Some Insights + Feelings From 24th Holotropic Breathwork Workshop

At 9.00am, desperately needed a drink. Sank into very deep depression, feeling I wanted to come out of all my therapies. Around 10.10am rang my therapist, Alan, and told him what was going on for me. Some insights came as I was talking to him, like how my craving for anything which blocks out all my feelings, still remains very much with me. He was very supportive and asked me to call him again at around 2.00pm, which I did. By then I was even more distressed, panicking that I wasn’t going to make it through the day without hurting myself one way or another.

Sometime in the evening, became aware that I hadn’t given in to the tremendous urge to have “just one drink” and felt really proud of myself. Having realised that my breathwork sessions must after all be doing something for me, I decided to tell my husband of my great achievement.

Had a very disturbing dream that I was living with my adoptive parents in my present house. In one of the back bedrooms, where the window is without net curtains, I was naked and drying my vagina with loo paper, and when I looked up a woman was staring over at me from her own bedroom window. I was mortified and completely hysterical.

From that dream I went into another. I was in our front bedroom when my father told me that my mother was sick and needed to rest.

She was lying on a mattress on the floor and was wearing the same white heavy cardigan she wore for years before she died. I hated them being with me. All I could feel was a dreadful sense of fear, plus, I was straight back into that side of my personality which longed to know the real me.

Most of all I hated my mother being sick, not because I loved her, which I don’t think I ever really did, but because I knew I would have to relive the terror I experienced one afternoon, when, as a child, I saw and heard her vomiting into a basin on the living room floor. At the time I became hysterical, not knowing what was happening to my mother.

21st Feb, ’97:
I have blocked everything out from yesterday, which has left me feeling numb, but sounding fine.

22nd Feb, ’97:
Took a shower for the first time in seven days. Feeling confident in myself. Question if my euphoria, Wednesday (12/2), was really the onset of my depression this week. I’m finally beginning to understand the pattern of my mood swings.

At 10.00pm suddenly became extremely tired and agitated. Went straight to bed, behaving exactly like a nackered toddler. Almost immediately on getting into bed, was seized by an incredible anger, which had me violently tossing and turning and making really angry sounds. Each time I woke up during the night, repeated this performance.

24th Feb, ’97:
Could it be possible that as my sessions have dealt with really shit stuff recently, that I’m trying to deny the reality of the experiences by craving substances (tranquillisers and booze)?

1st Mar, ’97:
I’ve come out of the depression and I’m feeling great. Did a lot of housework. Around 11.00pm, while sitting on the loo, suddenly wondered, if the lower stomach pain experienced by some women, including myself, both during and following a breathwork session, is caused by a sudden release of the hormone, Oxytocin, into the bloodstream as a result of hyperventilation?

5th Mar, ’97:
In the early hours of this morning, woke up shouting and twisting my body all over the bed. Intense anger.

Is there a remote connection between a heart attack and a panic attack, given that, with the exception of the associated heart pain, the symptoms are very similar?. Could the underlying cause of a heart attack be repressed fear? (concept occurred while taking shower).

As I entered a supermarket, blind panic set in. Everything blurred, felt I was going to pass out, terrified of everything.

6th Mar, ’97:
Woke up 6.00am sobbing my heart out. Dreamed that I’d been publicly humiliated and rejected by people I’d previously been very friendly with. Some of these people even did breathwork sessions with me. This happened in a church, where I was supposed to read something during a Mass, but I couldn’t understand when I was meant to read it. I felt so stupid and guilty about letting everyone down. I continued crying for about ten minutes after I woke up.

7th Mar, ’97:
Shortly before I woke up this morning, dreamed I had a very chesty cough. Also, I was in hospital waiting to be taken down for an operation. I was looking forward to being knocked out.