Getting High on Air — My Experience with Rebirthing Breathwork in India
I got myself loaded on oxygen in the Himalaya.
In my time in Dharamshala, I went to a regular Shivananda yoga class, which always started with some pranayama (controlled breath) practices. While those were pretty pleasant, and a fine way to start the physical exercises I did not get strong effects from alternate nostril breathing, in terms of shifts in consciousness. Much more effective in this regard for me has been the Wim Hof Breathing method, which is based on a Tibetan practice called Tummo. You can read about my experiences with Wim Hof Breathing during my Vipassana meditation retreat here. But other than that I have never had a proper guided Breathwork class before.
So what’s Rebirthing all about?
Before I saw a flyer for a one-day-class in the upper regions of Dharamshala, I have never heard of Rebirthing Breathwork. Short research showed me that it is not that different from Holotropic Breathwork — which I always have been curious about. So I decided to give it a shot.
Rebirthing Breathwork is called like that because the guy who invented it, claimed to have had visions of his birth while doing it. But this doesn’t mean that everybody will actually go there (and I didn’t). It just means that you might have recollections of your past during the process — and maybe that you feel somewhat reborn when it’s done.
The afternoon class took place in Upper Bhagsu, a part of Dharamshala in the upper hills, populated with hash-smoking hippies, spiritual seekers, restaurants like “Monkey Mind” and “Buddha Smile”, yoga schools and so on. The room in the simple stone building was brightly lit, spacious and had a view over the small forest nearby.
I had the feeling to be in good hands here. The facilitators of the course were a skinny dude in white pants and a white t-shirt and a hippy girl. The guy welcomed our group of about seven people, explained the procedure in detail, showed us the breathing technique we were about to do and gave advice in case anything would come up during the session. He was open, friendly and neutral. With neutral, I mean that he didn’t force his interpretations of the effects of the session onto us — something I valued even more after my second Breathwork experience — of the shamanic kind.
Intention and Osho Meditation
We were told to make up an intention for the session, something you want to accomplish. This might be healing of bad experiences, pain relief, more creativity, whatever is bugging you and you like to address. We had to build pairs and tell each other our intention. After that, we would warm up with an “Osho Kundalini Meditation”.
I mostly know Osho (aka Rajneesh) from the “Wild Wild Country” Netflix documentary, so I was somewhat excited to experience his method first-hand. Disappointingly, neither a savage sex-orgy nor barbaric fits of rage ensued.
This is how Osho meditation works: It has four stages, we practiced each of them for ten minutes.
First, you stand up straight and dance to rhythmical drumbeat music. You keep your eyes closed and try to observe your body. The movement is supposed to come from the legs upward, kind of in a wriggling way. It felt weird to me to move blindly and try to watch myself at the same time.
Then, the music turned more “shanti” and we were supposed to “free dance”, still with our eyes closed. Swaying of arms and generally hippyish, oriental movements were encouraged.
In the third phase, we sat down and meditated with focus on the present moment. My head felt warm in this phase.
Finally, we laid on our back into Shavasana and relaxed.
The Breathwork Session
After this warm-up we went directly into the actual breathwork. We laid flat down onto the yoga mat, without pillow or headrest. We got some toilet paper in case we needed to clear our windpipes. They also gave out blindfolds, but as a prepared psychonaut, I had my own sleeping mask with me. We were instructed to breathe deep through the mouth into the chest. The rhythm was deeper and faster than with normal breathing and without break between in- and out-breaths. All of this was accompanied by beating ethno tunes. (You can find this kind of music by typing “holotropic music” into YouTube)
If you listen to stories about people and their experiences with deep breathwork exercises, you will come across one quote over and over: “I can’t believe that these effects only come from breathing!” Same for me. Just after a few minutes of deep breathwork I became very light-headed and felt a tingling sensation in my fingertips, going up my hands and arms. I knew this Tetany effect already from practicing Wim Hof Breathing, but this was more intensive.
Very soon I felt the tingling becoming stronger and stronger. My hands turned into lobster claws, which means that my palms and fingers bent inside as if trying to touch the forearms. I recalled the last time this happened, it was in the Peruvian highlands, while under the subcutaneous influence of frog secretion at a Kambō-session. But this here was no mysterious animal poison, just my own breath.
Extraordinary States of Body and Mind
The Tetany went from my arms into the sides of my body. I felt like being in a clamp, not able to move, except for breathing. The sides of my head and face started to vibrate, even my tongue was tingling. By now the breath movements got their own rhythm, I was pushing the deep breaths automatically. There was some pain, like from cramping a body part but it wasn’t too bad. I was more astounded than suffering. I imagine that some people might get anxious here, but I knew that I could just normalize my breath and the effects would go away — other than with a drug where you have no choice but to ride it out. At one point, one of the helpers put their hand on me and told me to flatten my breath but to keep the momentum.
Psychically, I zoned into a different state of consciousness. My thoughts became more reflective and memories turned up with new meanings. It became clearer to me that my thoughts have been going in circles lately with no real purpose. I was able to watch my inner life with more distance. Some very recent events came back to me, like the helper asking me earlier if I had enjoyed the nice weather today. I hadn’t. I’ve taken it for granted and was occupied with my ruminations instead of noticing the pretty day outside. There was a lot of reflection and some emotions also came out. I also had some pretty stunning closed eye visuals. There was definitely some interesting geometry involved.
Coming Down
The session must have taken 90 minutes or so, at some point the music got softer and we came back to our normal breathing. There was a phase of relaxation and afterwards, we made a circle to share our experience. Someone started crying during the session and in the aftermath expressed his shock about this sudden emotional breakdown. Others had a very pleasant experience, one girl almost fell asleep and didn’t feel much.
This was the first time I have done breathwork under guidance. It was stronger than expected and very eye-opening towards the possibilities about exploring your consciousness just with your own air intake. I appreciated the openness and neutrality of the guides even more after my second experience with “shamanic breathwork”, two months later.
