in the passenger seat of my car.

On one hand, Holotropic Breathwork was transformative for Ben and Mary, and hundreds of thousands of others who’d experienced it. On the other, there was obviously some psychosomatic influence going on there. I couldn’t help wondering how much of its curative effects were the result of the environment, of the “set and setting,” and how much might be a measurable, physical response to breathing so heavily for so long.

Grof believed that at least some visual and introspective experiences were triggered by having less oxygen in the brain.46



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