Breathwork Meditation

Sunday evening I decided to join my friend Marci and try out a breathing meditation called Breathwork here in Saratoga. To be honest, I haven’t sat down and just focused on my breath since India … whomp whomp ... "bad lady" as Timji would say. It’s been far too long since I sat down and truly dedicated time and space to just my breathing. I’m guilty of tacking it on to the end of my practice or the beginning, but usually due to lack of time, it’s short and honestly after yesterday, feels a bit pathetic. 

Yesterdays class was guided by Brigitte and was AMAZING. She has the gentlest voice and holds the space for all in attendance. You start lying down on your back, with any props that you may need to support you. I chose to have a bolster under my knees and blanket on top to keep me warm. Once you are situated we start to breathe. This is a Three-Part Breath — Dirga Swasam Pranayama (DEER-gah swha-SAHM prah-nah-YAH-mah) — and is often the first breathing technique taught to new yoga practitioners. The “three parts” are the abdomen, diaphragm, and chest. During Three-Part Breath, you first completely fill your lungs with air, as though you are breathing into your belly, ribcage, and upper chest. Then you exhale completely, reversing the flow. You sort of make a little swishing sound if you can imagine as the parts of the breath come and go from the body.

Dirga Swasam comes from two Sanskrit words. “Dirga” (also spelled “Deerga”) has several meanings, including, “slow,” “deep,” “long,” and “complete.” “Swasam” refers to the breath. Therefore, this practice is sometimes also referred to as “Complete Breath.” It is also often simply called “Dirga Pranayama.” Dirga Swasam also helps us open up energy blockages we may have in the body. We start down low at the root chakra and through the breath lift and move the energy all the way up to the crown chakra. 

Brigitte guided us during the 60 minutes to keep focusing on the breath. She added in some cues along the way, such as giggles or laughing, or yelling into your hands, moving when we needed to, and she applied various essential oils to the throat, chest, misted in the air to help us open up our chakras. 

About halfway through the breath work I started to feel like someone was choking me. Tight hands clenched around my throat making it feel impossible to breath. I just kept the breath as steady as I could in my attempt to work through it. Enter Throat Chakra blockage! Where in the world did you come from? This Chakra is also called Visuddha, it is our bodies way of having a voice. It is the 5th Chakra and is the 1st of the 3 spiritual Chakras. It is positioned in the throat, it rules our thyroid, jaw, neck, mouth, tongue, parathyroid and larynx. When our Throat Chakra is in balance, we can speak and listen with confidence and express our higher selves in a completely authentic way. Expressing yourself like this is not always easy and there is a real line between being honest and remaining diplomatic. This is the pressure valve that releases energy from all the other Chakras to be distributed and expressed. If it is out of balance it can affect the health of our other energy centres, it is really important to balance it so we can fully express from our higher self. 

Well, well, well, Ms Taegan Marie, what in the world do we have here. What are you hiding deep down, that you can’t find the words to express? This is the thought that crept into my mind while I felt like devil hands were gripped on my throat, and I was gasping for breath — okay so it wasn’t so dramatic, but I couldn’t figure out why there was a blockage at that moment, and I knew I would look into it after class. So, I continued to breath. Just focusing on the breath and with each cycle the sensation became less and less. 

We finally slow down the complete breath and move into a meditative breath. Easy inhales in and out of the body, just letting our body relax even more onto the mat. As Brigitte encourages us to move our hands from the floor to our heart, I can’t move. My hands feel like a ton of bricks and tingling sensations all throughout them. So I decide to just lay there and breathe and then all the tears start flooding in. I cried and cried, gently as the tears streamed down the sides of my face. I suddenly became flush with heat and was burning hot. I saw images of people and things flash into my mind. Again, not sure why those very specific people or things came to me, but I decided not to analyze at that moment. This went on for what seemed like 20 minutes, although I’m sure it was much less. By the time Brigitte encouraged us to slightly move our fingers and toes and breathe deeper I calmed down and the tears had stopped. It took me a bit to move, again that sticky like feeling and tingling was all throughout my body. As I came back to the present moment, I felt very calm and at ease albeit a bit exhausted. We all shared our individual experiences and it was amazing to hear the various feelings, or emotions, and sensations that each person had experienced. All very similar but very different. This type of energy work is different for each person and will vary each time you do it. I proceeded home to rest and hibernate for the evening. I slept wonderfully and woke up beyond refreshed to teach my 6 am class this morning. I will absolutely be back to continue to work on the energy blockages in my body. One hour can be truly transformational if you give yourself the time to let it happen. 

