Day 15

Wow...Holy Kamoly this sure is getting interesting to me. Today's session was unlike any I've experienced in any of the breathwork sessions I've done this round or the many I've done in the past.

I began thinking it wouldn't be anything intense, wondering if my body would still be bubbling from a few days before. Then the breath started to breathe me. What I mean by that is that it just went into its own rhythm instead of me trying to make it harder or faster.

At first, mind thought to "work on" the third chakra as that was what came up yesterday. But then I felt the most bizarre thing....never felt it before. It was like a rolling flutter of energy (man this stuff is so difficult to describe) started a bit above my heart moving outward and down my hands. It kept happening. I just continued to breathe and feel, but then it felt like Body wanted more assistance. So I began a thymus tap. This is the endocrine gland located above the heart which is pretty shriveled up by adulthood. Alternative healers (of a certain flavor) suggest doing a tapping on it every day to restimulate it to grow and open. Then..shoot...can't remember how many years ago, but I heard that some chakra healers were saying that this was beginning to open as one of the chakra centers.

I don't know about that stuff, but I do know that my body was feeling what it was feeling and it wanted me to tap it. Then pound it, like an neurotic gorilla (these are the things that flash through this brain). So I did. I waled on it, using fingers alternating with closed fists. While it hurt (the area was really tender to the touch) I kept feeling like it was moving the energy. And there was no way that I couldn't be doing it. Yes, I could have stopped but the urge was strong to continue so I did it for a long while.

Then my breathing really started to be raspy. I kept drawing in a tremendous amount of air, and doing the outbreath just as strongly, moaning/rasping with each outbreath...um..kinda loudly.

I felt strong energy in a continuous flow out my hand and feet. Then, my body started to wave big time with the breaths and with each inhale, my head wanted to go back so my face was upward to the sky. I started to feel energy coming out my mouth and all of a sudden images of the movie "The Fifth Element" and pictures of saints with those shootings of energy came to mind. I remember flashing that the breath is life force. Every time I tried to slow the breath down, Body wanted more..not to push it, just to open. Strong beams of energy kept flowing out my hands, feet, heart, and mouth. I was able to let them flow (thanks, I think to the Tantric work I've done with holding energy and not needing to direct or stop the flow....high states of arousal with total relaxation).

I remembered flashes of an email I had written to a friend describing tetany in breathwork and how I don't get it any more. As he is a biological scientist, he was trying to understand the physiology of what's going on with me here. I conveyed my personal experiences in both my body and my coaching that when people start doing this breathwork, they exhibit many of the symptoms of hyperventilation. The first sign is a tingling around the mouth and fingers. Eventully it can lead to tetany, which generally first shows up in the hands and feet freezing up into claws. It's very painful and can lead to the whole body freezing up in pain. It has been my experience, though, that when the breather has a release of some emotional or psychic pain, both the emotions and the body release their hold simultaneously, not more pain, just bliss. So that what's going on can't be explained (to my satisfaction, anyway) as mere physiology of O2 excess or CO2 deficiency (they go together).

I told him that I no longer get that tetany of the hands or feet, but that my body went to pain where the blocks remained. What I forgot to talk about is the huge amount of energy that flows out the hands and feet. It's like there's energy pouring out holes in the palms and soles. I flashed that in a new breather, it could be that the hands and feet contract because their bodies are not prepared for the incredible amount of energy, so subconsciously try to hold it back.

Mind goes in flashes during these sessions because it's just stuff coming up/into consciousness. Unfortunately, it leaves just as quickly.

When I stopped stomping my upper chest and just breathed, I felt tremendous movement pouring out of that area. Opening. Flow. I felt the energy move into my throat. It wanted to be open. At first, that movement with wave and head back, face towards the sky was enough, but then it wanted to be able to completely relax into the feelings without having to effort in any way....even keeping itself up.

So, even though it was difficult to move, I tried to position the zafu pillow on its side so that I could drape my head over the elevated edge. That wouldn't work (too much efforting to hold my body up) so I went on a bed and hung my head over the side, throat exposed and continued to breathe.

After a few minutes, I felt a bubble of energy (can't figure out how else to describe it) start to form in my second chakra between the two hip bones. It kinda bubbled there...sometimes moving up a bit into the belly...then it would be down there again in the second ckakra area. I didn't feel it go down, like maybe it flowed up a bit with a breath then formed again? Not sure, but I definitely felt something trippy.

Not sure how long I stayed there, but eventually, the breath started to slow down. I tried to lay on my side, which is the position my body usually goes into for comfort, but it was having none of that. I had to be on my back, so that the chest was unimpeded. There was no way that amount of energy was going to be slowed down by any body positioning my mind thought appropriate or went to out of habit.

