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I want to share a really powerful healing technique with you healing through briefing psychotherapy through breathing and even tripping just through breathing breath is a really powerful tool a really powerful spiritual tool but also just for therapy and just for healing and most people they don't know how much healing they have to do and how much their emotional blockages are holding them up so this technique that I'm going to show you here today is really good at releasing emotional blockages that are deeply wired inside your subconscious mind most people don't even know that they're there you'll be surprised at what you'll discover by practicing this technique very very powerful and it doesn't take years like with meditation to get somewhere you will have incredible results just after one or two trials that's how powerful it is now the technique I'm going to be sharing with you is sort of my own bastardization and my own little invention that I was experimenting with based off of the work of Stan Grof now stan grof is a really interesting character he is an MD and also a psychiatrist and a psychologist who is a one of the founding fathers of transpersonal psychology and he was really instrumental in the 1950s and early 1960s in doing the first clinical trials of LSD he was sort of one of the few early pioneers in clinical psychology and psychedelics and pioneering how to use psychedelics specifically for helping very disturbed people psychotic people schizophrenic people suicidally depressive people and you know the whole gamut of problems that people have so he started to do these trials and this was in the 1950s and 60s where psychedelics were still legal and we didn't really know what LSD was so he was experimenting and trying all this stuff out and he administered LSD in a clinical setting to hundreds probably thousands of patients and he took meticulous notes and archived everything and just did a whole study and for him his entire paradigm was blown because he was a he was a doctor a researcher he was in academic he was from that field of that whole kind of materialistic Western pet rationals paradigm but the things he was discovering with all these LSD treatments that he was giving people that people were coming back and they were telling him about all sorts of crazy stuff that they were seeing on LSD they were having near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences and spiritual experiences and all sorts of trauma because these very disturbed individuals as it turns out of course no big surprise that they're so disturbed because they had a lot of trauma in their childhood and a lot of it they might have even forgotten about they didn't even know some of them had trauma during childbirth and they didn't even remember that but then when they sort of taken this LSD a lot of this stuff started coming out their shadow started coming out and that proved to be very therapeutic for them but then of course the government cracked down in the late 60s because of this sort of hippie counterculture revolution the abuse of psychedelics the government crackdown and all psychedelics were outlawed and of course that meant that as a legitimate researcher and a academic clinical setting he could no longer do LSD research so he had to stop and that was a great shame that set us back that's the humanity back a good 50 to 100 years that was a huge shame but he was so moved by his discoveries that he wanted to invent some alternative a substitute how can we find a substitute that doesn't require people to go look for psychedelics and he invented holotropic breathwork so that's his technique he actually coined the term politics is method he trains practitioners there's workshops that are held around the world and in particular in California around the United States but they're available all over the world where you can go to these workshops and it's done in a group and people sit there in that workshop for a couple hours and they do this deep breathing and so it's it's a sort of lying on the floor doing this deep breathing in and out in and out until you start to experience psychedelic like effects and it's very very powerful and if you watch some videos online if some of this type of holotropic breathwork like crazy [ __ ] goes on in these sessions the deep breathing is done for such a long time for an hour or two or even three that it completely sends the person into this altered state where they can be lying on the floor writhing around as though they are possessed by a demon like this [ __ ] is scary it doesn't happen everybody like that but to some people it happens you can go to some pretty wacky and far-out places just by doing this breath work so these workshops are available and I encourage you if you're curious about that and you want to experience this very deep therapeutic process in a group setting where you have a lot of support because it needs a lot of support for emotional you know for emotional assistant because a lot of emotions comes up then go ahead and try it out research you can you can read about it on his website you can find these workshops and try that out but of course you know I like to do solo personal development work so although these workshops are great and I do go to workshops various kinds and I do go to seminars I do learn from people and group settings and those can be very illuminating but I like techniques that I can do completely solo so I'm not reliant on some facilitator or having to go somewhere to do something so what I sort of did is I came up with my own variation that I do at home and that's what I'm be sharing with you here I don't call it holotropic breathwork that's stan grof thing that's his word what I'm gonna be showing you here we can call it shamanic breathing I'm gonna share this