If you’re looking to experience deep healing and to shift around blocked energies within your body I highly suggest getting into a session with Brigitte and allowing yourself the time and space to heal and move your prana. Schedule below:

Sunday's
Location: One Big Roof
Time: 4-5pm
Fee: $15.00
*Pre-registration required.
To RSVP or for info, contact Brigitte 518-275-5653 or peacewithin19@gmail.com

First Monday of the Month
Location: Hannah’s Healing
Time: 6:30-7:30pm
Fee: $15
*Pre-registration required.

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Practicing pranayama helps to regulate and purify your vital life force energy or prana. In yoga, it is believed that when your prana becomes unbalanced, you become susceptible to illness and disease in body, mind, and spirit. By bringing awareness to your body and consciously practicing breath-control exercises, you can bring positive changes to your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.

The Energy Body

So I experienced something today that was beyond my realm of understanding. Still feeling the current within my body, I'll do the best I can to explain what happened and I'd like to while it's fresh in my mind. But lets establish that I am OK.

Tonight Petri talked to us about healing techniques:

• Physical - those we can use in the classroom when giving adjustment.
• Mind body - while manifesting healing for another purely with the mind and without touch.
• Deep relaxation - using a combination of both mind body and physical. Sometimes the use of hypnosis is used here.

We started off my learning one of the most important and frequent postures in the Primary series, which is the forward bend. Petri discussed using your hands to massage the sacrum, and then thumb walk up the sides of the spine (or line 1) all the way to the skull, while doing so you're thinking relaxation and upward movement. Trying to lengthen the spine. This technique was really lovely and felt great for releasing tension in the lower back and was actually a very therapeutic experience. For the next healing technique we did the same exercise but just placed our hands on the middle of the back, and then mentally focused on relaxation and channeled it to the recipient. We maybe used 2-3kg of weight but it was all about the touch. It was amazing to see how deeply people were folding forwarded. All of this was in a safe and sound environment, no forcefulness. The next exercise, was to heal with the use of the Mind body. For this, the exercise was to stand over the recipient. As them to tell us where the tension was, and to focus on that area. Once you could feel the energy you were supposed to massage it and try to send relaxation to the area - but again you would do this in your own body. So the concept is that you transfer the pain to your own physical body and then try to help aid in the relaxation for the recipient. I worked with Grace, fellow American who is from SF! She was having some tension in your lower abdomen so I focused on this. I immediately felt my i stomach harden and upon touch it hurt. I've had this feeling before, so I recognized the sensation, but I know that I wasn't experiencing this before trying to connect with Graces' energy body. I started to massage my belly and rub it with soothing strokes. After a few minutes, Grace described what she felt, and WOW! She could feel me massaging her stomach without actually touching her, and said it felt like bubbles popping and the pain was melting away.

If you're not buying into this 'energy' stuff yet, well here is where shit gets real folks.

Lastly, Petri started to discuss deep relaxation. Which is a combination of the mental and physical, but mostly you're channeling energy to the recipient to try and get them to relax. I volunteered to have Petri work on me in front of the class. I was thinking deep relaxation is exactly what I need right now. I had woke up severely congested with a head cold, and I haven't been sleeping much, and I've also been battling some belly issues along with sore muscles. So sign me up, because this gal could use some deep relaxation in one or all of the above areas. For purposes of the demonstration, Petri was positioned in front of me, and I had feet hip distance apart and hands in prayer pose. He was going to demonstrate a drop back (standing backend) through use of deep relaxation energy techniques. So I'll explain this from what I can recall and then I'll include the version from my fellow classmates.

