The Circular Breath

My mind is restless and it is only making me more anxious. I am supposed to focus on my breathing and let loose my thoughts, but the more I think about focusing on my breathing, the more uptight I am getting. I don’t feel like I can breathe properly and even though I am breathing continuously, my mind is telling me I am out of breath. This makes me panic internally. I need to get control of my mind, but this requires thought and I am not supposed to be thinking. So I think about not thinking. That’s not working. Ok, let me focus on my breathing then. No, I have done this already, and it made me almost claustrophobic. I need to stop panicking. To stop overthinking this all. Why can’t I just let go?! I know she is watching me and I am probably doing this all wrong. I really need to stop stressing myself out like this, but what if she asks me questions which I cannot answer. I feel incredibly insecure right now.

Those were the thoughts which perpetually looped in my mind as I lay on the floor of an unfamiliar room, with this almost stranger sitting crossed legged next to me, whilst peering down at my probably ridiculous facial expressions. The initial humiliation stirred into fear was so, very, very overwhelming and even though I had signed myself up for this experience, I was beginning to think I had totally screwed it up, began to wonder what the heck I had been thinking in the first place and also continued to remind myself that I was not supposed to be thinking at all.

Just another breath and absolutely every “conscious and anxious” thought and feeling within me evaporated into thin air. I have no adequate words to describe that moment, other than, I was “in my mind, but not my head”. I suddenly became aware of my presence in a space which was not reality and I knew that. Probably best described as some kind of regression I suppose. Like gaming in “third person” mode, I was suddenly watching myself in this strange and yet oddly familiar, “game play”.

Like it wasn’t strange enough already that I was experiencing this almost “dual consciousness” of being somewhere that I wasn’t and knowing that, I was also becoming acutely aware of the fact that I was not only seeing myself, listening and watching, but I was also feeling every single emotion my “third person player” was. It felt like real time, but was probably shorter than that, not unlike dreams.

Like being stuck in a cartoon of some kind, where you are grabbed by the ankles and swung like an elasticized body, from the one side to the other; It threw me into my past and showed me so much of what has hurt me along the way, then it slapped me into the future and made me look at everything I am passionate about being an absolute reality at that time - and lastly, it dumped me in some strange kind of alternate present, showing me, myself in ‘real scenario’, responding to certain things precisely as I should be right now, but am not.

It was a wild, weird and wonderful ride, and I was jolted out of it when I burst into tears at the internal recognition of how I had been ignoring the true voice of my “present” self. Within that space, watching, witness to and simultaneously living the moment, I was so filled with sadness and regret, shame almost, that I had been denying myself what I deserve in so many ways.

Coming out of that deep internal state which I initially doubted so greatly that I was even good enough to enter, I was completely overcome by emotion and that crossed legged stranger was no longer such. She embraced me, held me, and reminded me that I was more than ok. Reassuring me that I had simply just “unblocked a blocked drain”, so to speak. Once the intensity of emotion passed, I felt so much lighter. Brighter in fact. It was nothing short of incredible.

That was my first experience with circular breathing and it was a two hour ‘moment’ I will never forget.

Not something I had ever sought out, intended to do or even researched, but I was seeing a psychologist at the time, who was helping me through a pretty rough patch in my life, and after having had several weekly sessions, she opened up to me rather than the other way around - and told me that “focused breath work” was something she did as an alternative approach to dealing with deep seated emotional trauma.

I had no clue what I was in for, despite her grandest attempts at “filling me in” prior. I am mostly a first hand kind of person, so perhaps I didn’t really retain the pre-guidance under the assumption that I would just “handle it at the time”. Regardless, it was a life changing experience.

Perhaps you are asking - What is circular breathing?

A technique, which I learned not long after this experience, is one that has been practised by buddhist monks for centuries. Essentially, it is a breathing process where you inhale through your nose and exhale out your mouth, except you retain air in your cheeks - not unlike how a gerbil stuffs food into it’s cheeks for “later”.

I was in an environment where this technique was used for meditative purposes, but it is also quite commonly used among wind instrumentalists as well as singers, in order to create a more seamless or ‘continuous’ tone from the instrument. You breathe out the air in your cheeks and as that depletes, you simultaneously breathe in through your nose - and repeat. Practicing circular breathing for meditation or spiritual practice differs slightly though, in that there is not as much focus on the “storing” of breath in the cheeks, but rather on the fact that you are consistent and balanced in the exercise. So, you inhale deeply from your abdomen using your nose, exhale an equal length breath from your mouth and there are no pauses in between any of the inhalations or exhalations.

I cannot speak for anybody else, but my experience of it - being in a quiet and focused environment whilst lying flat on the floor, was the feeling of eventually becoming quite lightheaded and ‘lightened’ from the breathing, almost euphoric in a way. That was, once the consistent breathing finally outweighed my mind, lolz!

Looking back, I will definitely say that I was not emotionally equipped for what I threw myself into, but perhaps that is half the point. I guess if you have too many preconceived ideas or expectations with something like that it could probably ruin or even eliminate the authentic rawness and impact of it all.

At the beginning of the session, she guided me with her words in order to get me into the right mental space I suppose, but after a short while she was quiet, other than the occasional gentle and brief reassurance that everything was alright. The course of that internal adventure was purely mine and something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

I actually started writing this piece about a week ago and got to a point where I could not continue. It surfaced so many emotions within me, I just had to walk away and make time for myself to process all of it. I realised through the ‘sharing’ of the experience with you, that I myself had not quite finished “unpacking it all” and so, I took a few days to do that which I shared with you all in this post..

I realize that the actual “what” of the experience, described to all of you in terms of detail, probably doesn’t seem very profound at all, but for me to delve into that would require an entirely separate post, and perhaps I will do that at some point. It was really very personal, so I cannot say for certain I will.

I can only say this; In the moment, it made me feel incredibly vulnerable. As if I was witnessing myself, feeling my emotions and without any kind of “socially acceptable armor”. It also had me questioning the things I was watching unfold - like somebody had switched the light on in the room for the first time, and I was seeing things I had never seen before… an entirely new perspective on myself.

I am always thinking. My mind never stops and a little known fact to most about this relatively quiet and somewhat reclusive beach bum is that I actually struggle a lot with that part of myself. It causes way too much over thinking and that leads to me stressing out and ultimately anxiety. As crazy weird as that experience was, it definitely helped to calm my overactive mind, gave me the satisfaction of simultaneously having something to solve in one hand as well as having resolution in the other.

“You are more powerful when you innerstand your emotional vantage point.” ― Felicia Miracle Hankins

I shared this experience with all of you, because I am contemplating attempting another circular breathing adventure, except this time by myself… perhaps only guided by some chilled tunes. What do you think?!

Eliza xxx

^{PS. All photos are either taken by me or are my property, unless credited to someone else.}