Stop Carrying That Anchor on Your Back

I’m a reasonably well-adjusted human being, or so says the narrative in my head. If ask me whether I’m carrying around trauma from early in my life—or from my ancestors—I’d say no.

But then I went to my first breathwork session (with 379 other people).

For 25 minutes, I inhaled… then did a second inhale… then exhaled with a quick release of breath.

That’s it. Hundreds of times, I breathed exactly like that, as all 380 of us laid on the floor of a convention center.

My hands started to tingle. Then energy started to pulsate in them. Before long, my body was shuddering. Off and on, I sobbed. Not cried. Sobbed.

In the background, the perfect music soundtrack played. The music was so loud and there were so many people there that never once was I self-conscious. No one was paying any attention to me and even if they were, it would be nearly impossible to see or hear me in the darkened room filled with so much sound already.

I didn’t feel sad. I felt as though I was releasing decades of unnecessary burdens. Which burdens? Where did they come from? I have no idea. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I let them go.

At one point, I wondered why it took me so very long to put down this weight? Why have I awakened every day and thought that another normal day was fine, and that there was no need for me to put down the 10,000 pounds I’ve been carrying around most of my life.

At another point, I remembered in a deep and profound way just how much my parents loved me. They both died in the 1980’s, so my memories of them often seem faded.

I also saw—as though they were stars in the evening sky—so many of the people whom I love and cherish. Relieved of my burden, I felt incredibly connected to these folks.

This is an extremely condensed version of my experience, but it taught me an important lesson…

We all carry unnecessary weights from the past

Some of us experienced trauma. Others were raised by parents who experienced trauma, and portions of this trauma bled into our way of being. All of us have experienced thousands of days of carrying the weight of being a responsible human being with multiple obligations.

My breathwork session taught me that it is not necessary to analyze every burden in order to release it. Sometimes, we can simply breath in a set pattern for 25 minutes and unload a tremendous weight.

By the way, I’m just getting started. The first thing I did upon getting home was to sign up for next month’s 380-person breathwork session.