Example of the drop back process

I stood there and tried to relax ... first time was unsuccessful. Again we tried and I was not relaxing. So finally on the third try I truly tried to relax, but was still pretty stiff. The next thing I know, darkness crept over my eyelids. I completely blacked out. I'm not sure for how long but it felt like a really long time. The next thing I know I felt like I was falling forward my vision returned just for a moment long enough to recognize that I was in a forward fold, arms dangling and I was a bit skewed to the left side of my body. I couldn't hear anything, except for Petri asking me if I was okay, and what was I feeling. I responded to say I blacked out and my fingers felt tingly. Slowly, Petri started to pull me back up, with his hands on my waist, all the way very slowly until I was standing on both of my feet. This felt like a rope was pulling me up one vertebrate at a time. When I stood up, my I vision went black again. Petri had me in his arms and very slowly sat me down on the mat, and then laid me down. I couldn't see very clearly and it was hard for me to understand what was being said. Eventually my hearing returned and Petri asked me how I was feeling. I described a tingling sensation in my body and that I blacked out. I continued to lay there until I could start to move my wrists and ankles, and felt somewhat normal. He helped me to stand up and walk over to my seat where I sat. I was not very aware of what else was happening in the room, but I felt that all eyes were on me. Petri asked the students to try out a lighter version of this technique on one another, but caveat that he had gone very deeply on me, and that this would not be the suggestion to practice here and now.

So, once I sat down, Grace and Petri accompanied me. I asked them what happened. Here is roughly the conversation, If I remember correctly:

Petri: You were not relaxing into the back bend. The first few times we started to drop back you were still in control. So, I went deeper into the energy and then you relaxed.

Grace: He started to lift you back up and massage your back, and then you dropped forward from the waist, and looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut. (Readers: Petri was holding my waist, so I didn't collapse and hit the floor or anything of that sort). When you flung forward there wasn't a sound in the room, everyone looked at one another and visually said 'oh shit', because as you went forward, you tilted towards the crowd and your eyes were WIDE OPEN, but you were white as a ghost. Your arms were shaking and it looked like you were having a seizure (Grace later told me that because I was wearing a striped shirt, I looked like Beatle Juice - ha!).

Me: I remember this, but I couldn't hear what everyone was saying. This is when I was waking up and felt like I was falling.

Grace: Nobody was saying anything.

Me: (I thought to myself: Wait, really? I thought Petri was explaining the technique?) How long was I out for?

Grace: Just a few minutes.

Petri: I did pull you back up to standing like I was pulling a rope.

Me: Did you have your hands on my body to help me back up?

Grace: No! He was not touching you at all! He was just using his hands in a way that looked like he was pulling an imaginary rope. Your body was reacting like you were being pulled back up by a physical rope.

Me: WHOA, it felt just like that!! Whoa, my fingers are still tingling, I feel like I've got a body high, like maybe I smoked marijuana.

Petri: Yes, like a kundalini sensation. Once you experience this, you've opened a door, you'll be able to experience this again. We went a little deeper than I planned. That's about the deepest relaxation one can attain. You'll be able to heal others now.

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I continued to sit there for a moment, just taking it all in. Feeling very light, but also aloof. I went to the bathroom, because that was one sensation that crept up pretty quickly as I came to on the mat after I regained consciousness. Then for the rest of class, I kept going over in my mind what I had just experienced. I couldn't partake in the last portion of class, where we learn to heal ourselves, because I was just trying to reground myself back down to planet earth! So if you're wondering if I am still okay, I am indeed. I ate a bit of dinner and just sat there very quietly. Grace and Sonja were in disbelief, usually I'm the chatty one, asking about everyone's day and sharing stories. But tonight I was very stoic, like I was in another place. Which they were right, I felt light, but disconnected from that moment in time. I was aware of the conversations but wasn't actively partaking. I called Devin to tell him about what happened, and as he put it, "Mystical, unexplainable experience in India. Check". It was so surreal but here I am two hours later and I can still feel the tingles in my fingertips. When I close my eyes, it feels like my eyelids are dancing.

I have only experienced energy flow a few times before this. And always on a much smaller scale. I'm fascinated and intrigued by what I experienced this evening. I'm hoping I can channel some of this deep relaxation and sleep soundly tonight. I am fairly exhausted, so that's it for tonight.

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The Next Morning

So, I slept for 12 hours and feel like I could still sleep longer. I feel very relaxed, my head feels better, not nearly as congested, and my body feels very soft and light. I joined the girls for brekkie and told them about my night. While I was falling asleep I could hear all the sounds. The cricket outside my window, the couple next store fighting and crying. The motorbike coming from miles down the road. The odd thing is that I do have good hearing, but I felt like I could hear much much more. Even now at the breakfast table, I can hear those around me in conversation from half a room away and I feel like I'm sitting right next to them. I saw Petri and he checked on me, and was glad that I just slept and rested. He also encouraged me to take it easy and continue to relax, so that's exactly my plan. The plan today is to rest by the pool, and observe in the afternoon class. I can't really explain how I feel today other than just different, there is a new softness.