I have done shamanic breathing for 100 days, each night.
This topic follows my 60-day marathon, which I have spoken of earlier on the forum. Today would be technically day 108, but I have missed a few.
This thread serves as a canvas for what I have learned during my 100-day marathon, as a guide in which are mentioned the things to expect and watch out for if you dedicate your time to do something similar.
Technique & Setting Overview:
The following setting became routine for the breathwork:
Night around midnight Alone in a room on the floor All lights or electronics off, apart from headphones & phone Water served prior to each session Ready to go sleep, last activity of the day Over the 100 days, the sessions usually lasted:
5 minutes (50%) 15 minutes (40%) 60 minutes (10%) Music:
If the session lasts 5 minutes, played after. If the session lasts longer, played during and after. Tracks that have proved to be the most influential are: Anything orchestral, such as Two Steps From Hell. Anything instrumental, such as Narnia or Skyrim mixes. Especially songs by Loreena McKennitt. The Mystic’s Dream Ages Past, Ages Hence Beneath A Phrygian Sky Now for the technique itself. I used to get terrible drought in my mouth before the marathon. It does not happen anymore. As anything in life, the technique will perfect itself if you practice. The state I could once achieve in 20 minutes is the state which I can evoke in less than five now.
Same as psychedelics, the breathing is not linear.
What helps to breathe properly:
Try imagining a shore. As you breathe out, imagine waves that are thrown by a gusty force onto a sea. As you breathe in, imagine the tide crawling back towards you. Breathe out – blow the waves up & away. Breathe in – visualize a slow rising tide. Please, pay heed to this: The most important aspect of this exercise is to visualize an elliptical movement.
The visualization is merely supportive. Pay attention to your breath, and imagine it repeating an elliptical pattern as you breathe. It helped me a lot with sending the air into the belly. When your body gets the rhythm and memo, it will automatize.
What to watch out for:
Some of these insights will be freely quoted from my previous threads.
1) During the first minute of the breathing, and especially during the first 20 seconds, a huge wave of fatigue may wash over you. This is nothing but the ego's illusion. I personally experience it every time I initiate the breathwork. It feels like having barely enough energy to crawl into your bed after a tiresome day. When you initiate a session, be prepared you may be molested by thoughts like "You are tired" or "You will suffocate" or “Stop it now”. You will be playing devil’s tricks on yourself; it will be debilitating, heavy, like wading through drifts of snow. Remember in the moment: This is the ego trying to persuade you through whatever means to stop the exercise. You are perceiving these thoughts, do not get attached to them. This barrier only lasts about 20 seconds for me. But it may be completely different for you.
2) Time runs differently during shamanic breathing, for its notion starts to crack. The gap between 5 and 20 minutes will feel as breathing for the first five.
3) Lay down. Do not get up during the practice. I got up from the floor once and tried to drink from an open water bottle. I grabbed it upside down without realizing what was happening. I also dropped a five-kilogram object onto my leg, and I also fell and hit my head twice by wobbling around a bed. Lay down. These are blackouts you got to watch out for. They are potentially dangerous. Lay down.
Insights:
This is what I reaped from 100 days of shamanic breathing.
Bridge Towards Being
I am humbled by the ever-present connection that sprawls between us. This is the “w” axis of an “xyz” world, the untrodden path, the childhood magic, the indescribable kernel of mysticism, the ever-flowing river that sways you. Despite my highest efforts, I will never grasp it through language, and neither will you, and this guide will be merely a singular cell in a limitless body, and I will cry for an hour because it is so beautiful.
The Body Is A Temple
All the mysticism-braided notions you have heard throughout your life; of Atlantis, of Shangri-La, of the Center of the Earth, of Aztec pyramids, of El-Dorado are within you. Your body is literally, and I emphasize the word literally, a temple. Within you splash waterfalls and shine stars, literally. This is all symbolism, yet it implies exactly what is experienced; and it can be experienced literally. Ever since childhood, I have always had special place in my heart for these notions. Yet they are all here, you are basking within them, they all celebrate you.
You Have Already Made It
You have already crossed the glorious veil. You have already made it to heaven. Congratulations. You are here! Love has never abandoned you, and it always has your back, no matter how deep you go. To quote my past commentary, the fastest method to enlightenment is realizing you already are and dropping the duality completely. You were brainwashed in the first place to believe you are something less than pure consciousness. You took the belief that you aren’t enlightened by storm & you set out on the mission to find yourself, not realizing you would be chasing your own tail. You are searching for what you already are, how comical is that? Enlightenment has no authority over you, it's not anyhow or anymore important, all those are bulwarks keeping the ego protected. You invent the notion of a "method", which implies a future-that-is-yet-to-come, and therefore pushes enlightenment infinitely far away.
When I speak of enlightenment, I speak about pure awareness of being, and I realize how tricky it is to get lost in semantics, definitions, and in what exactly is being implied. Take whatever suits you, do not pay any attention to me. I do not exist in the classical sense, I am irrelevant, for you cannot refer to anyone but yourself.
Infinite Metamorphosis
Everything is happening here simultaneously. You believe to be alive, to be on Earth, to be a human experiencing stuff around you. This is all just one narrative out of the infinitely many unfolding now. Even when you pursue enlightenment, from the human point of view, you are still constantly bombarded by thoughts like “I am a human pursuing enlightenment” or “I am reading a paragraph by SirVladimir right now”. You really are not, though, reality is simultaneously everything. When you look at the screen, it is simultaneously a coffee table, Mount Everest, a cheese; the pure consciousness, the groundless appearance which you are experiencing now is literally everything you could break down & focus on and even more. You could literally believe you are climbing Mount Everest right now. Reading this sentence could actually mean driving an ice axe into a rock. Those are the basics of how tangible reality is. You are so free that you can blindfold yourself into believing any narrative.
To give you an example – and I realize how symbolic this is, for you realize in that state how the mind is constructing these notions – last night, I experienced an entire human lifetime in a matter of seconds. Listed below is a video, which is set to 1:10. As soon as she sings “Ages Past, Ages Hence”, stop the video. That’s it. That’s how long it took to experience one life; it was a matter of 2 seconds.
https://youtu.be/g97IG3yuFBk?t=70
Life Purpose & Vision
Shamanic breathing is a golden ticket to your life purpose. Defining one can be tricky. If you remain too down to earth, the statement will be, so to say, a mere construct of an already predefined paradigm, yet if you go too nondual, the statement will always be Love. Use sessions of shamanic breathing in order to reach beyond-earth states to deconstruct your beliefs and shadows from (t)here. Your doubts will melt like lemon drops. Without shamanic breathing, I would have never written Journeys Beyond Earth and therefore never attempted to create a new book genre. But it’s coming in a matter of days, and I will make a thread about it.
I Love You
Last but not least, this hit me just yesterday, and I cried for about twenty minutes. For one paragraph, I will relax and just say my deepest thank you for being here, for pursuing the highest truths, for sharing this forum. We are perfectly alone together. You are amazing, all of you. How comical and funny it is? To share one reality, to bask in the experience, to communicate with one another, all while pretending there is society & that we are humans? What I felt when it clicked yesterday was completely out-of-earth, unimaginable, yet I am humbled by how much more there is to come. Thank you for searching for yourself.
Love you. Freaking Godspeed, spread the sails, and let’s go.