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Holotropic Breathwork

Boy in a Suitcase

05:47 / 17.10.02

Hey all–wondering if anybody has any experience with this. I've heard all kinds of things about it–yesterday I was persuing a local new age bookstore and came across the book "Stoned Free" which was an early effort by everybody's pal Douglas Rushkoff before he became "the rightful heir to Marshall McLuhan." In the book he says that breathwork (which I had heard was some super-elite psychotheraputic technology) basically involves lying on the floor in the dark, listening to music, and breathing heavy for an hour. Huh. This sounds pretty loopy but I went home and tried it, and did so again just now. None of the promised "crazy-ass psychedelic shit" but I did have some interesting experiences, like feeling extreme pain in my chest.

Anybody here in the know about this kind of stuff?

07:35 / 17.10.02

I think this kind of technique can be very powerful. It can also really whup you round the head if you don't know what to expect. Breath is a key to our phyisology and a direct route into parts of ourselves we might normally be unconcious of. All yoga and most martial arts I've come across cultivate an awareness of breath.
You can find some stuff on Holotropic Breathing in Dave Lee's book Chaotopia (republished by Mandrake of Oxford).

I've been practising Christopher Hyatt's Energised Meditation exercises for a while now and they really kick ass. Hyatt's exercises are based on stuff he learnt from Israel Regardie who in turn was influenced by Wilhelm Reich. Reich was a orginally a star pupil of Freud's who broke with the master adn went off and formed a much more immeadiate school of therapy based on breathwork and the body. Reich's writings are well worth checking out if your interestd in the theraputic side of breathwork.

More later.

11:47 / 17.10.02

I believe Holotropic Breathwork comes from the work of Stanislav Grof, and he developed it as a non-psychedelic way of accessing some of our hidden traumas/ectasies. Anyway who has actually read his books is welcome to correct me here.

The stuff from Dave Lee's book is actually called Vivation, and developed from rebirthing - rebirthing was felt to programme people to expect trauma and breaththough because of the lingustics used. Vivation concentrates more on "programming oneself for ectasty"/ reprogramming trauma.

Reich's stuff developed from a pschyoanalytical framework and he went off to make some very weird discoveries about energy, in our environment and in our bodies. He's an amazing figure in his own right. His theraputic technique basically rests on getting in touch with the bodies energy through breathwork and then working on chronically tense muscles. His theory is that these tensions were taken on in childhood and have now become part of our character structure, supressing unwanted/traumatic emotion (the term he uses is "character armour"). Thru work on these tensions we can integrate or release these feelings etc. etc.

The sequence in an early Invisibles where Tom O'Bedlam slaps Dane around a bit is a bit like an impromteau session of Reichian therapy.

14:22 / 17.10.02

Yes, Holotropic Breathwork was originated (in some sense) by Stansislav Grof. It's essentially quite similar to Vivation, Rebirthing, etc.

The basic technique is what's call "continuous circular breathing", where one breathes slowly and deeply, exhaling without pause and then inhaling, again without a pause or break.

I think if your chest is hurting, you may be trying too hard.

16:18 / 17.10.02

Can this be done successfully in combination with other techniques? (Certain kinds of yoga, meditation, maybe even floatation tanks?)

XXII:X:II = XXX

16:22 / 17.10.02

A bit off topic, but Doug Rushkoff appears to be in the process of reinventing himself again, beginning with the themes in Escape Strategy but continuing in his forthcoming Nothing Sacred: The Case For Open Source Judaism. Soon we may be referring to him as "the rightful heir to Moses Maimonedes."

17:37 / 17.10.02

Hmm - i was just reading The Excluded Middle anthology before I logged on here, and guess which bit?

A section of an interview with Michael Grosso where he mentions holotropic breathing.

'Hmm,' I said to myself, I said, 'I'll have to ask the Barbelith guys about that...'

Synchronicity city!

Boy in a Suitcase

18:28 / 17.10.02

Slow breathing or fast breathing? Is the big question. Because I am hearing both.

Doug is a god is a verb.

07:07 / 18.10.02

Slow breathing or fast breathing - depends on which technique you're using - the Reichian rooted stuff would use slow deep breaths from the belly, while Vivation beathing uses breath as a way to modulate the feelings and sensations that come up - fast and deep to increase sensation, slow and deep to explore same and fast/shallow to decrese sensation if it becomes overwhelming/ uncomfortable (slow/shallow is avoided because you fall asleep).