by Amrita Grace

If you’ve never experienced breathwork, you are in for a real treat! Breathwork is a powerful healing process that brings forth your own inner healer and has the capacity to release dysfunctional patterns and addictions as well as take you into states of pleasure, delight, and bliss. It’s a highly individual process and every journey is different. It’s a natural way to experience altered states of consciousness assisted by music, your breath, and your intention.

I had my first experience with breathwork in the early 2000’s. It was called Maitri Breathwork and was led by a woman named Anahata in the small mountain community of Murphys, CA. It was an 8-hour experience. I always did like to dive in deep! I found it very healing and loved the natural altered states I could get to. Getting up to go to the bathroom was like being on another planet!

I was exposed to Holotropic Breathwork a few times after that initial experience and found it to be a mixed bag. I loved the loud, evocative music and again, the realms of consciousness not normally available to me. But there was something not quite “complete” about it. I often did not feel grounded afterward.

Then, in 2008, I had the opportunity to experience Shamanic Breathwork®. It was in this magical space that I met my Beloved. I asked him to be my co-journeyer, my breathwork partner. In Shamanic Breathwork, I found a freedom of expression, a permission to explore that had not been available to me in previous breathwork sessions. Afterward, we were given art supplies to create a mandala of our inner experience, something that was new to me and that I found to be the missing piece.

Two years later, I was back in that same room, once again in a Shamanic Breathwork holding co-journeyer space for my Beloved. As he came out of his breathwork, in complete silence, he proposed to me. I responded with an enthusiastic but equally silent YES!

My most powerful Shamanic Breathwork experience took place on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, which contains the Callanish Standing Stones (a complex of many stone circles). When I was first introduced to the stones, they felt like old friends. Curious about that, I took the question into my Shamanic Breathwork session. What was revealed was amazing!

As a breathed my way into an alternate reality, I was shown the standing stones with very light, almost transparent beings weaving through the tops of the stones. They seemed to live above ground, and I was one of them. They showed me that I was a queen in this realm and that some of them had chosen to embody as the stones. So yes, they were indeed old friends! Tears poured down my face as I recounted the experience to my Beloved (now my husband).

In late February, I had the opportunity to experience Shamanic Breathwork three times with the founder, Linda Star Wolf, facilitating. What was revealed this time was that I’ve come full circle on my healing path and now it’s time to hold this powerful space for others. I’m now certified as a Shamanic Breathwork Facilitator and I’ll be bringing this powerful work into the Costa Rica Sacred Sexual Awakening & Healing Retreat for women that I’ll be co-facilitating with Caroline.

Love & blessings, Amrita