I had my fourth transformational breathwork session today, and each one is different as they say.
My initial one was torture, with tetany from head to toe and feeling quite sick for days afterwards. We took it a little easier during the following sessions, so they were more neutral, with some tingling, slight tetany, and other symptoms. And this fourth one was different again.
Some typical symptoms for me include…
- tetany, especially during the first couple of session and less now
- a sense of pressure in the solar plexus and belly area, with the two quite distinct from each other
- tingling in arms and legs, and cheeks
- nausea during and following the first session
- following and between sessions, a sense of quiet joy/bliss throughout and in the body, as if inside of each cell
The most memorable part today was three brief periods with a very strong, almost unbearable experience. I cannot easily put it into words, but it almost seemed like emotions as infants or (say) a fish (!) may experience it. Proto-emotions. Each one with a slightly different flavor. It came up, was unbearable, and then released and dissolved as quickly as it appeared, and each time it was as if my hearing opened up. There was a distinctly different, and more open, experience of hearing.
It made me think of how emotions appear to be formed by stories, in at least two ways. They emerge as the consequence of different stories, and different stories create different emotions. And the emotion itself is labeled by a story, making it appear solid and real and easily identifiable. Maybe our early emotions are just proto-emotions, as the one coming up for me in the session, and these are then refined and differentiated through social interactions (learning from others) and stories later on. For instance, first just an undifferentiated ball of uncomfortable emotions. Then, refining these into the range of emotions we are familiar with, such as fear, anger, sadness. The stories help refine and develop them, and also help guide which one that is to emerge, and how it is labeled.
I also notice how these sessions help with a deepening into an easy, comfortable, bodily felt-sense of trust, and of being utterly ordinary, a seamless part of humanity. It feels very much like a reorganization of the body, releasing some of the patterns reflecting beliefs and reactive emotions.