The Level 1 Breathwork Intensive: What's It Like?

Interested in the Breath of Bliss Level 1 Self Love Journey in Thailand this September?  We have new programming coming out for the next one. Read this and imagine yourself here... 

ISLAND ENERGY

Imagine … you're on an exotic tropical island. The wind is blowing through your hair. You wiggle your toes and feel white powdery sand between your toes. The ocean reflects sunlight like a million diamonds. You can begin each day swimming in warm, clear waters. Now it’s time to head up to what your group calls, “the Crystal Castle.” 

A SANCTUARY

Climbing the stairs up to the rooftop studio at Sunset Hill Boutique Resort feels like coming home. It’s bright, light, modern and clean. This is one of the most luxurious estates on the whole island. As you step onto the massive terrace, you take deep breaths, looking out over an infinity view of the ocean. 

YOUR PEOPLE

You've been wanting to dive deep into something you believe in, something that can help you make a difference. You're ready to shed layers, embody your highest potential, own your voice and share light with the world. It's time for a wake up call! You want to to clarify your message, download a vision and begin holding space. Everyone here feels the same way. They’ve come from all walks of life -- yogis, therapists, doctors, corporate executives, healers, mystics, moms, and more. These are your allies.

JOURNEY OF SELF DISCOVERY

Fragrant sage wafts over you as you enter the space, which feels like a luminous temple. You sit down in a circle around an altar, drawing an oracle card. Once everyone gathers you do an alignment meditation, visualizing yourself as a pillar between heaven and Earth, grounding and orienting before the day begins. Your senses of taste, smell, touch, hearing and sight open more with every breath. 

As you voice your personal intention to the group, you may feel more clear about who you are and why you’re here. Group agreements and communication tools are provided. Perhaps they help you relax into a sense of safety. 

Together we approach breath as sacred plant medicine with the power to awaken. During this six day pilgrimage you explore how breath can bring you home to the truth of who you are. This may involve facing unprocessed material that distracts you from your true nature as Bliss.

Together we remember that there is nothing broken in us that needs to be fixed, changed or saved to be worthy of love. As a group we get curious about the mysterious, holy intelligence in whatever arises. Each day, you embrace any abandoned or unmet parts of you -- both your shimmering divinity and shadows. In a space of tender holding, you deepen intimacy with your sensations, nervous system, emotions, family, body and relationships. 

The facilitation team shares with great vulnerability, including personal stories which give you permission to you be to raw and real. While doing practices, light could come flooding into your consciousness. Maybe they bring creativity and spiritual epiphanies. They could also illuminate parts of you longing for more love and acceptance: your worthiness, inner child, painful memories, challenging relationships, and orphaned emotions such as anger, fear, sadness and sexual feelings. 

You learn more about your habitual ways of breathing, or not breathing. Little “a-ha”s could arise. Some joyful, others wobbly…You keep tuning in with inquiry: "How do I feel? What do I need?" During breaks, you may dash off to lay on a daybed next to the infinity pool to write in your journal. Quick swims in the pool refresh you.

ECSTATIC DANCE

Each day has lots of movement on the ocean view patio. There's lightly guided undulation, gyration and everything in between while taking connected breaths. Your body is invited to stretch open to feel new sensations. Ecstatic dance is offered as a somatic awakening, increasing awareness of the Earth, Sky, breath, boundaries, and others. As your body shapeshifts, you're invited to explore embodied breathing as a path to presence. You choose the energy level that's right for you to stay energized and fresh. There are other shakti awakening practices as well, like laughter yoga, shaking, and microcosmic orbit. 

LIFE-COACHING

One-on-one life coaching exercises may give you a gentle push to step into more responsibility in your life. Some practices feel fun, others may push your buttons. You may start to realize where you give your power away, self-abandon and suppress your truth. You could also realize how you can be a source of light and alignment for yourself and others. You could feel excitement about this... or resistance. Throughout it all, the facilitation team is present to support you.