technique with you but before I do a couple of things need to be said first is that people consistently underestimate the power of the breath they think the breath is just like olio breath breath everybody just breathes every but he no how's it breathe you know how can you possibly get some sort of deep healing or some kind of psychedelic LSD like state from just breathing well that's because you haven't really practiced deep breathing breathing is something that needs to be mastered and in fact I'll be releasing some episodes in the future just about how to breathe properly that's a whole topic onto itself here I'm not gonna get into all the different facets of briefing we're just gonna show you this technique but what you need to understand is that breath is integrally linked to the function of your mind and your body and in many languages the words breath and spirit are actually coming from the same root and they're at Amala G goes back thousands of years and there's a good reason for why breath and spirit are synonymous in a sense because the breath was used in many spiritual traditions going back thousands of years for accessing spiritual realms of course the best example of this is yoga and the pranayama that is done within yoga but also other traditions shamanism there are many different versions of shamanism out there and I'll be releasing an episode about shamanism as well soon but shamanism also relies on breathing it can not not all shamanistic modalities but many of them do so the breath can be used for shutting off the mind the breath is one of the most effective methods you have for shutting down your monkey mind if you're one of those people who can't stop to think overly conceptual like I am you're always thinking about stuff and you're a DD and all this then learning breathing techniques can be really powerful for that it can help your meditation breathing is also very effective for emotional healing and psychotherapy because something happens when you breathe very deeply you get a lot of oxygen into your brain and into your body and then all of your tension and all the deeply-held emotional trauma that you've had in your life all of that it's residing and it's held in your body that starts to get released and that can be very therapeutic it can be more powerful than years of psychotherapy with with some sort of psychiatrist and it can be more powerful than psychiatric medication and what's really cool about it is that it actually gets to the root of the issues and it releases them without you necessarily having to consciously work through that stuff so you're sort of you're getting massive benefits and at the same time you're not having to think through too much of it so it's it's a great way for releasing trauma it can release trauma that otherwise you would never be able to release just through journaling or just through contemplation it can be good for opening up chakras the breath can be used for pumping energy into your body for warming up your body and just getting yourself more awake and alert the breath can be used for accessing altered states of consciousness and ultimately the breath can be used for accessing non-duality and having even enlightenment experiences so there's a lot to this thing that's simple on the surface this breath but if there's a lot to it so this breathing technique that I'm going to show you is for home use but you have to be very careful so I got to issue some warnings here and I'm not kidding around because this technique is so powerful that you have to heed these warnings it's extremely powerful it can cause hallucinations it can cause panic attacks it can cause outbursts of Rage anger it can cause immense fear even terror fear of death you might encounter your own death you might start to feel like you're dying you will surface deep emotions and trauma with this technique almost guaranteed if you practice this technique this will happen and depending on your background this can cause a real problem for you because if you've been abused if you have sexual abuse physical abuse if you've been bull you know all sorts of trauma and sometimes it's minor trauma sometimes maybe major trauma this stuff will start to surface that's why it's healing that's why it's therapeutic but that can also be dangerous because then people get freaked out because this stuff is surfacing but they don't know how to deal with it which is why in the Stan Grof holotropic breathwork you're in a group environment and you have facilitators who are helping you to deal with the emotions with with the trauma when you're at home and you're doing this well it's sort of like you're tripping at home on LSD there's nobody to help you so you got to be able to be mature enough to handle any emotions or any kind of trauma that comes up so be careful about that I also got to warn you that money you might experience out-of-body experiences which are very profound and utterly shocking and mind-blowing and you won't know how to deal with it and even this this breathing technique can be physically dangerous if you misuse it if you strain yourself too much or if you have some kind of medical conditions or psychological conditions this could destabilize you so you got to be careful in fact I have to issue this warning by using this technique you are agreeing that I'm not legally responsible for any physical or psychological harm that you may cause yourself you agree to breathe and do this technique easy and gradually gradually ramping up and increasing your time and not to over strain yourself do not do this technique if you are pregnant if you are mentally unstable if you have breathing problems if you have heart problems or if you have some kind of other special unique disability or physical condition or disease you know be smart about this but if you're a normal individual don't