After reading about your experiences, I’m wondering if for me there’s a more definite split or disconnect between my consciousness and my body. There seems to be a slight delay for me between the two…I’ve done work in NR that created soreness in my physical body, but I didn’t feel it immediately. It usually takes a few seconds or minutes for my body to react to what’s happening.

I’ve learned, mostly through trial and error that I need to maintain some grounding when I do out of body work for my safety on an energetic level. One of the things I love about breathwork is that I don’t have to do that. Holding a safe container is the practitioners job, not mine.

I can relate to the feeling drugged or dreamlike and having a hard time speaking. It took a fair amount of practice for me to be able to talk when I’m doing any kind of journeywork. It still requires much more effort than having a basic physical reality conversation. When I try to speak from that state, there seems to be an enormous distance between me and mouth…almost as if it doesn’t quite belong to me anymore. Odd sensation.

I suspect that as you continue to explore what your altered state experiences are about for you, you’ll be able to access that state consciously without someone else needing to facilitate it. My sense is that you’ve done this before in other lifetimes and are pulling that experience into this lifetime.

I have to agree based on my experiences that I can be in both (CPR) and (NR) when I am most deeply in CPR, I still am aware of my physical presence, it is just not my focus unless it needs to be.

I would love to share about my experiences. I am going to share from the “altered state” perspective rather than the healing of the trauma, which is what I usually share, leaving out the altered state parts.

I consider my journey starting about six years ago when a deep trauma was uncovered during a CranioSacral (CST) therapy session. It was this journey into my healing that helped me fully express myself and access greater awareness of the unseen world.

Once a year I would go back to this CST practioner who was from my home town and I would uncover more of the trauma, but then I started going into altered state. I would do various unusual things like speak in an unknown language, move my body in a way I never had, like a dance, in the beginning it was mostly my arms. My movements had an intention, but I was unaware of what it was in my mind, I seemed to move by some other force. The movement varied from being yin like and soft to being warrior like, fast and decisive. The practitioner was not intimidated, but he had no idea what I was doing, I just thought it was so weird. But it was fun.

The other times I experienced it was during our CST study group, but only when this one particular person was there? I still am not sure about this, we have become good friends now and we do trades, he just holds the space. He helps me ground and keeps me safe. I didn’t realize at first that I was not fully present. It wasn’t until I started working with a woman who trained with the Barbara Brennan school about a year ago. She asked me to open my eyes and look at her. When I did, it took me awhile to being able to focus on her and speak. It was like I was in a dream or drugged.

Being in this state was euphoric and powerful. I feel frustrated that I can’t access it on my own. There are times I have experienced the “yang” state, what I call the warrior not during a session with a practitioner. Once, during a Family Constellation, I was playing the role of a man who was a sexual abuser, as the story unfolded I felt “possessed” almost like I was trapped. I was in a group of people, when I stepped out and started to move that energy, I am aware of what I am doing when it happens, I am not fully out of it. but it has a flow of its own that doesn’t require conscious thought. I will never forget when I stopped and everyone was staring at me and I realized that I had just “danced” and “chanted” in front of everyone. A part of me is very familiar with that “dark” energy and that part of me knew what to do to protect me.

I guess I will stop there for now.

I guess I should start with why I am blogging. Who I am, has changed dramatically over the last few years through “energy work”. It started with a fairly mainstream modality, CranioSacral Therapy, it started with me having a Somatic Emotional Release, which scratched the surface of some deep rooted childhood traumas. As time went on, I was experiencing non- ordinary states of consciousness during the sessions. On many occasions scaring the practitioners in my presence. I recently was able to fully express myself and better understand the bigger picture during a four day Holotropic Breathwork experience.

Now that I understand myself better, I have less people in my life who could possibly understand what I have experienced. I am craving contact with people who I can talk to about how I perceive the world now.

As Raven said, we are currently in Port Townsend, WA and I wanted to respond to the experience that we had the other night. I usually experience energy through pulsations, vibrations, or frequency. The sensations are different depending on what I’m doing. This time, I put my hands on our clients head and I started feeling my heart responding instead. At first, it wasn’t so noticeable that something was different. But something made me shift my awareness because I started to feel my heart pounding. It wasn’t clear that it was in response to the work that I was doing. As I checked in with myself, I realized that it wasn’t me. As an experiment, I took my hands off of the client’s head, just to see what would happen, and my heart stopped pounding. I put my hands back on her head, and it started up again but this time it was louder and more intense. I repeated the experiment a couple more times and each time it became stronger and stronger, almost like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. I kept looking at Raven in puzzlement. It wasn’t until after the session that Raven told me what she was experiencing. It was amazing to feel the shift in my body and all of the possibilities in which I could experience energy. It’s enough to make you go hmmmm.