Hawthorne: Breathing through stressors and self-doubt
My adventure was an intimate experience of breathing techniques to ease my mind and lead me into an altered state where concealed emotions and traumas can be revealed
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I was looking for some adventure on a Friday night. But instead of asking a friend out for bowling or bouldering at a local climbing gym, I had booked in for a group session for self-discovery with a Toronto breathwork and sound therapist, Mike Tsirakidis (@tsirakidis1). He’s also a firefighter and registered massage therapist, so an interesting guy.
A friend of mine had been and highly recommended it. It’s called an “inward experience” where you lie on yoga mats with eye masks on and a blanket for more than an hour of breathing and exploring what’s deep inside you. A little scary? Yes, because my mind has difficulty being still and I’ve never been able to meditate in any traditional way. And at the end of the work week, like most people, I just wanted to enjoy my after-hours without working too hard at it.
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Cacao for energy steeped in Mayan tradition
My friend said it was relaxing and kind of euphoric, so I settled in after saying hi to the person next to me and petting the cat roaming around the room before finding a perch off the floor. First, in the beautiful softly lit space, came a nice cup of hot cacao, which was delicious. The Mayans and Aztecs valued it as a medicinal resource, so the ritual piqued my curiosity. Cacao is different than hot chocolate because it is less processed and doesn’t have added sugar. The aim is to give you energy for the session so you can open yourself up to the healing to come.
Mike describes the session as an intimate experience using breathing techniques set to a musical score to ease the mind, leading you into an altered state where concealed emotions and traumas held within the body can be revealed.
How breathwork can take you deep inside to release stored stressors
The idea is that you can then release blockages and stressors for personal healing and find a sense of clarity and openness for new intentions. I need this! Likely, who doesn’t? When I think about emotional baggage, setbacks and all the pain people carry around with them, finding a way to release these imprints from your mind and body could be powerful.
Interesting, the week before I came to the session, I happened to be reading about the “heart wall.” Energy healers say this is where trapped emotional pain, invisible to everyone, triggers your subconscious mind to form a wall of energy around your heart to protect you from hurt. But the result is that the heart wall hinders your ability to feel the good stuff, like love, joy and connection. It shields you from that unless you break it down. To build something new, you have to tear down the old.
So, here I am.
Sometimes I feel insecure about who I am and where I’m going. This experience could be self-affirming. But I would be happy with calming and relaxation.
Holistic therapy to bring on the mind-body connection for healing and transformation
Mike has been doing somatic breathwork for years and says it’s addictive because it brings you right into the moment. Somatic means roughly “of the body” and this holistic therapy essentially makes the mind-body connection that people often talk about actually happen. I think this is because you have to be so present to focus on the breathing. It’s like diaphragmatic breathing, where you breathe in to fill your belly and then breathe to fill your chest as well and then you exhale.
When you start to do this quickly and repeatedly, you easily build up heat in your body. The concentration on the breathwork helps your mind to stay focused and not wander to other thoughts. Somatic breathwork is also offered as part of integrated care for mental health at various centres, so the practice is growing in popularity and acceptance as a tool for treatment.
We start the intense breathing and keep at it, listening to Mike’s voice and reassurance layered on top of the music. “You’re in a safe place, breathe, there’s no right way, just here, just now.” There’s no stopping the breathing which for me is tiring at first, but then it becomes easier and more fluid. The soundtrack that fills the room is energetic drumming and gorgeous notes, mounting with intensity at times and then slowing. He also plays a number of sound bowls that reverberate, which I learn later are sound therapy for unifying the body and mind.
Sound provides a medium for treating fragmentation in both the body and mind, as Mike writes: “When a sound wave reaches the body, it prompts distant body parts to vibrate in harmony.” When a sound wave reaches your mind, it captures your attention and grounds you. Basically, fragmentation and being disconnected lead to illness.
“In the unique case of sound immersion, where the whole body is exposed to the sound field, both heard with ears and felt with the body, the body and the mind are unified in the simultaneous, coordinated experience of the same phenomenon.”
Fascinated by the feeling of heat that started to build up inside my chest
I’m surprised by how immersed in the breathing and sounds that I become. It’s hypnotic and I feel really comfortable. While Mike initially told the group to just be open to what happens within and let it come, I was fascinated by the feeling of heat that started to build up inside my chest. It was a strong sensation that made me feel powerful and energized.
At the end of this session, we all sit and remove our eye masks, returning to our natural breath and invited to share our thoughts. One person talks about the sound from one of the larger bowls giving a feeling of water, like being immersed in blue water and the freedom that gave them. Another person said they saw lights in rainbow colours that were joyful. Oddly, I felt tears in my eyes as I told the group about the heat in my chest that was powerful. Maybe it was a release of something that would open me up. I felt so relaxed and peaceful.
I’m now trying to understand more about energy and how it works, reading that everything—our thoughts, emotions, and bodies—is made of energy that vibrates at different frequencies. Science can measure some frequencies, but there are vast energy frequencies in the universe. Here’s the challenge (I do like a challenge!): You can open yourself up to experiencing higher vibrations through breathwork and meditation that help you to better understand yourself.
In other words, I’d like to go back again for some cacao and self-exploration.