let this freak you out you're gonna start gradually and you can see how you handle it it's not gonna be too bad and then you can experiment with it and see where it goes so here's the technique for shamanic breathing first you want to clear out your sinuses so go blow your nose go to the rest so you don't need to do that while you're in the middle of this session you're not going to be interrupting it for 30 whole minutes and drink some water to moisten your mouth and your throat because you're gonna be breathing through your mouth also I recommend you get some chapstick and you apply it to your lips especially the corners of your mouth here because you will be breathing through your mouth for a whole thirty minutes straight and so your mouth can get dry your lips can get dry and have problems so do that then create a comfortable space on your floor get a nice flat carpet or something that you can lay out on lots of space so you can stretch out your arms and your legs with no obstructions and nothing that could you could bump your head into or hurt yourself and then spread out a blanket or something comfortable and some pillows that you can lie on the floor so you can be lying flat on the floor and you're going to be doing the breathing there so get yourself comfortable then get a timer and set it for thirty minutes that's what you're going to start with and then later you can increase that to longer durations but start with thirty minutes and I recommend playing some music of course you can play different kinds of music what's most recommended is some kind of relaxing yoga type of music or meditation type of music or perhaps even better is a drumming type of music tribal drumming so you can go online find some tribal drumming so make sure you got that and start your timer and then as you start your timer you can just start breathing as you're laying there comfortably relax your whole body you can be laying on the floor and then you just start breathing through your mouth and the breathing is very simple but there are a couple of rules what you got to do is you got to breathe equally in and out for the same amount of time I'll show you in a second and you got to make sure that there's no pause between your breaths so it's gonna look something like this not like this you notice the difference the first time I was doing it there was no pause as soon as I breathe fully in I then breathe fully out and as soon as I breathe fully out I breathe fully in so it's just continuous without stop and of course you want to make sure you're not just breathing into your chest but also down into your belly you're gonna do that non-stop for 30 minutes it's important though that as you do this you don't go too quickly and you don't overstrain yourself so here would be an example of going too quickly don't do that pace yourself slowly like that and also don't breathe so deeply in or so completely out that you hurt yourself like don't fill up your your lungs in your belly completely like not like this don't over exaggerate it don't strain your muscles and also don't breathe out so much that you completely empty everything just nice and steady and consistent and deep but not strained relax to relax your whole body stretch out your arms like this and your legs so you're kind of like laying on the floor like a starfish and that's it and you do that until your timer rings and that's the whole technique incredible stuff will start to happen after the 10 minute mark after the 10 minute mark it's gonna get quite difficult to keep doing the technique your mouths gonna get tired your throat is gonna get tired you're gonna feel that your head is starting to spin because your Sajid oxygenating your your brain and your body so much you're gonna start to feel tingling in your fingers and in your extremities and then by the 20 minute mark this is gonna get even more pronounced and more pronounced and by the 30 minute mark you're gonna be in a state that you've never experienced ever in your life under any situation it's gonna be completely unique it's gonna be sort of like a psychedelic but still different you're gonna feel very different for me personally I mean I can't speak to how it's gonna feel for you but for me personally it was like really weird stuff happens I stopped being able to feel my fingers everything is tingling sometimes my arms and hands get numb my my feet and and legs get numb and there's this sort of like pins and needles sensation sort of like your arms or your legs are falling asleep you start to get that but now it's happening because you have too much oxygen in your body your brain starts to tingle and stuff starts to move and it's just like you're experiencing this altered state and it's really interesting and it's gonna involve both your mental domain but also your physical domain and it's all gonna be kind of like blending together the physical and the mental these boundaries are gonna start to be breaking apart and it's not all necessarily going to be pleasant it can be extremely pleasant but it can also be challenging because you feel like you have all this energy in your body that's kind of shifting around and moving you have this kind of burning sensation in your muscles and like we're just really weird you feel really weird and you want to like why they're out on the floor you might start to experience emotions coming up you might start to experience weird memories from the past coming up maybe traumatic memories maybe happy memories you might become emotional and you know the full spectrum of emotions as possible from ecstasy to to pleasure to excitement to frustration to agitation to anger to fear curling up into a ball into the fetal position you know you might have itching and burning and clawing and you might start speaking in voices you might start crying all sorts of weird stuff could