Trust Your Ability to Heal Yourself

Robert Albert, an alumnus of our month-long Live Extended Education Program (LEEP), shares a personal awakening where he drops into a non-ordinary state of consciousness with Holotropic Breathwork®.

‍

“Trust your ability to heal yourself,” Stacia said confidently — words I needed to hear. “It’s your journey. You decide how deep you go.”‍

I live a fairly typical urban life in New York City, and I often crave more nature, for external and internal well being. Over the years, Esalen has provided an outlet for both. This past fall, I spent a month at Esalen through the Live Extended Education Program. I was seeking practices to go deeper and focus on some unresolved emotions. In a moment of being in the right place at the right time, I was invited to join a small breathwork experience.

To the unfamiliar, Holotropic Breathwork®, developed by Stan and Christina Grof while in residence at Esalen in the 60s, is a practice of self-discovery where you can enter a non-ordinary state of consciousness through accelerated breathing and evocative music. In other words, you can simulate a psychedelic experience without drugs. Everyone’s journey is personal and therefore different. 

For my holotropic experience, we enter the Big Yurt, a typical Esalen space with big pillows, blankets and BackJacks. It was a small but refreshingly diverse group open to this journey. My heart starts racing as we prepare.

I’d been here before, five years earlier, in this very room, attempting this breathwork. Accelerated breathing seemed uncomfortable if not dangerous, and the prospect of opening the floodgates to an unknown emotional response held me back. I went through the motions, but didn’t really do it.

This time will be different, I think. I breathe through my racing heart and resolve how I’m actually feeling: a small part fear, a medium part curiosity and a big part desire to dive deep. I tell this to the group to their nods of encouragement.

There are “breathers” and “sitters” in this practice. Sitters ensure comfort and safety of the breathers. In Holotropic Breathwork®, workshop participants experience both roles.

I am a breather first.

I make the most comfortable bed of cushions around myself, like the fort you built at home as a kid, minus the bed sheet roof. By this point, our group has talked for hours with the marvelous facilitator Stacia Butterfield demonstrating her conviction and connecting with us, allaying fears as well as developing trust and camaraderie among the workshop participants.

Time to begin. We close our eyes and cover them with eye masks.

Stacia turns on the music and guides us to start breathing. Deep, consistent breaths without pauses in between. Once I get over the effort involved, there’s a rhythm with a flow. It feels like a good workout.

Music fills the room like that classic 80s commercial where the guy is blown away by Wagner’s “Ride of The Valkyries” playing on Maxell’s “high-fidelity cassette tape.” (Google it if you weren’t around.)

Whoa! I want this playlist, I think.

Sooner than I could have imagined, the breathing, music, and environment start to carry me into another dimension.

From there, I see a light, a small dot in the distance. My conscious mind, often stubbornly analytical and sometimes skeptical, wonders if there’s a light fixture in the ceiling of the room that I can sense. But my eyes are closed AND I’m wearing a thick eye mask. It doesn’t matter, I think. It’s my journey, so I let the nagging thought go and instead remain curious. Then it happens.

I travel to the light and through it, and I realize I am being born. I see the retro-styled hospital corridor and suddenly I’m in a crib, with onlookers scurrying around me. I’m in the middle and feel like a baby prince, comforted by all the attention and marveling at the new sights and sounds.

What ensues for me is a rich mental and physical journey of my life with milestones, insights, connections and metaphors I never fully saw before.

I see why my 5th-grade teacher was my favorite and how some jobs I hated were so valuable. I feel a deep and tangible awareness and appreciation of my parents and partner who I see standing by and supporting me. I play Carnegie Hall to a packed audience, followed by some of the most mundane (but sweet) life activities. I have a strong sense of seeking and offering forgiveness for some of the deeper wounds that I had inflicted or were inflicted on me.

Sensations abound as the powerful music and consistent breathing guide the more than two-hour experience. Out of the womb, my body is freezing cold. As I shiver, I am given a blanket. I toss it off when I become warm. At different moments in this journey, I feel curious, wise, happy, elated, angry, sad. There are tears and more emotions. I let them all flow.

Toward the end, I ask Stacia if I am still alive, mostly joking from this other state of consciousness. She grabs my hands and says “very much so,” and I go back for some final reflections before the music ends. And some more even after. We breathers make some art to visualize our experience. The come down takes a while. And then it’s my turn to be a sitter and provide support for my breather. (I’ll save that for another share.)

I’ve carried the transformative insights from the breathwork workshop and from my month-long LEEP program at Esalen back into the world, ever more open, prepared and ready for the journey ahead. 

Trust your ability to heal yourself, indeed.