A Breath Too Far

Even though most of the adverse effects of my meditation experience are behind me now, I find myself still trying to incorporate and understand everything that happened to me over the last year and a half when breathwork meditation blew my sense of self right out the window.

I have been in and around the recovery community for decades which has always encouraged prayer and meditation. Because of my early religious training, I leaned on prayer rather than meditation even though I’ve always leaned toward agnosticism. Then after the 2016 US election, I couldn’t even pray anymore so I found myself looking for a new way to stay connected to a Higher Power that did not rely on theology. I started seeking out meditation options. I participated in a Oneness Blessing meditation group for a while. The Oneness Blessing (also called Deeksha) is a transfer of energy from one person to another individual or group. I had a life-changing, beautiful experience after one of those sessions and I have never been the same since.

Soon after, we moved to another state and I wanted to build on that experience through the practice of meditation, since I was having a much better experience with meditation than I had ever had with prayer alone. At one point I discovered pranayama breathwork which is a form of active meditation that involves breathing first into the belly and then high into the chest/heart while lying in Shavasana. These classes were very intense, at times lasting up to 45 minutes. I took classes with a certified teacher who became a friend and also started doing shorter sessions at home with a teacher I found on a popular meditation app.

At first, it was deeply moving and transforming. I felt more connected to my body, mind and spirit and to the world around me. I felt immense gratitude and a sense of wholeness all the time. But after one very powerful private session with my teacher/friend, I started to spend more and more time in an emotionally heightened state outside of my meditation practice. I’d cry at the drop of a hat, mostly out of a feeling of love and gratitude but still I felt weird when I broke down in front of others, like in a support group. Then I started having prolonged bouts of anxiety. I’ve had my struggles with fear, of course, but this was way more than I’d experienced in a very long time. I kept asking myself “Why are you reacting so strongly? What is wrong with you?”

Then one night at a support group meeting, I felt suddenly disconnected from everyone in that room. I felt a psychic “pop” like a tent stake being yanked out of the ground. It was very disturbing. I struggled to understand it through the lens of recovery, not realizing it was part of a larger event unfolding inside me. The following night I was driving home after a surprisingly difficult encounter with my breathwork teacher. I was both baffled and scared at how quickly our visit had gone sideways. All at once, my entire sense of myself dissolved. It felt like the rest of my psychic tent detached and blew away. It felt like there was no protection between me and everything else, including all the malevolence and darkness in the world. I thought maybe if I went home and did my breathwork, it would help. This spurred a strong wave of revulsion came over me almost as if the Universe was saying, “DO. NOT. DO. THAT!”

For the next few days, I felt like I was having a bad LSD trip. Disoriented, dissociated, bereft. I told my teacher I needed a break, but I couldn’t verbalize why. Because they were also my friend, they took my distance personally, deepening the rift between us. How could I tell them that this practice they had taught me felt sanity-threatening and revolting?

When I experienced their reaction to what I was going through, my sense of disassociation and fear got worse. I felt I had nowhere else to go but within. After I stopped the breathwork I started journaling and engaging in a prolonged period of self-reflection, trying to attend to what was happening to me. For the next year or so, I continued to have bouts of feeling naked, vulnerable and pretty lost because I still didn’t know what was happening to me. I suffered from racing thoughts and anxiety, insomnia, panic-like feelings, a sense of feeling judged, shamed, embarrassed, mood swings and even two episodes of maniacal laughing fits! The singularity of the experience was very isolating.

But I also had life-altering experiences of my Higher Power showering me with love and a deep, profound sense of being seen and understood (I needed that since I was walking around feeling completely misunderstood!). As lost as I felt, I decided that I wasn't going to give up on myself - there was an answer and I made a choice to walk through it. Slowly, I was learning to trust my intuition; to go to my Inner Self to find friendship, solace, wisdom and ecstasy.

One of the best ways I have found to connect with the Divine in me and in the Universe is through my art practice. I am a Creative and found that imagery and poetry offer safe pathways to the mystical side of my being. As I wrote, or did yoga or walked, images would fall into my brain and I would try and put those on canvas. When words failed me, art allowed me to externalize and make sense of what I was going through.

Here are some examples of my art, all ways of trying to express the experience I was having diving into the unknown:

As I started to get past the worst of my confusion and disorientation, I realized, with shock, how much power I had given this teacher. I unwittingly had fallen into a teacher/acolyte role with them. I started to connect that to some of my early childhood trauma being raised in a high-control religion where I was taught to trust other’s spiritual authority over my own. I dove into that meditation fully trusting it would be nothing but wonderful and through that blind trust, I ended up being spiritually wounded. Very painful.

But all this self-inquiry and soul work didn’t entirely explain what I was going through. A few months ago, I came across Dr. Willoughby Britton’s documentary about adverse effects of meditation. It truly was a godsend. The more I read about the research and read all the personal stories, I realized this was the missing piece! I finally had an understanding of what had happened to me. Much of my anxiety about what I was going through was because I didn’t understand. I thought I was losing my mind! And when I found Cheetah House, I almost instantly started to feel better. That’s how I knew I was on the right track.

One of the gifts that has come out of this dark night of the soul, as one of my friends calls it, has been a new, solid trust in my own spiritual authority. Attending the Cheetah House support group has helped me strengthen that. I am trusting and loving my OG(my original girl!) now more than ever. I am connecting in a new way to myself, the spirit within and the world around me that is looser and more spacious. I am taking Dr. Britton’s suggestion to discover what practice(s) work best for me. I currently practice yoga a few times a week: I am experimenting with a more gentle version of breathwork, with sound-bathing and walking meditation. Painting and writing and reading poetry also help give my soul a more generous, illuminated vantage point. But I am watching to make sure it’s done in balance with all my other mental and emotional faculties too. I have also learned I am a mystical person, a tendency I might have inherited from my Mom, which means I may be more susceptible to getting overtaken by these transcendent experiences. So I’m trying to learn more about that too.

In one of my sound bath meditations recently, an image appeared in my mind of a kimono floating in a lily pond. It really moved me, but it took a few days to understand why. I now see the kimono as a symbol of my new sense of identity. My old staked tent has been replaced with a beautiful open garment that lets life flow in and out without being obliterated.

I hope through participation in the Cheetah House support group I can continue to learn and support this emerging self I’m liking so much. Thank you for your research. These days, I am more curious about the Unknown than I am afraid.