happen so be ready for that be especially ready for old trauma to surface emotional stuff to surface the key there is you just want to after your thirty minutes are over you just want to lay there for a good 10 20 minutes on the floor and just be mindful of how your body feels so after your 30 minutes is over for the next 10 minutes you're gonna be in this altered state and it's gonna be very powerful so just watch it reach its peak and then watch it slowly taper out and come down so after about 10 or 20 minutes if you're slaying on the floor eventually gonna come back back back down to baseline if you have watched my episode called the dark side of meditation you want to make sure you go watch that before you try this technique it's gonna prepare you for all the stuff that's going to come up in that episode I talked about the kind of dark stuff that can come up for from meditation and so this technique is gonna give you exactly that it's sort of an accelerated version of meditation imagine you take a year of meditation you cram it into 30 minutes that's sort of what you're gonna be getting here and so of course all the same sort of side effects can come up and you need to know the possibilities so they don't freak you out and take you by surprise and you also need to know how to deal with them so I talked about that in that episode how do you deal with them it's actually very simple you just do nothing you just lay there and you just are mindful of it and you let it happen without resistance surrender to it don't resist don't hold back don't tell yourself it's wrong don't judge yourself none of this sort of stuff all right you have to reframe any negative emotions that come up or any kind of disturbance that comes up or any trauma as a good thing that is what's telling you that it's working that how therapy works therapy doesn't work with you going into a therapists office and just sitting there and talking and just talking about positive stuff that's not therapy therapy is you going in there talking about all your deepest darkest secrets and all the skeletons in your closet all the stuff you did wrong all the stuff you hate about yourself all the ugly stuff all the shadow stuff so of course that's also gonna happen here just without the therapist and without all the talking you need to appreciate that understand that and not overreact to it that would be the mistake he's so sure saying oh my god I was abused as a child and this thing happened to me and that thing happening no just accept it allow it forgive yourself love yourself and you'll be good and understand that whatever state you're in whatever trauma you're having if you're feeling sad or angry or whatever understand that that's gonna pass it's probably gonna last for a good 10 20 minutes and it's gonna pass it might last for a few days if you had some very deep trauma might last for a few days but it'll pass you've got to remind yourself it's gonna pass and once it passes you will have healed that wound within yourself that's psychological wound that emotional wound and then from that point on you'll be operating on a higher baseline psychologically your consciousness will slightly rise as a baseline you'll be at a new baseline of consciousness probably not drastically new you're not gonna become enlightened but you're probably gonna be a little bit a little bit more calm a little bit less neurotic this is how neurosis leaves your psychosomatic system neurosis is wired in the mind but also in the whole body and this is what you're doing you're releasing it you're purging it you're literally exercising these demons and you might have some really deep demons that need to be exorcised so don't be surprised if some weird [ __ ] goes down that's okay don't judge yourself and also I'll warn you expect an ego backlash to happen the day after and the week after doing one of these sessions by ego backlash I mean that you're gonna now reach a sort of a new state of awareness but then the ego wants to kick back kick you back into your old way of being so homeostasis kicks back in and so your mind will try to drag you back down so be careful about that and make sure to just stay mindful of the ego backlash this technique is great as a supplement to your meditation practice although I wouldn't say it's a replacement it's a good supplement it's also a great supplement if you're doing psychedelics again I wouldn't say it's a replacement it's not identical to psychedelics psychedelics are very powerful and I highly recommend them for people who are serious about growing themselves and becoming conscious but this is a great supplement one of the reasons it's a particularly great supplement to psychedelics is because with psychedelics before you can get to the really profound insights about the nature of all of reality and God and existence and all this sort of stuff before you can have those deep enlightenment experiences first usually with psychedelics you have to deal with your emotional trauma and baggage and for many people they have so much of this baggage that a psychedelic is too powerful it's too much it freaks them out so with this breathing technique because you have more control over it you can stop at any time you want you can use this technique to purge a lot of trauma and emotional stuff do that for a few months maybe and then you can try psychedelics and then you'll be ready for going to the very deep existential insights on psychedelics so that's it for the technique now I want to show you an actual live demo of how I do this obviously not the full 30 minutes but here you go here's a live demo of how to do this breathing and how to set up your your situation there all right so here we are for the demo of this shamanic breathing as you can see I've laid out a nice open clear space here for the breathing session I put a comforter