HEARTSHARES

Every day also has heart-opening practices. Many of these happen in pairs with sentence starters that provoke radical truth and vulnerability. Speaking aloud may reorganize your sense of self. Your heart is approached as a living oracle that can provide instant guidance on any topic. You may feel waves of love, compassion and empathy. Softening, warmth, and belonging may also arise. Insecurities could melt away as you connect with your innocence. And sometimes...you may also experience resistance, mental chatter and contraction. It's all good. Everything is an opportunity for deeper presence.

MESSAGES FROM THE BEYOND AND WITHIN

Once or twice per day is a breathwork led by Christabel or one of her assistants. You hold a prayer in your heart while you breathe into what's moving, what you want welcome or release. Its possible that you dedicate your practice to the healing of your entire lineage across lifetimes, in parallel lifetimes and for whole collective of humanity... or something even better.

You open your mouth and begin the Motherwave Breath… connecting inhale to exhale without pauses. You choose the pace that’s right for you. Sometimes it’s faster for a more intense experience, sometimes slower for a more subtle one. You trust your own pace. You quickly let go of wondering about doing it “right”, opening to air as a teacher.

Each breathwork journey is completely different. Some may be mind-blowingly intense, some gentle and soothing. Each one has a wide variety of beautiful music, sensitive and powerful guidance. Some have anointing with essential oils, sound healing, light language, and healing touch. 

Some journeys bring strong sensations, psychedelic visuals and gut-level knowing. Others bring suppressed emotions, memories from this life or others, and communication from the beyond. Gut-wrenching tears may show up. You may leave a few in wordless bliss. Or laughter. And perhaps you leave one feeling like, “nothing happened”.  

Miracles might unfold. Forgiveness can happen. Suffering, resentment and loneliness could dissolve. Ancient memories may show up. Creative ideas could reveal themselves along with a call to action. Guides may visit. Perhaps something that's felt stuck for years or decades can transform.

Whatever your experience, a shift is happening. You're discovering something new. After each journey, you take time to journal, draw and sometimes share. You receive help staying grounded and integrated. 

THE ART OF HOLDING SPACE

By now you may be realizing that the Self Love Journey is really a 6 day living laboratory in the art of holding space. And perhaps... you're understanding that holding space is all about being space — a warm, welcoming field of presence that allows wholeness to flourish. Being space starts in you. It's about offering tender compassion to everything that arises, breath by breath.

If you can't tenderly hold space your own vast light, divinity, beauty, ecstasy, joy, sexuality, rage, grief, trauma, triggers, anxieties and shame, how can you hold space anyone else's? Or a group? Can you expand your comfort with discomfort? 

You cannot learn to hold space all alone. You must be in a live, relational field with other humans. We are wired to repair unconscious material in face to face, live encounters. As you cultivate unshakable self-love, your presence must become multi-dimensional to hold others. As a more unconditional acceptance radiates from your heart, you can welcome more and more people into a nourishing field of harmonic resonance.

As this becomes clearer, you may find that you are increasing your ability to be with things that previously overwhelmed you. Your deepening awareness of nervous system activation and dissociation is helping you with this. Learning in a live community with an ongoing dialog about the somatic field and collective nervous system of the group has been helpful. It is allowing you to embrace your wounds as sacred allies that have expanded the your ability to love.

If you're continuing on to Level 2 to become a group breathwork facilitator, you may be realizing that holding space is actually a path of spiritual awakening. It's all about building your metaphysical muscles of compassion so you love yourself AND others at the same time. It asks you to be here now, track sensations, emotions and breath while attuning to others in a field of relational presence. This could be a lot to take in! The facilitation team reassures you that no matter what's unfolding, or not, all is well. Turbulence can be normal when assimilating so much in such a short time.

INTEGRATE

You enjoy spacious 2 hour lunch breaks with delicious group meals, or if you prefer, as time alone. This break is a great time to chat, unwind, wander the grounds, lay in the sun, journal, drink coconuts, swim in the pool and integrate.  

