I went to a talk recently. The speaker knew their subject, was well qualified and experienced, and they took us through what goes into their sessions, including the science and proof behind each part of it. It was careful and it was accurate.
And the room stayed exactly where it was.
We didn’t experience what they offered. There wasn’t a story about a session that surprised them, and nothing of what the work had been like for them or for anyone they’d sat with. By the end I knew a good deal about their work, but I hadn’t felt any of it. The demonstration and lived experience was missing.
It’s an easy talk to give, and one I’ve given before on more than one occasion so I’m not criticising. I know that when you care about being taken seriously, the explanation or the science feels like safe ground to stand on, and it matters. It’s why the Body exists as one of our categories, and why we’re always clear about what the evidence shows and where it’s still finding its feet. But explanation tells people about the subject. Lived experience is what makes them want to try it.
I came home and reread what our writers sent in this month. Every one of them chose to share what happened for them. We didn’t ask for that, it just happened naturally, a cornucopia of experiences beautifully gathered to educate and to inspire.
Marie Doherty spent session after session waiting for a release she’d been told would come. It never did, and she decided that meant she had failed. It took a gentler way of breathing for her to see there was never only one door.
Kristina Pyrtova realised she had lived most of her life from the neck up. The breath showed her that her body often knew what she was feeling before she did. Giving her a single breath of space between noticing and reacting.
Catriona Byrne qualified and felt the old pull to rush into the next thing. She stopped instead and chose to build slowly.
Jane Beverley shared a poem she wrote at the very start of her training, from the middle of the grief rather than after it.
And Ruth Buckingham found out that the breath she’d taught herself as a student had a name. She used it cycling everywhere, so she could sing the whole tune without running out of air. Years later, on a course, she learned it was coherent breathing. “I didn’t know I knew,” she writes, “but my body did.” That’s the one I keep coming back to. The science gave Ruth the name. Her body had known for decades.
I think that’s the order it usually happens in. Nobody explains their way into breathwork. They breathe, they notice something, and then they want to understand it. The understanding matters. It just rarely comes first.
I’m writing this on the September full moon, it’s the harvest moon, the one farmers worked by to bring the crop in, by generations of knowing, not by science. Our harvest is in, and it’s all lived experience.
So, this month, read one or two of them and then take one slow breath and notice what your body already knows.
And if you hold the room yourself, maybe your story is the one somebody is waiting to read. Science and Experience, they are both welcome! Write with us.
Take care
Sharyn with a Why