down here that's what this is just to make it more comfortable because I mean lying here for 30 minutes or 60 minutes or 90 minutes and let's begin it's real simple I have a timer here so I'll set 30 minutes on my timer and put that over there and then you want to have a blanket and some pillows just make yourself as comfortable as you can this is all about comfort you don't need to be austere here and you're gonna want to turn your lights down so it's comfortable you could even use some sort of mood lighting or candle light which is nice and then you'd want to play your your drumming music I'm not going to play that now I just want to show you the breathing technique and how I kind of lay myself down so arms out legs out just very comfortable you can close your eyes and then you start your timer and here's what the breathing will look like and that's it I'm already starting to feel a little bit lightheaded and dizzy of course that's only uh less than a minute and you'll be doing that for a thirty or sixty or ninety minutes straight without stopping it is quite challenging even doing thirty minutes for the first time is difficult you might need to start with only fifteen minutes or 20 minutes and then ultimately work up to thirty that's kind of what I remember doing and there you go not really much to it do that for a few weeks do that for a month until you're you're comfortable thirty minutes then ramped it up to forty minutes 50 minutes 60 minutes try to get beyond sixty minutes you can even go up to ninety minutes and even beyond that just be careful especially when you're getting into the 60 minute 90-minute ranges be very careful because you're gonna get be getting into very deep states and since you're doing it solo you're not quite sure what's gonna come up make sure that you can handle whatever's coming up so as you're doing this you want to ramp yourself up gradually the same way that you would with psychedelics all right and also I recommend that do this on the weekends when you don't have a lot of obligations give yourself a day of integration time after this stuff happens especially if you do a very deep and long 90-minute session you probably don't want to be going to work the next day on some important project early in the morning because emotional stuff will come up you'll have weird dreams you might wake up crying or or screaming or afraid or happy or whatever you know who knows what's happening so just give yourself time probably the best time to do these sessions would be on Saturdays speak which let me give you three different ways that you can use this technique how you can structure it into your schedule so the first way is commit to doing it once per week for an entire year sort of the way that you would do therapy or life coaching you would do it on a weekly basis so this is sort of your own private way to do psychotherapy on yourself in a physical integrated way not just through talking so you commit to and you just do it once let's say you do it every Saturday for the next year that's 52 sessions and then over time you know you're gonna build it up to 90 minutes plus or whatever that can be really powerful after a whole year of doing that if you're like the ordinary person I would pretty much be willing to bet that you're gonna walk away a year from now you are gonna have a much more stable psyche you're gonna purge a lot of old anger and fear and judgment and just all sorts of neuroses and tension from your body that that's been stuck there for a long long time you're gonna you're gonna be a brand new person a year from now just from using this technique especially if you are someone who has a lot of trauma and emotional baggage that you have not worked through yet this can be a life-saving technique potentially for you life transforming a second way to do it is to do it once per day for an entire week so you're gonna say okay this week it's kind of like Shark Week Shark Week instead of instead of Shark Week this is breath week shamanic reading week and so every day you're gonna be doing one of these sessions and then of course after a whole week of that then you want to give yourself time to relax maybe take a few weeks off and then do another week so under this scheduling scenario maybe you spend one week per month doing this sort of process and the third option and perhaps the most powerful is to cram it all into one day so the way you do this and this is similar to what they do with the holotropic breathwork workshops is they do three of these sessions per day so here what you would do is first you would build yourself up to like a long 90-minute session make sure you can handle that then you would schedule and take a whole day off nothing but breathing work for this day in the same way you would if you were tripping on LSD you would take the whole day off basically can't do anything it takes all day so here what you would do is you would do a morning session of 90 minutes then you take a couple hours break eat a light breakfast or whatever after your breathing is done take a take an hour to to relax to integrate to work through the emotions and stuff then in the afternoon you do another 90-minute session then take another couple hours off have a light meal dah dah dah do that stuff integrate and then finally the third session in the evening ninety minutes in the evening and that will be all of it packed into one day and that can be very powerful so in this scenario you're getting the most concentrated potent version of this you're probably gonna release a lot of emotional stuff so you definitely want to make sure that you have the next day off so do this on a Saturday for example if Sunday is all for you and and there you go and of course you want to give yourself plenty of time after that to relax so take a couple of weeks off and then maybe maybe do one