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Healing from trauma with Holotropic Breathwork

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I will start with some wonderful quotations about trauma; one new, one ancient.


Gabor Mate defines trauma as:


"... a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically that then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. It pains you and now you're acting out of pain. It induces fear and now you're acting out of fear.


"Trauma is not the event that inflicted the wound. So, the trauma is not the sexual abuse, the trauma is not the war. Trauma is not the abandonment. The trauma is not the inability of your parents to see you for who you were. Trauma is the wound that you sustained as a result.


This is a passage from the Gnostic Gospels




If you bring forth that which is within you,  

Then that which is within you  Will be your salvation. 


If you do not bring forth that which is within you,  

Then that which is within you  Will destroy you. 



When we experience something that is too much, too painful, too shocking, too sudden to process, we feel we have no choice but to stop the experience, stop feeling, stop seeing and hearing. The experience gets pushed into our unconscious and stays there, it becomes trauma, it becomes, “that which is within you”. 


It becomes an “unexperienced experience”. We couldn’t fully participate in the moment, so it remains incomplete, and stuck. It requires energy to keep it immobile, and affects how we behave in all kinds of situations that our psyche feels are related to the original event.


Peter Levine gives the example of gazelles in Africa, always surrounded by predators. If one gets caught its natural response is to shut down physically, but remain highly alert.  If the predator loses focus the gazelle takes its chance and escapes. When it gets back to the safety of the herd, it bounces for a few minutes, literally shaking the experience off, and then goes back to grazing. The gazelle fully experiences the event.


We often don’t allow the experience to complete. We might have been told boys/girls don’t cry, we might not have had the time and support to  grieve for a loved one, there are a lot of reasons, situational , familial, cultural, but the result is the  same, we are wounded.


HB is a safe non drug way to enter states of consciousness that allow you to “bring forth that which is within you”  and allow it to soften,  allow stuck patterns to free up, allow pain and fear to ease.


In a workshop the participants and facilitators co create a safe container to allow trauma to heal. Your experience can take many forms.  it might be somatic; powerful releases of feelings and energies, movements or gestures, vocalizations but no real story, just release. You may relive the traumatic event or situation, or the general feel of a period of your life that is stuck. If you relive the moment it is from a supported more mature position, and the unexperienced experience can be felt and released. 


Some of the transpersonal experiences that can arise in a HB workshop can help to heal trauma. Interactions with family members, ancestors or archetypal beings can bring insight and release of traumas. 


Healing from a deep trauma can be difficult and may occur over a long period of time. HB can be a catalyst to break the initial stuckness and start the healing process.It can also support your healing work with other modalities, such as psychotherapy, bodywork, spiritual practices etc.


Your being wants to move towards wholeness, to respond to life unfettered by past events. Your deep wisdom will know if it is the right time to let go of your trauma. HB is a powerful method for acting on that wisdom.

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