“The Clearing” happens twice each day. This is when you use communication skills from day one to voice anything you've been bottling up inside that the group needs to know -- like unmet needs, "sticky" situations or a desire to revisit group agreements.

ENCODING NEW CIRCUITRY

The whole experience feels somewhat surreal, so intense. As you learn a few helpful gems from neurocardiology, you realize you've been refining and expanding a coherent electromagnetic field around your heart. The teachings on brain chemistry also help you understand how breathwork has been helping you build new neural pathways. Breath literally helps you call in your higher self to rewire, and encode new somatic circuitry.

Around 6pm each evening, you look out over the clifftop view at the peach sunset blazing into the water. You might feel more whole, connected and alive. More hugs as you leave the group for private time and deep rest. Each night you metabolize insights and savor silence. 

BLISS

As the days continue, you're also understanding more about bliss. You could be realizing that it isn’t about eternal happiness or new age spiritual by-pass.

Bliss is space. Bliss is a living, breathing field of awakened presence. 

Bliss is the space between thoughts. It’s the space beyond right and wrong. It lives beyond fear, resistance, judgement and guilt, where the inhale meets the exhale. Its in the vast emptiness inside each of your 70 trillion cells. It's in particles of grace in the air. It’s in the water molecules of tears and the puffs of air you exhale while laughing.

Bliss is inside every living plant and tree, just waiting for communion. It lives in sunshine, starlight, the ocean and the earth. You may catch moments as you move beyond the "little me" -- your stories, dramas, and any addiction to suffering ... into a vast, eternal Oneness.

Right here, right now, in this next breath and sensation, you feel a unified field... Bliss lives here. In this blessed field, everything says, "Yes!" The sacred door opens with your vulnerability and surrender, your willingness to embrace your humanity as a path to to the truth -- life is a miracle.  

YOUR UNIQUE MEDICINE

Your breathworks may be downloading significant guidance about who you really are and why you’re on here. Perhaps you're even starting to gain a sense of yourself as an angel on Earth...here to transmute your own confusion, doubts, heartbreak and insecurity into love. Challenges arising during the week have been helping reveal your greatest gifts, lessons you can metabolize into medicine to serve others. In the words of Lisa Nichols, “your mess is your message”. Whatever is showing up is pointing you towards your unique heart medicine — what you’re here share and how you're meant to serve.

As the week progresses, you may realize that you are a teacher here to share the gold of your "wisdom body", the collective consciousness gained from all your life experiences. Perhaps the majesty of your imperfection has opened you to new levels of love you can share. You've may have transformed your "demons" into diamonds with presence and have a wealth of holding to offer others.

After the closing ritual at the end of day six, you may be at a loss for words. The epiphanies, breakthroughs, realizations, new perspectives, emotions, people, lush island, dancing, sharing, coaching, conversations, music, food, dancing, tears, laughter… what a sacred, mysterious journey this has been. A wild ride! 

TRIBE OF LOVE

You've gone on a profound journey with people who share similar values and visions. They may see you in ways that some who've known you for years may not. You may realize that one of the greatest gifts of attending a transformational event like this is the extraordinary people you meet. You’re growing your tribe of likeminded, big hearted, soulful friends. Together you have the power to co-create a New Earth. 

PLAN FOR REST

Wether you're staying on for the 14 day Level 2 Group Facilitator Training or not, you enjoy the next week completely off. Maybe you lay on the beach and get Thai massages. Maybe you nurture yourself with sessions from a life coach, therapist or healer. You design a week of deep rest with space for contemplation. You pause, enjoy stillness and integrate insights. Lots of journaling, amazing food, maybe even some yoga... 

* If this inspires you, join us for the next Level 1 Self Love Journey , September 3-8. I’m currently only offering this once per year in Koh Phangan,Thailand. 🙂