Oh...should mention that all day yesterday I felt my chest opening more and more breaths. I'm noticing I'm standing and sitting straighter. Body won't not.(smile)

It came to me to try and write this all down as soon as I could move..so I made myself get up, go to the computer and write. Dizzy. This is what was written with eyes closed, hardly able to move my fingers...no editing:

"not out of session yet, but need to write before I forget...stumble to computer...no pain in stomachor heart..moved to thuippoer chest...thyumus...pressure....keep breathing. body wants to do thymus tap so did until pounding on chst for long time.. pain...paniting...hoarse breathing ..pain sejsatono fo letting go i nhands feet ,ehce....head moves up and ak with each breath...five elements...pictures os fisaings...hands no pain but were before....eintnest pain snesaion..not pain...energy life..moving into throat....ears pluggeg...head swimmingn...go to bed and hang head over side....intesne energy from throat...thenfrom fifth chakra..bivbtating...slo ball of negy moving from there up..."

Hehehe..I'm thinking I translated it pretty well..who knows what some of that middle stuff was. Note to self...get a tape recorder.

After writing the above, I stumbled into my bed and pulled the covers over me to snuggle. I felt my body humming and my upper chest prickle. It felt like a cross between wool and what I would imagine burlap to feel like on the skin- more than an itch, not pain. I feel asleep for two hours, coming in and out of sleep and not being able to move, just feeling all the energy still working.

The rest of the day, today, I feel my breath all the way to my pubic bone and all the way up to my shoulders. When I check in, I notice I'm doing deep belly breathing even unconsciously now, like I used to before this last two years of slowly shutting my body down in pain.

During the course of today's meditation, I wondered what would happen if I did this, not for a month, but for a year. Today I thought I could just totally devest and start my cave stint (my kids have always said they think I'll end up in a cave some day, a hermit/nun), breathing, feeling the energy flowing all inside me and around me. Yum.

There's lots of stuff coming up around abundance for me. A few days ago, I realized that when outrageous abundance seems very close, somewhere way deep, I get terrified. I hadn't noticed until awhile back when it came to me that every time it gets close I drink lots or eat a bunch of chocolate.

I hadn't even noticed it before....but it's like I can't handle it so I try to bury the feelings of fear...like it's too much so I have to weigh my body down to handle the possibility of it all and stay grounded.

I also realized today that I have attracted a mirror of judgment into my life embodied in two people. Both are friends. I project that both have judgments to differing degrees around what I'm doing or not doing with my life right now. Both want to support me and consider me their friend. They care. But I feel judged. I am not saying they judge me as they have never said that directly...I am saying I am projecting that. The person who was my previous mirror for that died in April, and I wondered who would show up to take his place. Today I was able to identify where.

And I realized that in the stuff I'm doing/not doing with my life...the stuff/gift that triggered my decision to to do this journey to release and surrender/allow all that will be, mostly around abundance and relationship. It's not that I want the money, the stuff. It's not that I care that I may decide to sell my house.

It's the shame of failure. I have it inside me and I have plenty of mirrors for me.....my kids before, some of my friends, many people who know me but not well...those who only know some surface stuff.

As I've been talking about with my best friend for awhile now, I'm in the middle of something where if it succeeds I get to be seen as a warrior who believed in My Voice-who trusted my inner guidance no matter what the world around me said, no matter what kind of fear it's brought up for me.

If it doesn't come through, I will get the opportunity to judge myself as an idiot..someone who was in the middle of something that made no sense, had no footing, was not grounded or safe in any way. Not logical. The Path of the Risk Taker.

But this is the really fun part: the longer I stay the more of a warrior or fool I become...and all depends on forces that lead to outcomes outside my control. (kinda sorta sounds like life, yes?)

It's not about the loss of the "stuff," it's the ego shame/loss of having made decisions when I'm using logic that is not linear. It's bringing up all my stuff around my Path, all my memories of past lives when I was burned. And in this life, there isn't the fear of being literally burned. It's what I call "the dumb shit factor" (a phrase I coined from that friend who died. He used to say so many people "were dumbshits"....and I told him I had a hard time trusting him with my inner stuff because I thought he would lable me that in his mind).

I've been tip toe-ing on the edges of this shame....not wanting to really embrace how it will be to walk thinking that my decisions had led to a major step...no giant leap backward.

My prayer today, while on my walk, was to learn to live with this and surrender to that, allow that possibility in my life...

How will it be to walk if this does not work within the next few months? I am no longer running from it. I am willing to face that terror now, so that if it happens, I have practiced it so that it is my friend.

And in the midst of all this, I'm really pretty darn happy and at peace. It's all just awarenesses, flittering through. Kinda like...oh...that's interesting....hm....would ya look at that....cool....nice to be putting things like that together.

Funny....fear if it works, fear if it doesn't. What a pretty pickle!

And, wow...feeling even more exposed and vulnerable with this all out there. Whew....
__________________________________________

I send a prayer to the monks and people of Myanmar/Burma. May they find peace and freedom within the contrast they are experiencing now.