of these one of these really intense days every two weeks or every month and that can be sort of your way of growing yourself add this in with all the other stuff you're doing so don't replace meditation you still want to maintain your daily meditation practice still maintain your self inquiry practice maintain other practices this is more of a sort of a potent you know one time shot sort of deal that you do on a weekly or monthly basis lastly I will just recommend that you actually go and try out some of the holotropic breathwork workshops if they're available in your area definitely try it out it's a different situation when you're doing it at the workshop you're doing it with a group of people all simultaneously you're being guided they play certain types of music for you they give you special instructions there's special food so the whole thing kind of comes together in the sort of retreat situation which is unique and different than what you're doing at home there's gonna be pros and cons and you might find well you almost definitely will find that at the workshop it's gonna go deeper the only challenge is that you got to you got to go find the workshop it has to be in your area you have to pay for it there only happening a couple times a year so the scheduling of it and its availability might be limited so check out online what's available in your area if you're in the United States if you're in California should be easier if you're in Europe I think they have some options in Europe and other places you're probably gonna be out of luck but try it out and just compare for yourself and see what works I think you'll you'll gain valuable lessons from doing it in a group environment you'll see the kind of stuff that's happening with people crazy stuff will be happening all around you in one of these workshops that you probably won't see at home with yourself and that in and of itself will be will be very eye-opening for you so that's basically it please click the like button for me and come check out actualize that org that's my website I got resources and cool goodies for you there I've got exclusive stuff that I post in my blog check that out the forum has unique content as well and you can contribute and ask questions and stuff and get help also check out the life purpose course check out the book list that I have lots of good resources there and lastly just stick around and start doing this technique start focusing in all of my episodes when I tell you a technique that is your gateway to the results it's not all the stuff I talk about the theory I talk about is not gonna get you real results it's a necessary step but it's not gonna really get you the life transforming results that comes from doing the technique and this particular technique might be especially good if you're stuck in your mind if you're a very rationalist person if you're a scientifically minded person if you're an atheist and you don't believe in all this New Age mumbo Joe all this Airy fairy whoohoo stuff start doing this technique it's very simple there's nothing whoo-hoo about it but you might be surprised at how much it opens your eyes and opens your mind to a new set of possibilities because you are gonna start tripping just from oxygen alone and you will start to experience some very weird stuff which is gonna start to break down your materialist paradigm your rationalist paradigm and that's gonna be an important first step for you you see because when I talk about mystical experiences and I talk about God and I talk about spirit and I talk about soul and this and that the this language to most people this language falls on deaf ears because you need to have a reference experience for what that word is talking about and most people they don't have a reference experience for it so of course what they do is they say Oh Leo this is just some sort of fluffy nonsense so sort of unscientific nonsense no it's not unscientific at all you just need to have the reference experience we're talking about altered states of consciousness and if you haven't had one of those well I feel sorry for you and I want you to start to have those so do whatever you can to start having those having these experiences is one of the most important factors for starting to do really deep growth and even if you're doing this breathing technique and it doesn't get you some mystical mystical state you'll just start to experience energetic and therapeutic healing which in and of itself will start to open up your mind you will start to experience dimensions of life facets of life that are beyond the rational beyond the logical and you will see the power of working with your body you will see the power of energy blockages and how significant that is to your happiness into your success in your to your well-being and then you will start to reassess your whole perspective will change on some of these more advanced techniques the biggest challenge I have with presenting advanced spiritual techniques or personal development techniques to people is that most people will not do them because they cannot believe that they will work because they sound so hokey so simple and so stupid that a scientific rational assigned will never accept that this could really work so how do you overcome that problem by actually doing it put your money where your mouth is stop being a lazy atheist or a lazy rationalist or a lazy armchair scientist thinking that you know everything just because you you read some scientific theories you know you don't know anything you got to start to do these techniques to actually experience how little you really know and that will be a great launching point for your whole journey into self-actualization and stick around with me for more because I'll be presenting more of these sorts of techniques to you as I discover them in the future you